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Peter Burgess
Dear Mr. Yannacone –
You and I have never met, but you had a strong influence on my career choices, because of your comments and articles back in the late 1960s, when I was studying geology and field ecology. You helped persuade me that the environmental movement and pollution control were vitally important. I got involved in environmental issues and changed my post graduate plans from marine biology to law, concentrating on environment and natural resource law.
Over the years, like you and my friend Patrick Moore, I became highly critical of the movement and what I saw as its excesses, betrayal of original principals, and outright falsification of facts, to promote fund raising objectives and political power.
I’ve been deeply involved in campaigns to control and eradicate malaria, a harsh critic of environmental activists over their opposition to insecticides, and a strong proponent of DDT as an essential weapon in this fight. I share your perspectives on human-caused catastrophic climate change, and your view that DDT was greatly and carelessly overused. But I disagree with some of your analyses and conclusions.
You wrote: “The fair preponderance of all the substantial credible scientific evidence of which I am aware has clearly established that broad spectrum persistent chemical biocides such as DDT and the other chlorinated hydrocarbons do not substantially limit populations of the mosquitoes which carry … malaria, much less effectively control such insect populations in the wild. The effects of such broad spectrum persistent pesticides on non-target organisms, particularly those which prey on insects such as mosquitoes, make application of DDT and its related compounds counterproductive.” [emphasis mine]
You are correct that DDT does not substantially limit mosquito populations. It’s not a particularly effective mosquito/insect killer. We have much better insecticides today, including Dibrom and Icon. But that is not the way DDT is used today, or the reason many of us want it used in programs to prevent and eradicate malaria.
DDT is first and foremost a powerful spatial repellant, and no other chemical (at any price) does what DDT does, at a fraction of the cost of supposed “alternatives.” Sprayed in small amounts on walls of cinderblock or mud-and-thatch houses, it keeps mosquitoes from entering homes for six months or more, irritates the few that do enter so they don’t bite, kills most of those that land, and slashes malaria rates by 70% or more. In combination with other interventions, it can help reduce malaria by some 95 percent.
As far as anyone has been able to determine, mosquitoes do not become immune to this repellency effect.
They have become increasingly resistant to pyrethroids, which are used heavily in agriculture – and that is beginning to raise concerns about insecticide-treated bed nets. Dibrom and Icon still have tremendous success in controlling mosquito populations. And potential resistance to DDT’s insecticidal properties is largely irrelevant, since health officials do not employ DDT to limit mosquito populations – but to keep the flying killers out of homes.
I would agree with you that non-target species impacts is a valid and significant concern, were it not for several considerations that to me are overriding.
Worldwide, over 2 billion people are at risk of getting malaria. Between 300,000,000 and 500,000,000 are infected every year – making them unable to work, care for their families or attend school for weeks or months on end, and leaving many with permanent brain damage. Over 1,000,000 die. The vast majority of the morbidity and mortality occur in Africa, and children are especially at risk.
DDT is not being sprayed indiscriminately or in large quantities in the general environment – but only on the walls of houses, in selected locations, by trained personnel. It is like having a bed net over an entire house 24/7/365, protecting every inhabitant, whether or not they forget to use their bed nets.
DDT is just one important weapon in our arsenal, with specific traits and capabilities that are essential in certain instances. The military analogy might be tanks, armored cars, trucks, rocket launchers, fighter jets, close support aircraft, machine guns, howitzers, air-to-air or ground missiles, sidearms and tents. No army uses all these weapons in every instance; but success often depends on using them when necessary.
DDT is likewise vital in many situations – along with larvacides, insecticides, insecticide-treated nets, artemisinin-based combination drugs, clinics, doctors, education, control of breeding areas and other measures, including careful and constant monitoring and data analysis. It should never be used indiscriminately, without first evaluating its usefulness in particular circumstances, without considering alternatives, or without monitoring how it is working and whether it is causing unexpected or undesirable impacts.
But it should not be dismissed as an intervention – or removed from the arsenal.
It’s often easy for people in malaria-free offices and countries to oppose DDT, or focus on the often speculative risks of using it – while ignoring the real, immediate, life-or-death risks of NOT using it.
