Environmentalists falsely claim weed-prevention chemical threatens 1,800 threatened species
Paul Driessen
Modern American agriculture has wrought miracles over the past 70 years. Conventional farm production per acre and overall nearly tripled, corn (maize) production increased 500% from 20% less land – and farmers used less water, less fuel, less fertilizer, and fewer pesticides and other chemicals for every bushel of food they harvested. They did all this using hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, tractors guided by GPS, equipment that can space seeds precisely to the inch and apply chemicals in amounts suited to soil characteristics that can change every few feet, and numerous other high-tech advances.
By using weed control chemicals, they avoid having to till and break up the soil, thereby protecting soil organisms, conserving soil moisture, sequestering carbon, saving time and tractor fuel, allowing more land to be conserved as wildlife habitat instead of being planted in crops, and dramatically reducing erosion,.
It’s thus surprising and troubling that environmentalist groups continue to attack the foundations of that success – especially GMO seeds and safe, effective, repeatedly tested, constantly monitored chemicals like glyphosate (Roundup) and neonicotinoid pesticides.
Another long-term target is atrazine, used to prevent the growth of broadleaf and grassy weeds among corn, sorghum, soybeans and sugarcane, on golf courses and lawns, and along highways. It is the second most widely used herbicide, after glyphosate, and controls glyphosate-resistant weeds. Over a dozen government studies since it was first introduced in 1958 have concluded it is safe for humans, animals and the environment.
The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups opposed to synthetic chemicals nevertheless sued the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming endangered species had not been properly considered during the pesticide review process. The courts gave EPA limited time to analyze possible effects on listed species and determine whether there is “moderate” or “strong” evidence that species and habitats on the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) “threatened or endangered” list (as well as candidates for listing) will likely be killed or otherwise adversely affected by commonly used herbicides and insecticides.
Once EPA finishes its “biological evaluation” of each chemical, it will pass the baton to the FWS for more in-depth, but still insufficient analyses of effects on each species – also under tight court deadlines.
Faced with a court-ordered deadline and lacking the data, funding and personnel for adequate evaluations of each listed species, EPA resorted to satellite imagery, statewide crop and atrazine use data, computer models, algorithms, extrapolations and best guesses – plus available toxicity studies of rats, hamsters, other lab animals, and plants tested for the pre-emergent weed control chemical’s effectiveness. Data were not available (or were not used) at the county level, and certainly not at the farm or habitat level.
It produced a document claiming 1,013 species and 328 endangered or threatened habitats are “likely to be adversely affected” by somehow encountering atrazine, if it is inadvertently sprayed on them, small amounts “drift” into their habitats, or animals wander into a sprayed yard, farmer’s field or golf course.
These numbers represent most of the endangered or threatened species and critical habitats in the continental United States. The numbers would have been higher, except that, as EPA notes, atrazine manufacturers “committed to limit use of atrazine products” to the continental USA.
Ultimately, the agencies must decide whether to let current rules stand – or restrict or ban atrazine nationwide, regionally, or near some or all of the species’ habitats and occasional stomping grounds.
EPA’s list includes 36 amphibians, 207 aquatic invertebrates, 190 fish, 47 reptiles, 108 birds, 99 mammals, 160 insects and invertebrates, and 948 plants. At least 8 of the species are already extinct, and dozens more live in mountains, deserts and other areas that will likely never be touched by atrazine.
It’s a commendable effort – maybe the best possible under the circumstances. It’s just not good enough, not for decisions with such monumental, far-reaching implications for America’s agriculture, especially since these evaluations are likely to be grounds for many more lawsuits against other vital chemicals.
Agency findings are presented in complex equations, over 100 pages of explanations of data and methodologies, and mind-numbing, almost incomprehensible spreadsheets that can involve over 1,800 rows and 30 columns. They’ll probably impress citizens and courts, politicians and journalists with the expertise, precision and detail they supposedly reflect. But in reality, in the end, it’s mostly GIGO: multiple uncertainties in, multiple black box analyses conducted, multiple faulty conclusions out.
The EPA analysis begins with species whose actual populations and presence in specific parts of possible ranges and habitats are mostly unknown. It then utilizes statewide crop planting and atrazine use data, averaged out and applied to possible habitats and individual plants or animals – which as individuals or a species may react very differently to different amounts of atrazine, and may contact them as direct or drifting spray, diluted promptly or over weeks in soil or water, ingested or contacting the skin.
