"Eco-Freaks": The 2% fight back

Given the relatively green/greenybrown nature of this blog it is always good to provide a little balance.

The issue however harks back to a post Matt wrote about media balance. Journalists often feel the need to put both sides of an argument to "balance" their piece even if, as the CEO of Shell said in a post 3 or so back, 98% of scientists believe in one thing.

The question, therefore, is how much attention should the 2% get? Of course this very post falls into the same trap.

However, in this case the 2% are showing quite clearly why they are the 2%. The review of this book has to be read to be believed. I also include a link to the original "green" review that cannot be posted here due to its rather "industrial" nature.

Book Description

Tree-huggers may actually be squeezing the life out of the environment.

In book that is alternately alarming, enlightening, ironic, and entertaining, award-winning journalist John Berlau explores the many ways that shortsighted environmentalism actually endangers trees, wildlife, and people. In chapter after chapter, Berlau debunks myths and libels about:

global warming and climate change
the dangers of pesticides like DDT
trees and pollution
fuel economy and the auto industry
the threat posed by asbestos
the lifesaving role of dams and levees
plans to "rewild" America
Mother Nature is not a gentle person, and Berlau's pointed reporting reveals the very real dangers to people and their environments when Eco-Freaks prevent us from restraining her.

"Berlau makes a powerful case. . . . Thinking environmentalists who read this book will be forced to revisit at least some of their most deeply held beliefs."
-Joel Himelfarb, Washington Times

"Berlau says a lot of things that are not generally known that needed to be said."
-Bruce N. Ames, recipient, National Medal of Science, 1998


Save the Planet . . . and Ourselves

In Eco-Freaks, award-winning journalist John Berlau provides a much needed and startling expose about how the environmental movement with its radical, shortsighted eco-activists has actually helped amplify the dangers of natural disasters and destroyed the lives and property of millions of Americans.

As Berlau writes, "America . . . is still mighty prosperous, but environmentalism is putting us on the brink of danger as well. As technology after technology that our grandparents put in place is being banned, and new technologies never even come to market, we risk a public-health disaster. Environmentalists have promoted all sorts of doomsday scenarios about population explosions and massive cancer crises from pesticides that have been shown to be false. But now, because we have done away with so many useful products based on those scares, we are in danger of an old-fashion doomsday returning, because we've lost what protected us from the wrath of nature. Indeed, as we will see throughout this book, public health hazards caused by environmental policies are already on the scene."

To read EarthchangeII's opinion read "listen up you kommie lying evil SOB eco terrirists, we're on to ya, and we know where you live..."

I think we know from which side of the fence this reviewer comes from. Equally, Jerry Saperstein's review provides the climate change skeptic view.

John Berlau has a mesage that must not be ignored: environmentalism - and environmentalists - are hazardous to your health and safety. Far from being a crackpot, Berlau exposes leading environmentalists for the crackpots, often dishonest crackpots, they are. More importantly, more shockingly, Berlau patiently explains in detail just how environmentalism, often based on pseudo-science or outright falsity, is killing people or subjecting them to unnecessary danger.

Everyday, children in Africa and other places die from malaria and other preventable diseases - because of the zeal of so-called environmentalists in insisting on a ban of DDT. DDT has never been proven to cause disease in humans or to be a danger to animals in normal amounts, but its effectiveness in combatting mosquito-borne diseases is unquestioned. In fact, some environmentalists may actually see the untold thousands of preventable deaths as a blessing, helping to keep the Earth's population under control.

In the United States, well over a million schoolchildren and millions of adults are put at risk because environmentalists - based on the findings of a fake doctor - have forced asbestos out of the marketplace. No fireproofing as effective as asbestos has been found. In fact, had asbestos been used, the World Trade Center towers might not have collapsed or at least would have stood longer, preventing the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands.

Misguided, uninformed environmentalists are changing the shape of the world through their crusade in behalf of "nature". Except the nature of the environmentalists "nature" is an illusion. For example, Berlau recounts that the American Indian reshaped North America in the 13,000 or so years before the Europeans arrived. The treeless Great Plains are a result of Indians tampering with "nature" for their own survival. Likewise, Berlau explains how America is now more heavily forested than it was hundreds of years ago - and that this may not be an entirely good thing.

Berlau is not a crank in any sense of the word, though is cannot be doubted that the environmentalists and their fellow-travelers will shortly subject him to their slime machine. What the environmentalists won't talk about is the racism of John Muir, a founder of the Sierra Club or their own rather frightening attitudes toward the need to control population by whatever means necessary.

Berlau painstakingly documents each of his assertions. Al Gore, by the way, is provably a major prevaricator on the environment.

Author Berlau surveys a wide swath of American life in this expose: from how environmentalists are responsible for much of the Hurricane Katrina damage to New Orleans because of their opposition to flood gates to the real rationale for enviro campaigns against automobiles and accessible woodlands.

Environmentalists are not your friends. And environmentalists are certainly less than honest in their campaigns to dramatically change your life and freedoms. John Berlau has done the nation, if not the world, a valuable service in exposing the environmentalist movement. (His well researched background briefs on some of the leaders of the movement are worth well more than the price of the book - you will not believe that the media takes some of these people seriously after reading their biographies and philosophies.)

This is definitely a "wake-up" and highly recommended.

You could not make it up. Whilst we would certainly not recommend buying this book if you do use the above link as it will certainly not be going into our new and improved bookstore with 26 recommended texts now listed ;-)