There may have been some harmful effects on certain species, the broad environment and even some people from the widespread use of DDT during and after World War II. I’m not going to contest every claim and counterclaim. But the fact remains that DDT did eliminate malaria and yellow fever in the United States, Europe, Canada and elsewhere, and did prevent a major typhus epidemic in post-war Europe. Today, it could help minimize or even eradicate malaria in much of Africa and other poor regions … keep people healthy, working and in school … and bring greater prosperity to these lands, so that they can build the modern homes and hospitals that have window screens and doors to keep mosquitoes out.
Those are vital, humanitarian goals – and it should be the purview and responsibility of health officials in those countries to decide whether DDT should be employed in specific situations. We can offer advice and note the risks of using or not using specific insecticides.
But the final decision should be theirs, and it should not be influenced by bogus or highly speculative science, by concerns that pale in comparison to the human carnage being wrought by malarial mosquitoes and environmental radicalism, or by threats of trade sanctions or aid cutoffs imposed on any country that does decide to use DDT.
Thank you for considering my perspectives.
Best regards,
Paul Driessen, APR, Esq.
PS: I am attaching the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now declaration that was signed by three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of physicians, clergy, civil rights leaders and other “people of conscience.” It was presented to President Bush, Congress, USAID and the World Health Organization – and played a major role in ensuring increased funding for malaria control and returning DDT to the anti-malaria battlefield. You may find the declaration and DDT background material to be useful information.
From: Victor John Yannacone, jr. [mailto:vyannacone@YannaLaw.com]
Subject: Re: Comments: Monckton letter to Senator McCain
Having spent many hours being interviewed by NPR and PBS over the last thirty years, NPR editorial comments aren't science and neither NPR or PBS, much less Fox News provide any peer review of their guests statements, mine included.
NPR and PBS also provide a bully pulpit for some of the most outrages claims of the global warming alarmists. Witness tonight's 'special' on PBS entitled 'Heat'.
The fair preponderance of all the substantial credible scientific evidence of which I am aware has clearly established that broad spectrum persistent chemical biocides such as DDT and the other chlorinated hydrocarbons does not substantially limit populations of the mosquitos which carry diseases such as malaria, much less effectively control such insect populations in the wild. The effects of such broad spectrum persistent pesticides on non-target organisms, particular those which prey on insects such as mosquitos, make application of DDt and its related compounds counterproductive.
It is just because of the enormous respect and high regard I have for Lord Monckton that I had to take issue to his referral to the DDT controversy in just the same kinds of terms and with no more evidence than the AGW alarmists use to advance their cause. If we are ever to make rational science as the basis for public policy, we must stay with positions that are truly supported by a fair preponderance of the substantial credible scientific evidence.
Victor John Yannacone, jr.
My dear Lord Monckton:
Our mutual friend Dr. Gerhard forwarded a copy of your open letter to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. Your cover letter was eloquent and moving and your lucid discussion of the anthropogenic global warming issue precise and essentially unassailable. However, your attack on the Environmental Defense Fund for its work against the indiscriminate application of DDT worldwide for control of insect populations which had long since become fully resistant to this particular broad-spectrum persistent chlorinated hydrocarbon biocide is no more based in solid peer reviewed science than the polemics of the AGW extremists against whom we both rail.
The Environmental Defense Fund has been responsible for much of the mischief attributable to the more extreme aspects of the environmental movement. Since my wife and I were responsible for launching the environmental movement, I can make these statements from direct personal knowledge not secondhand filtered news reports.
As the cofounder and original attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, and the attorney who tried the first action against the indiscriminate use of DDT for mosquito control in Suffolk County, New York the action from which the Environmental Defense Fund evolved, I must take issue with your attack on EDF over its challenge to DDT.
The single lasting contribution of the Environmental Defense Fund to the protection of the world environment was its demonstration that the indiscriminate application of broad spectrum persistent chemical biocides such as DDT and the aptly named “death group”--dieldrin, endrin, aldrin, toxaphene and heptachlor¾without regard to the phenomena of biomagnification and target species resistance was responsible for serious, permanent, and irreparable damage to the Biosphere.
