问答题
Environmentalists claim the moral high ground: their
interests are in preserving our precious planet, protecting defenseless animals,
ensuring our children have clean water to drink and air to breathe. Yet
environmentalists' policies have been a much more mixed bag in terms of their
actual consequences. {{U}} {{U}} 21 {{/U}}
{{/U}}{{U}}Indisputably, many regulations and initiatives have reduced pollution and
improved air and water quality, to the benefit of everyone, but other
environmental efforts have backfired, some with truly disastrous
consequences.{{/U}} Consider what's happened with DDT (a chemical
used to kill insects that harm crops). The pesticide came into use during World
War II and helped eliminate malaria. However in 1962, an environmentalist wrote
that the chemical was causing cancer and destroying wildlife. In 1972, DDT was
banned in the U. S. and ultimately worldwide. As a result of the ban, malaria
remained a plague in many poor countries. {{U}} {{U}} 22
{{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}So during the decades in which DDT was not used, when the
world bowed to undoubtedly well-intentioned environmental activists, about 50
million people-overwhelmingly African children-died, mostly
unnecessarily.{{/U}} Ethanol provides another example. For years,
biofuels were heralded as the promising alternative to fossil fuels, yet it
turns out biofuel's environmental impact is much more complicated. In 2008, Time
magazine wrote about ethanol's dubious environmental benefits. {{U}}
{{U}} 23 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}The article warned that forests, wetlands,
and grasslands were being sacrificed in a rush to farm crops that could be
turned into gasoline, so the once environmentally favored solution to our energy
problems is now recognized as a potential environmental catastrophe{{/U}}. It's
worth noting that, beyond biofuel's environmental effects, using food for fuel
has a significant impact on the worldwide food supply.
Prominent environmentalists promise that they are confident that man is causing
the Earth to warm, and they don't want to contemplate alternative theories about
how the sun might be responsible for warming, that the warming isn't
unprecedented and therefore could be naturally occurring. {{U}} {{U}}
24 {{/U}} {{/U}}{{U}}They don't want to consider the costs of policies
that they want to oppose in the name of combating global warming, or .just how
ineffectual those policies might be{{/U}}. Yet the public should consider what a
significant decline in worldwide wealth will mean, particularly for those who
are already poor. {{U}} {{U}} 25 {{/U}}
{{/U}}{{U}}Those who question global warming alarmists' claims and policy
prescriptions have been compared to massacre deniers, yet what are we to call
environmentalists whose policies have resulted in the deaths of millions and
could aggravate poverty, and hunger?{{/U}} The movie title Not Evil, Just Wrong
may be too charitable.