One of the claassic D.C. quotes quipped about “a billion here and a billion there.” It referred to money. We aren’t supposed to be so cavalier when we’re talking about a million here and a million there and we mean human lives.
But that was the way The Washington Post treated the 100th birthday story of environmentalist “icon” Rachel Carson. Carson wrote the book “Silent Spring” and set in motion the banning of DDT that cost millions of lives needlessly.
The Post celebrated Carson’s birthday by barely mentioning that her actions “have remained controversial” and ignoring that the World Health Organization now embraces using DDT.
All readers got was a pro-Carson press release filled with people who wrote about her and people who work for organizations named after her. One conservative critic was given 78 words to remind readers “people are dying of malaria that don't need to die’ because of bans on DDT.”
Ironically, Mark H. Lytle, a Bard College professor who wrote about Carson, said her book had “an impact on Gore’s audience as well.” According to Lytle, “this,” meaning climate change, is “‘Silent Spring’ all over again.”
Hopefully, that means climate change hype will all turn out to be bogus, but it won’t cost millions of lives in the process.