I don’t know where you got your information on DDT and the environment, and DDT and human health, but it has no substantial credible peer reviewed scientific evidence to support it. To rely upon such unsupported opinion discredits your effort to bring rational science to the issue of global warming. It calls into question all your solid work on climate and makes you sound like a 1960s public relations flak for agrichemical industry. I am reluctant to circulate your otherwise cogent and well-reasoned demonstration of the folly of trying to limit anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere to control global warming to the next President of the United States in association with such patent and easily discoverable inaccuracies about the impact of limiting the use of DDT
To be more specific, I will go over your comments as you did Senator McCain’s, and then, by your leave, I will proffer an edited version of your comments to more accurately reflect the truth and the scientific evidence while still respecting and supporting your attack upon my former colleagues.
* * *
“Earlier in this letter I undertook to illustrate the track record of the Environmental Defense Fund, which invented the “cap-and-trade” policy that you advocate with such insouciant enthusiasm. It was the EDF that brought the legal case that led to the ban on the use of DDT first in the US and then throughout the world.”
EDF did not bring the case that led to the ban on the use of DDT. The original action that awakened the public consciousness to the dangers of indiscriminate application broad spectrum persistent chemical biocides was entitled, Carol A. Yannacone, individually and on behalf of all those entitled to the full benefit use and enjoyment of the Suffolk County regional ecosystem without degradation from the effects of DDT v. Suffolk County Mosquito Control Commission, et al. Now is the time for an important historical diversion in the interests of setting the record straight once and for all. The following is taken from remarks prepared for a program presented by the Committee on Problems Arising from Environmental Litigation and Legislation of the Section of Insurance, Negligence and Compensation Law, American Bar Association in 1973.
A Short History Of Environmental Litigation
Environmental Law and Environmental Litigation became recognized elements of our legal system in the Spring of 1966 when a suburban New York housewife brought an action on behalf of all the citizens of Suffolk County, New York, not only of this generation, but of those generations yet unborn, seeking equitable relief from a toxic insult to the community ecosystem. The real defendant in that action was not the local mosquito control commission still routinely using DDT in an attempt to control a mosquito population that had long since become resistant to the chemical but the broad-spectrum, persistent chemical biocide, 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(parachlorophenyl) ethane, DDT itself.
The New York State Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction restraining the County of Suffolk from using DDT for mosquito control on August 15, 1966 and continued this “temporary” injunction until December 6, 1967, finally holding that:
The public interest in environmental litigation is in large measure the direct result of one attorneys answer to a series of rhetorical questions posed on September 30, I 967 at the National Audubon Society Annual Convention.
“What can you do when government agencies seriously consider drowning the Grand Canyon or much of Central Alaska, or when a combination of government agencies and private speculators act in concert to destroy the delicate ecological balance of the entire state of Florida?
“What can you do when the United States Department of Agriculture publicly states that it does not consider the possible adverse effects of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides such as DDT on non-target organisms, but permits them to be sold and used even after their toxic environmental effects become generally known?
What can you do when timber and paper companies cut down entire forests of Redwoods and other exotic species in order to “reforest” the area with faster growing pulpwood trees?
What can you do when real estate speculators insist on dredging estuaries in order to fill marshes or strip the topsoil from irreplaceable prime agricultural land in order to plant houses?
Just what can you do?”
It is time to assert your basic rights as citizens. Rights guaranteed by the Constitution and derived from Magna Carta. It is time to establish once and for all time that our natural resources are held in trust by each generation for the benefit, use and enjoyment of the next. Today, while there is still time, you must knock on the door of courthouses throughout this nation and seek equitable protection for the environment. You must assert the fundamental doctrine of equity jurisprudence - a doctrine as old as the Talmud or the New Testament or the Roman Law; a doctrine as old as civilization, yet a doctrine as topical as today and as advanced as tomorrow: So Use Your Own Property As Not To Injure That Of Another—in particular that which is the common property of all mankind, the air we breathe and the water we drink. ... Experience has shown that litigation seems to be the only civilized way to secure immediate consideration of such basic principles of human rights. Litigation seems to be the only way to focus the attention of our legislators on these basic problems of human existence.
