In recent years my emphasis has been on the science and economics of climate change since climate is surely the poster child for the increasing madness of the environmental movement. The principal problem, I have argued, is the failure of USEPA as well as the environmental movement to use good science and economics in a number of their regulations and policy proposals.
These problems started early in the Agency’s history by its decision to ban the very effective and safe pesticide DDT. Although they conducted a careful review of the science behind the safety of DDT use, the then Administrator ignored this evidence and succumbed to the political and emotional arguments advanced by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring. There were few repercussions in the US because of earlier US efforts to reduce and end malaria in the US, but this action soon led to banning DDT in many less developed countries where malaria was prevalent and is much more effectively controlled by using DDT than any other pesticide. The result has been estimated to be about 50,000 deaths in these countries. EPA did not force these other countries to abandon DDT, but it clearly played a very important role in the resulting disaster.
Environmental Movement Has Become Ever More Radical and Irresponsible
As the environmental movement has aged, it has become ever more radical and irresponsible. It has advocated more and more government regulation of increasingly less important and even no environmental concern. The poster child of this is climate alarmism, where it advocates reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a vital gas necessary for life on Earth. The world needs more, not less carbon dioxide, as frequently discussed on this blog. Until this year the environmental movement has increasingly taken over USEPA, particularly during Democratic administrations, culminating in the Obama Administration, where it exercised almost unfettered access.
Although many of the early EPA regulations were based on good science and economics, there has been a disturbing pattern, particularly during the Obama Administration, of ignoring or even distorting the science and economics in order to try to justify ever more strict regulations based on bad economics or science or both. Where this has occurred, the EPA is making the world worse, not better, at the expense of the US taxpayers and population. My book gives a number of examples. Other examples are discussed here and here, among other places.
via Carlin Economics and Science
December 29, 2017 at 01:54PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 