gungasnake wrote:Steppenwolf wrote:I still fail to see the link between the EPA's regulatory policy and malaria deaths outside the U.S. (and hence outside of the EPA's jurisdiction). But you keep citing the 90 million figure without addressing this critical short-coming in your argument--that's intellectually irresponsible and dishonest.
Cut and run, or face the music.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,55843,00.html
Quote:
DDT use has virtually disappeared. Many countries blindly followed the U.S. ban or succumbed to activist pressure. Activists recently succeeded in pushing a virtual world-wide ban in the form of a United Nations' treaty signed by the Bush administration, but not yet ratified by the Senate. The Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty would permit DDT use only through expensive bureaucratic processes designed to dissuade rather than encourage use.
Article also totally destroys arguments involving eggshell thinning amongst raptors, amongst other things.
Aha, an argument!
You should have read your source more closely. The article you cited notes that the only multilateral action against DDT by the US Gov. has been a recent UNEP treaty which was, and I quote your source "signed by the Bush administration." But the line of causality becomes increasingly nonsensical when you add the fact that DDT for use against malaria under this treaty was specifically EXEMPTED (a fact curiously not mentioned by FoxNews).
http://www.economist.co.uk/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=449311&CFID=897202&CFTOKEN=8338251. Actual causality cannot be traced to a U.S. regulatory Agency, like the EPA, but to treaty making powers, such as the President, and to regulatory powers in African countries. And that's assuming, quite implausibly, that DDT would utterly eliminate malaria in these countries. I'm sorry, but the causal link is simply not there. If you still believe that the U.S. is the sole cause of 90M malaria deaths, perhaps you should look to those that signed anti-DDT treaties. I expect Bush's name on your list unless you start doubting the causal links yourself?-as I do.
If anyone needs to reconsider DDT use, it's the WHO and the United Nations Environment Program, not the EPA. We in the U.S. simply don't suffer from a malaria problem, and it's silly to attribute deaths in African to U.S. regulatory law that doesn't face the same cost/benefit trade-offs. Countries that face malaria problems are more than free not to follow the EPA's lead. UNEP reports thatm any still use DDT (about 24 countries), while others use alternatives.
http://ipen.ecn.cz/handbook/html/ipen/pop_pap/paper4.pdf. As for the U.S., you've provided no compelling arguments for why US Regulatory policy is killing. It's simply not an honest position when countries with the worst malaria problems CAN AND DO use DDT. I agree that the WHO and international community should help countries infested with malaria, and that DDT provides a cheap means of doing so, but this simply isn't a compelling argument against the EPA or Ruckelshaus.
