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Forget climate change, fight against malaria
Environmentalists current obsession with the hypothetical problems relating to climate change, threatens to marginalize and overlook more pressing problems for humanity in the here and now like the fight against malaria in Africa and the rest of the Third World.
Environmentalists constantly bang on and on about forcing the most powerful leaders of the Western world to do this, that or the other, in order to save us all from global warming, but meanwhile in the real world, the body count for malaria in Africa alone is a million per year, and rising. (1) What makes me really angry is that these deaths need not have occurred. In fact, all those death lead right back to earlier environmentalists political obsessions the banning of pesticides.
Malaria, extinct in the Western world, is still killing Africans by the millions. But in the West, weve had the pleasure of using the miraculous life-saving pesticide known as DDT, which has all but eradicated malaria from the advanced world. Then came the World Wildlife Fund and the rest of the Green Gang calling for a worldwide ban on the use of DDT. They got their ban, now surprise, surprise, malaria; a once nearly defeated disease is killing more people globally than ever. But who would ever relate environmentalist anti-DDT policy with millions of malaria related deaths and illnesses?
For all their talk about the dire urgency of spending billions, upon billions of pounds reducing carbon emissions in order to stabilise the climate by one or two measly degrees, it seems that the life of human beings is in fact far, far less important than advancing the politics of their latest green obsession climate change, nothing else matters.
Read on:
(1) WHO: Malaria is alive and well and killing more than 3000 African children every day. 2003
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2003/pr33/en/
Submitted on Sun, 2005-06-26 21:53
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=179&threadID=44284&tstart=0
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
you've truly hit on the head, i mean this green issue thats become an obsession of many especially through & in the media, its the latest fanatisism, just like the other thats blowing-up pple every other day. The crisis in africa regarding malaria is not is almost a fringe issue, recently when the WHO lifted ban on DDT, there was and still is a major opposition to that effect by NGO'S, who make money through funds and on the suffering of the millions. The latest obsession with the green issue is to try and halt other economies which are picking up very fast, and the western world especially europe seems so keen to put brakes on this, and also in so try to tame the biggest economy which is america. There are issues about pollution,like polluting rivers,dangerous gasses released into the environment which adversly affect pple and nature, but this should be addressed differently, here in britain, the green taxes are for funding the iraq war which its still engaged in.
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
The same goes for other current third world problems. Over two million people each year die of diarrhea. While most enviro-mentalists continue churning out scary stories about how millions of us MAYBE will die in 2100 using this as a sound basis to slow down the global economic development, these people will continue dying in desperate need of development. There will be 200 million of them by 2100. Any takers for a big "Live 8"-style rock concert for diarrhea? Not sexy enough?
Malaria is particularly interesting. As I wrote before, one study found that without taking climate change into consideration, by 2080 the global population at risk from malaria would increase by 100%. At the same time the effect of climate change would only increase the risk of malaria by at most 7%. Yet we are supposed to avert the 7% hypothetical by crippling our economies rather than using all currently available technologies to tackle the real malaria-related problem of much higher magnitude.
This reinforces the point made by Bjorn Lomborg: the millions of the third world poorest people will pay with their lives for the billions of dollars that will be redirected from them to fighting the chimera of global warming. But hey, don't enviro-mentalists always say, there are too many people in the world?
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
Rachael Carson, who started the DDT hysteria, is responsible for more deaths than Pol Pot.
Evironmental extremists are responsible for millions of dead children.
Do they care? Is this their goal?
Either way, these people are dangerous.
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
forget malaria, let's fight against coughs. No, forget coughs, let's fight against sore throats. No, forget sore throats, lets fight against road accidents...oh, forget it.
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
did it ever occur to you, Courtney, that Malaria, a tropical-mosquito bourne disease, it likely to spread due to the rising temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?
"extinct in the west" - I don't think you understand how this works. if you look at a map of rich countries and poor countries, you'll notice that the rich countries are mostly in the mid-latitues: sub-tropic or temperate climates. the mosquitos we get here aren't the right type to carry malaria. by climate change may change all that.
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
did it ever occur to you, Courtney, that Malaria, a tropical-mosquito bourne disease, it likely to spread due to the rising temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?
Wrong! Malaria became a tropical disease only in this century. In the past malaria was prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere and well into the Arctic Circle. Oliver Cromwell died of malaria contracted in Ireland! Shakespeare's plays have numerous references to "ague" aka malaria.
Malaria is not a tropical disease but a poverty disease. Australia and US have tropical areas but no malaria, funny that. Both had massive DDT spraying programs to eradicate the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The best protection against malaria are modern medicines, modern building techniques and pesticides - not imperceptible temperature reductions promised by the costly CO2 reductions.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no1/reiter.htm
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
ILJAY,
What I find most disturbing here is the totally made-up link between malaria and climate change, or anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Most studies on this subject that I've seen argue that, 'claimed associations between local malaria resurgences and regional changes in climate are overly simplistic'.
Another major study argues precisely what you argued Iljay, accept the study adds that 'widespread increase in resistance of the malaria parasite to drugs', as well as a 'decrease in vector control activities', or in other words, a lack of deploying modern pesticides like DDT is the reason why malaria is making a comeback.
I agree with you Iljay when you argue that malaria is related to poverty rather than the climate. Indeed, the misinformed discussion that the climate is the cause of the spread of malaria and other vector borne diseases, actually ends up diverting attention away from more probable and substantial causes - and more importantly, it diverts us away from potential solutions.
It stands to reason, if malaria is spread because of 'anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions' then we would all need to give-up flying, driving, going on holidays, or watching live sports events - and embrace the miserable zero-carbon eco-lifestyle instead.
Re: Forget climate change, fight against malaria
Your two points raised by the studies of East African highlands are both flawed:
The first study is saying that malaria has gone up despite the climatic conditions of the area not changing. This does not say that if the climate did change that the incidences of malaria wouldn't go up. They actually state in the second study that:
'Climate has a significant impact on malaria incidence and we have predicted that forecast climate changes might cause some modifications to the present global distribution of malaria close to its present boundaries'
The second study also states that malaria has gone up due to multiple reasons, one is resistance to drugs (something we environmentalists can't be held responsible for), the other is a reduction in vector control methods.
Vector control methods are reduced for a number of reasons, not just because of environmental lobbying, resistance is another. India has almost stopped spraying DDT's due to the mosquito's immunity to its effects.
For the record, like WHO, I am not for the total banning of DDT's. What I am for is the responsible use of a substance that has documented negative side effects. Indoor spraying coupled with impregnated bednets and oiling of known breeding grounds are all methods for control, and the precise solution is situation dependant.
DDT being used as a crop spray to increase crop yield and profit is one thing, but its restricted use for indoor mosquito control is another.
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