Conservationists! You who would make wise use of our natural resources. Look to the history of the human rights struggle in the American Courts. Look to the success of the American Labor Movement and the surprising corporate survival of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, in spite of judicial recognition of the rights of the United Auto Workers.
The major social changes which have made the United States of America a finer place in which to live have all had their roots in fundamental constitutional litigation....
Our adversary system of litigation as the means of presenting evidence to the conscience of the community has been the touchstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence since Magna Carta, That adversary system of litigation survives today as the hope of citizens seeking redress of a public wrong.
If you the citizen do not forsake your Courts, they will not forsake you in your hour of need. Thomas Becket and Thomas More are only two of the many men who have given their lives that you the citizen may have your day in Court.”
During the fall of 1968, a class action was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Montana on behalf of all those entitled to the full benefit, use and enjoyment of the Missoula Valley Regional Ecological System without degradation from the effects of noxious reduced sulfur compounds emitted by the Hoerner Waldorf kraft pulp mill. That action asserted that the people of the United States had a constitutional right guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment and protected by the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, to the cleanest air that the existing state-of-the-art in pollution control technology applicable to the kraft pulping process could provide.
While the Hoerner Waldorf action was pending a major confrontation took place before a hearing examiner at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. There, during six months of trial, the issue of DDT as an environmental pollutant was resolved, and, as a result of testimony from that hearing, the United States Department of Agriculture is no longer directly responsible for the registration of pesticides.
Project Rulison
Finally, the success of the Colorado Open Space Coordinating Council, Inc.—a non-profit, public-service corporation whose corporate purposes include the preservation of the environment and protection of human beings from the effects of pollution—in establishing that it is a “person adversely affected or aggrieved” within the meaning of the Atomic Energy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act should put to rest the fears of those attorneys who have voiced concern over the standing of organizations and individuals seeking to act as “private attorneys general.” The Project Rulison litigation should serve as sufficient authority for the proposition that a public benefit corporation may bring a class action on behalf of all those entitled to the protection of their health and the full benefit, use and enjoyment of national, natural resources.
Project Rulison provided the first direct confrontation among the several current theories urged in support of citizen action to protect the environment from federal agency operations. Three separate suits were filed. The first action was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and relied on conventional theories to establish standing: Individual plaintiffs alleged direct, personal, private injury and special damages seeking injunctive relief to protect their own property rights. The ACLU action sought to restrain detonation of the underground nuclear device as its principle request for relief, and had already been dismissed when the second action was filed by the Colorado Open Space Coordinating Council. The title of that action in itself indicates the contrasting theories.
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Bureau of Mines, U.S. Department Of Interior, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, as their several interests may appear. “
Among the procedural landmarks established in the Project Rulison litigation was the right of the plaintiff COSCC to take the depositions of experts prior to the determination of the defendants motion for summary judgment to dismiss the complaint. Plaintiffs argued that the motion for summary judgment could not be decided without considering the relevant testimony of certain experts under the control of the defendants and the Court directed the defendants to produce those experts for pre-trial deposition. The information obtained in those pretrial examinations established the need for a full hearing on the merits as a condition precedent to determination on the AEC motion for summary judgment
The issues raised in the Project Rulison action are common to all environmental litigation now pending against federal administrative agencies.
Issues of Law
The first four issues of law may be considered the jurisdictional issues presented.
The plaintiffs, arguing entirely from the history of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, succeed in establishing the actions of the Atomic Energy Commission are subject to judicial review under the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act; the Court holding that the Administrative Procedure Act does not apply to the Atomic Energy Commission with only minor exceptions, one involving date or defense information and the others involving procedures in cases dealing with licensees for production and utilization facilities and patent procedures under the Atomic Energy Act.
