Are environmentalists killing people?

Question

Thanks to them we are now using biofuels resulting in lower food production which in turn is causing starvation in many poor countries.

Thanks to them we have insufficient nuclear power and therefore raised CO2 levels in the atmosphere allegedly causing global warming and rising sea levels reducing the availability of arable land once more resulting in even more starvation.

Answer 1

Yes.  Their campaign to ban the use of pesticides has caused more than 96 million Africans to die of malaria since 1970.

Answer 2

No "they" aren't.  

What? You hate the environment?  That's kinda self-defeating isn't it?

I would feel a lot better if some of you folks would turn off the talk radio and open a text book once in awhile.

Answer 3

Wrong on both points.

As the farmers point out, they are exceeding production goals for both food and biofuels so biofuels cannot be "causing lower food production".  They blame the food problems on high oil prices and droughts due to Global Warming.  There is no doubt that the biofuels programs in these countries are ill advised in most cases.  However both the government of the USA and the EU provide financial subsides to those farmers to grow biofuels, but none if they grow food (or invest in their own agricultural programs).  They are the people who have earned your thanks, not the environmentalists.

Now here is what is really behind the food prices and shortages.  The great financial houses that manage America's pension plans took huge losses last year in the real estate market.  In an effort to recoup those losses they are speculating in the futures market in food commodites.  Here's how that works.  You first buy futures in a commodity, say rice.  This means you agree to buy the rice at a future date at a price you lock in today.   Then you find a way to make the price go up, or you create a shortage.  Once you've done that you just unload the futures to someone else who will see them as a bargain.  The financial houses freely admit they are doing this.  It is legal, although the UN would like to see speculation in food banned.  These guys too deserve your thanks.

As for nuclear power, I think most environmentalists support some circumscribed use of it, as they do with coal.  It's obvious that neither will provide an overall solution.  The misconceptions floating around is that nuclear doesn't consume fossil fuel, which it does, that there's no downside, there is:  water consumption is huge on a planet where water shortages are increasing.  The plants cost about 6 billion dollars to build and have a lifespan of  25 years, then cost about 2 billion to "decommission".  European countries that went nuclear in the 1970's are facing the deconditioning dilemma right now.  In addition to that, nuclear material is not that plentiful, especially in the USA.  We buy all of our medical radionucleotides from Canada who makes them in an ancient reactor, one of 3-4 in the world.  Most of the rest comes from the former Soviet Union.  Going nuclear would not be like throwing a switch, or "plug and play".  We would for the most part building a program from scratch and it would take decades.  You'll be happy to know that environmental activist Michael Moore recently endorsed increased use of nuclear power as environmental policy.  He'd probably be the first to tell you he hasn't earned your thanks on this issue either, nor have the other environmentalists.

Answer 4

wot tuba said.

also, dont forget that most grain goes to feed animals for meat.

Answer 5

Don't blame biofuels on environmentalists.  They are a last ditch effort by a doomed society to maintain its reliance on oil.

Answer 6

Just goes to show you, you don't get something for nothing, everything has a price!

Answer 7

edit:

Ok, fine.  The whole DDT thing is a deliberate made up distortion and lie.  It's disgusting and despicable and shows how low the reactionary right wing movement will go to further their ends.  Which there really aren't any, they just wish to demonize the opposition.  Rachel Carson did not call for a ban on DDT.  She opposed the indiscriminate carpet bombing of the continent with toxic chemicals.  Which is what we would have if she hadn't begun the process to reign in industry.  According to them all these chemicals are benign and don't really need that much regulation.  Which is absolute total nonsense.  We need less toxic stuff in the world, not more.  Rational environmentalists agree with indoor spraying of surfaces with DDT for mosquito control, which has been proven to be THE effective technique, rather than the totally wasteful, ineffective and counterproductive aerial spraying.  

howshaw makes an incredibly rational and insightful comment.  

blanc repeats a total lie.

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Environmentalists look at the science, draw some conclusions and make broad sweeping declarations about what it all means and what we should do about it.

Dittoheads listen to the same made up c**p year after year and then regurgitate the swill.

Who is worse?

Is there some boiler room somewhere where they make all this stuff up?

Answer 8

You're thanking the WRONG people. :). Do some research into the companies pushing biofuels (clue: The same as the petrochemical giants), and the real reasons why we do not have have sufficient nuclear power. (Politics in the 80's, cost of building and storing waste, etc).

Google exists for a reason, you know.;)

Answer 9

Many environmentalists have a narrow agenda. Unfortunately it doesn't include the rest of us!

Answer 10

Yep.  They put up a huge stink when we use oil, so they convince idiots in government to subsidize and mandate ethanol production, and tada, we have skyrocketing food prices and starvation in poor countries as a result.  They complain about coal power plants and advocate alternative energies, so when we want to construct nuclear power plants, they block the efforts.  Sometimes I think these idiots want us to go back to the stone age.

Answer 11

yes, the money on global warming could be spent to give everyone in Africa clean water saving billions of lives

Answer 12

if you want to apportion blame try doing it on a sliding scale. I think that greedy corporations would have to be at the top. the ignorrant sheep amongst us somewhere in the middle and the well meaning environmentalist somewhere near the bottom. I would qualify that by saying that as far as things like biofuels and organic farming are concerned the honest environmentalists aproach to either is a far cry from that of the profit driven methods being applied by large companies