Making Money, At All Costs

FONDLY I RECALL, as a five year old in 1960, running down the center of our quiet suburban street on hot late summer afternoons, turning my face into the cool mist spraying from the rear of a municipal vehicle, felling the fresh coolness, drinking it in, luxuriating in its clean, cool feel. nobody tried to stop us. In those days middle class suburban American children ran wild and free, and parents were never jailed for child neglect or abuse. The mist was DDT, and the city truck was killing mosquitoes. It felt good, and it tasted better. Fifty five years later, I have three eye sockets, no tongue, glowing purple skin, my children are all severely disabled, but I feel fine, other than a little nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea two or three times a day. So, it was worth it. Then along came Rachel Carson a couple of years later, in 1962, with her damned book "Silent Spring", spoiling all the fun. In the mid seventies DDT was banned. Today's kids will never know what they missed. Rachel Carson is credited with ushering in the environmental movement by pointing out that spewing millions of tons of artificial chemicals into the environment has consequences. Not only does poison make desirable living tissue ill while killing undesirable living tissue, it tends to lose effectiveness over time, as the insect and microbiological world adjusts and strengthens its resistance thereto. Monsanto recently recently, grudgingly conceded that Roundup, the jewel inits corporate crown, aint what it used to be. Of course none of this matters to our beloved American right wingers, who decry any effort to protect the environment as unnecessary and uncapitalistic. Prohibiting the use of harmful chemicals is big government, and that is socialistic, and that we must not allow, no matter what, may the devil take the hindmost,the fact that recent studies conclusively link DDT to breast cancer notwithstanding. With eighty thousand artificial chemicals all around us, who knows their impact? Who knows the causes of our current cancer epidemic? We do know that molecules of jet fuel have been found in the breast milk of women who live nowhere close to an airport, but so what? Conservatives must have their profits.