Along the way towards determining that the AEC was subject to the Administrative Procedure Act, the Court laid to rest the issue of sovereign immunity as far as federal agency action is concerned. Although the plaintiffs struck directly at the entire doctrine of sovereign immunity, asserting that the general doctrine of the immunity of the United States from suit without the consent of Congress is but a rule conceived by the federal judiciary without basis in the Constitution or any Act of Congress and tracing the doctrine to the dictum of Chief Justice John Marshall, “The universally received opinion is, that no suit can be commenced or prosecuted against the United States; that the Judiciary Act does not authorize such suits.”
The Court was able to sidestep the issue by holding that joinder of the nominal head of a federal administrative agency is sufficient to make the agency accountable under the Administrative Procedure Act if all the other elements of jurisdiction under the APA have been satisfied. After finding that the Administrative Procedure Act does apply to the Atomic Energy Commission and exploring the meaning of Agency action in light of the exigencies of modern administrative operations the Court found that COSCC, as a public benefit corporation asserting the interest of all those persons entitled to the protection of their health and all those persons entitled to the full benefit, use and enjoyment of the natural resources of the state of Colorado, is adversely affected or aggrieved, if in fact the AEC is obligated by the Atomic Energy Act to consider the interests asserted by COSCC in its representative capacity.
The seemingly contrary holding of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Mineral King case can in large measure be attributed to the failure of the Sierra Club to adequately establish its position as a person or party aggrieved—a failure of proof rather than a return to the strict interpretation of standing. The real tragedy of the Mineral King case lies in the failure of the plaintiff Sierra Club to establish the basic requisites for equitable relief: serious, permanent and irreparable damage to a national, natural resource treasure.
It would be interesting if the Sierra Club would amend its complaint to challenge the proposed Disney development and its supporting State Highway and overhead transmission lines on the grounds that such development does not represent the highest and best use of the national natural resource treasure, Sequoia National Park, alleging that determination of the highest and best use of a national natural resource treasure such as Sequoia National Park must utilize modern techniques of systems ecology; and bringing the action “on behalf of all the people of the United States, not only of this generation, but of those generations yet unborn, who are entitled to the full benefit, use and enjoyment of that national natural resource treasure, Sequoia National Park, without degradation by reason of the failure of the defendants to determine the ecological impact of their proposed public improvement upon such a national, natural resource treasure in accordance with modern methods of environmental systems science.
Environmental Litigation On The Way
By Earth Day, April 22, 1970, environmental litigation was well established as a weapon in the armory of those seeking to defend the environment. Building on the rhetoric that had launched the Environmental Movement, speakers at college campuses throughout the country damned industry, government and free enterprise as the source of all environmental degradation.
There were cries of: Ban DDT! Ban the SST! Stop at Two! Up the Organization! and Burn, Baby, Burn! Coalitions were formed and large numbers of law students and young lawyers began to plan attacks on business, industry and government. One major, tax-exempt conservation legal action group has selected the following “targets:”
* * *
The UN’s climate panel makes no mention of the three letters “D”, “D”, and “T” in its mendacious ramblings about the alleged (but in reality non-existent) link between warmer weather and the prevalence of malaria. Therefore I should explain that DDT is the only effective agent against the mosquitoes that carry malaria;
That statement cannot be supported by a fair preponderance of any peer-reviewed scientific literature. Coming from someone as passionately concerned about scientific integrity and application of the scientific method as you are, it is almost irresponsible.
DDT has not been effective against Anopheles mosquitoes since the late early 1950s. The mosquitoes which carry malaria have been resistant to DDT since the mid-50s. Unfortunately whatever natural predators there are which might control those mosquitoes have never developed similar resistance to DDT and its principle environmental metabolite, DDE. The literature is full of tragic examples of collateral damage to populations of nontarget organisms after broadcast applications of DDT. It is just another example of the law of unintended consequences.
As we also established by a fair preponderance of the substantial credible scientific evidence at the DDT hearings in Madison, DDT and its principle environmental metabolite, DDE, were responsible for the phenomenon of enzyme induction which promotes accelerated destruction of steroid hormones in the liver. At the same time, while inducing production of steroid destroying enzymes in the liver, DDT and DDE were mimicking the hormone estrogen and competing for sites with the natural occurring hormone. It was this combination of enzyme induction and estrogen mimicry that was responsible for many of the sublethal effects which have been clearly associated in the peer-reviewed literature with uptake of DDT and DDE. These effects range from the thin eggshell phenomena and reproductive failure in birds of prey to altered levels of steroid hormones in mammals including human beings.
The well-known and most effective method of malaria control is to eliminate the breeding populations of the mosquitoes which carry malaria. There are many ways to control mosquitoes without the use of broad-spectrum persistent chemical biocides such as DDT. Eliminate standing water. Use light oil on the water to destroy the mosquito larvae. Light oil is relatively non-toxic to nontarget organisms. Many of these methods of mosquito control are labor-intensive, but in the Third World where where malaria kills the greatest numbers, there are more than enough people to do the work. At best DDT is a very temporary solution to a long-standing, and as far as human beings are concerned on this planet, eternal problem.
The “scientific literature” to support this absurd claim is at best the kind of “model derived” conclusion that we are both aware is not scientifically verifiable or even testable. Yes, many people die from malaria and other insect borne diseases in the Third World. DDT will not prevent the vast majority of these deaths. Poverty, ignorance, and lack of societal infrastructure, as well as inadequate or nonexistent medical care and treatment are the root causes of death from disease in the underdeveloped countries. We both know this and you do a disservice to all of us who share your concern about social justice, rational science, and intelligent public policy, by raising this “red herring”.
During the summer of 1969, after the conclusion of the DDT hearings in Wisconsin, the California agricultural community announced they were discontinuing the use of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in favor of organophosphates, particularly parathion. I expressed concern that the organophosphates would be responsible for many deaths among migrant workers, particularly their children. When I tried to interest my former colleagues at EDF in systems ecology which weighed all living creatures whether plants or animals as elements of a complex interactive system in which no element could survive without respecting its relationships with all the other elements, they had more important things on their mind. They had discovered fundraising. Until that point in time, we were operating the Environmental Defense Fund from my law office and on my diners club credit card.
There is absolutely no significant scientific evidence that in 1969 or 1970 the much touted “malaria eradication program” had even begun to “wipe this curse from the earth”. Rather, the reliance on DDT and the failure to maintain control of breeding sites for the mosquitoes which carried malaria was leading to a resurgence of the disease because the mosquitoes which carried it were now resistant to DDT and the disease itself had developed resistance to many of the pharmaceuticals used to treat it. Another example of the law of unintended consequences in operation.
And here is the point that you can legitimately make. EDF has never presented a case on its scientific merits since Carol and I left the organization. I doubt they are capable since none of the attorneys who ever presented them since 1970 seemed to have any grasp of even the rudiments of general science, much less the complexities of environmental systems science.
Dr. Arata Kochi of the WHO, announcing the end of the DDT ban, said that in this field politics usually prevails, but that it was now time to pay heed to the science and the data.”
At the hearings in Wisconsin, my entire case was based on peer reviewed scientific literature. The chemical DDT which was in the dock was defended by the National Agricultural Chemicals Task Force on DDT which had unlimited funds and access to all the putative experts on the subject. What happened during the two months of trial which was covered on live television and conducted under the strict common-law rules of evidence not the more liberal Federal rules of evidence used today in our courts, was the total refutation of the claims that DDT was essential to world health and the American agricultural economy.
During that period, the national agricultural chemical Association prevailed upon Congressman Whitten of the House Agriculture Committee to publish a book entitled, Bugs or People, and the magazine Bioscience, to publish an article by the attorney for the DDT Task Force claiming that all those who opposed the use of DDT were sexual perverts as had been described by Sigmund Freud in Totem and Taboo. One of the amusing sidebars to the Wisconsin hearings occurred when I called my adversary who had written the article as a witness, handed him a copy of Totem and Taboo and asked him to identify the specific perversions he was claiming the petitioners were involved with. He demurred.
More specifically, I never advocated, and I am still, except in certain extraordinary cases, unwilling to advocate, application of the “precautionary principle” as it is defined by environmental extremists and ecofanatics. While I do not believe that reckless application of untested technology which might place substantial numbers of human beings and other animals at risk of serious permanent and irreparable damage, I am not opposed to limited and well monitored applications of almost any technology offering substantial benefits to society and civilization. Blind and doctrinaire application of the “precautionary principle” as an article of “faith” would leave the world exactly as it is and turn society and civilization backwards on a path of regression toward a more primitive way of life and standard of living.
you do not wish to repeat the slaughter of the innocents;
But in this single clause you do serious damage to your argument.
to cast aside the corrupt folly of the climate scare and of the policies which its promoters self-servingly advocate; and to tell the people that not another penny will be diverted from the real environmental problems of the world to the non-problem of “global warming” unless and until compelling scientific evidence of the imagined planetary threat shall have been provided. For the avoidance of doubt, the diffuse and corrupt ramblings of the UN’s climate panel do not constitute scientific evidence, but a deliberate, artful, systematic fraud.”
Again, on this we both agree.
* * *
And now let us rework your attack on the Environmental Defense Fund in a more accurate and less polemical and strident tone.
Earlier in this letter I undertook to illustrate the track record of the Environmental Defense Fund, which invented the “cap-and-trade” policy that you advocate with such insouciant enthusiasm. It was the EDF that brought the legal cases after passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970 for the express purpose of using the costs of defending litigation as a means of preventing many reasonable attempts at economic development in the United States.
Sir, if you or your advisors are ever tempted to say that we should introduce such drastic measures as “biofuel” development or “cap-and-trade” or shutting down three-fifths of the US economy, as a precaution just in case the UN’s climate panel and other politicized extremists are right, I pray that you will think again. The “precautionary principle” is not a principle: nor do its advocates pray it in aid for any other reason than to provide a specious credibility for policies that would otherwise be self-evidently purposeless and cruel.
The very body that invented the “cap-and-trade” scam that you now propose to sanctify as a policy of the Republican party in government would have the children of the Third World and the poor of the developed nations starve as these subsistence agriculture they depend upon his turn to production of biofuels to reduce the claimed effects of using fossil-fuels on global climate. They would condemn the children of the Third World and the poor of the developed nations to death ⎯for it is children who are nearly always the victims of poverty.
The lawyer for the environmental Defense fund insisted that no legal action should ever be taken that could not be based upon substantial credible scientific evidence. He was scientifically literate and competent. And what was the reaction of the Board of the Environmental Defense Fund⎯your allies in introducing yet another mad scheme based on a policy that is already killing people by starvation in the world’s poorest countries? They dismissed their Counsel on the spot. As he left the room, he heard a member of the Board say, “That’s the last time we ever employ a lawyer who knows anything about science.”
Since 1970, the Environmental Defense Fund has been willing to advocate and litigate issues without attempting to present any credible scientific evidence arguing that even without scientific evidence the “precautionary principle” justifies calling a halt to technological and economic progress throughout the world regardless of how human beings may die as a result.
That is why it is necessary not to be careless about the science; not to believe grand-sounding international organizations which put their own political predispositions and financial interests ahead of the common interest and even the life of humanity; not to accept the case for climate alarm merely because it suits you to be seen to reach out to the millions of young people who have been relentlessly propagandized in their schools, or to cross the political divide and attract voters from the Democratic electorate; not to advocate or adopt policies which originate with an organization that is willing to inflict upon the United States and the world a policy that may lead to the death of tens of millions.
That is why it is necessary that you should have the courage and honesty to do what marks out the statesman from the mere politician: to change your mind; to admit that, in relying upon a policy advocated and promoted by the lavishly-funded Environmental Defense Fund, you do not wish to condone the slaughter of the innocents; to cast aside the corrupt folly of the climate scare and of the policies which its promoters self-servingly advocate; and to tell the people that not another penny will be diverted from the real environmental problems of the world to the non-problem of “global warming” unless and until compelling scientific evidence of the imagined planetary threat shall have been provided. For the avoidance of doubt, the diffuse and corrupt ramblings of the UN’s climate panel do not constitute scientific evidence, but a deliberate, artful, systematic fraud.
Victor John Yannacone, jr.
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