Other unknown factors include number of sprays per year; by hand, tractor or aircraft; wind speed and direction and ambient temperature at time of spraying; distance to habitat or individual plant or critter; amounts actually making contact over time; and whether an individual or species reacts to some unknown amount of atrazine the same way a very different laboratory animal did, with lethal or sublethal effects.
Even assuming a wildly optimistic 90% confidence level for each of these 12-15 or more unknowns, calculating the ultimate “strongest” evidence of harmful impacts requires multiplying the 90% (0.9) confidence for each element – thus 0.9 x 0.9 twelve or more times. The best possible scenario ends up being a ridiculously low 28% or less confidence that the agency’s ultimate findings are valid.
That is useless and unacceptable. Decisions affecting our farms, produce and dinner tables must not be made so cavalierly, on the basis of such patently insufficient evidence and rank guesswork.
But suppose they do ban atrazine. What guarantees will we have that this will prolong the existence of species that are already marginal and threatened by countless other human and natural factors? None.
And what next for conventional farmers? There is no substitute for atrazine or other modern herbicides, which are more effective, less toxic and more biodegradable than their predecessors. In their absence, corn yields would decline nearly 40% – and growers would have to control weeds by hand (by thousands of migrant workers and their children?) and by regularly tilling their fields. Food prices would soar.
Tilling means tractor mileage and fuel would skyrocket, crops would need far more water and irrigation, soils would lose their integrity and many organisms, carbon sequestration would plummet, and millions of tons of farmland would erode annually. Millions more acres would have to be planted to get today’s corn and other yields – and much of that acreage would come from land that is now wildlife habitat.
It’s the “precautionary principle” at its very worst: always focusing on alleged, highly speculative risks of using chemicals – never on the risks of not using them; always highlighting risks a technology allegedly might cause, but ignoring often far greater risks it would reduce or prevent.
Finally, if environmentalists, courts and regulators truly are concerned about chemical threats to these and other species, they would not look only at conventional, synthetic chemicals – but at organic chemicals.
Atrazine has an LD50 of 3090 for rats, meaning it takes 3,090 milligrams per kilogram of body weight to kill half of a test group of rats that ingest it orally. Copper sulfate used on thousands of organic farms is ten times more toxic: an LD50 of 300. It is deadly to fish, hugely harmful to avian reproductive systems and highly toxic to humans. The LD50 for rotenone is 132; a little bit will kill every fish in your favorite woodland pond. Pyrethrin (LD50: 200-2600 mg/kg) and neem oil (LD50: 3540) positively slaughter bees! Yet they (and many more such nasties) are approved for organic farming all over the US, EU and world.
When will environmentalists sue to have dangerous organic pesticides banned? When will courts and federal agencies initiate studies of their effects on EPA’s list of 1,795 threatened and endangered species?
It’s time we all focused on how and where atrazine is actually used – and whether any endangered species would actually be exposed to it (and harmed by it) under conditions of actual use. If you want your voice heard, submit your comments to docket number EPA-HQ-OPP-2020-0514 by February 19.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
— Thomas Sowell
Green activists do not understand this simple truth. Their solutions are always compared to utopia.
IRL, if you quit using chemicals to control weeds, then farmers will go back to mechanical means to control weeds. This disking and tilling will result in topsoil losses, more silt infiltration into streams, less carbon sequestration in topsoil, etc.
Do any “environmentalists” actually understand how the environment works?
“Do any “environmentalists” actually understand how the environment works?”
They certainly don’t. Many may have degrees in biology/conservation- but they learn little about agriculture and forestry- yet with those biology degrees, they think they understand agriculture and forestry more than those who work in those area- who they look down on as mere peasants. Pisses me off! They want a pristine environment- but they won’t give up their rich lifestyle which requires modern agriculture and forestry. It’s like- the kid who thinks milk comes from the grocery store- and wood comes from Home Depot.
Yes, the so-called “pristine environment” has always been a myth advanced among environmentalists who work with either regulatory agencies or entities like the client I once represented for over 26 years, a local city water utility. It was then, and still is, a very pernicious myth.
Because nature is not, and has never been “pristine.” Nothing is so neat and tidy in nature as it looks in the TV propaganda programs.
“It’s like- the kid who thinks milk comes from the grocery store- and wood comes from Home Depot.”
-and that electricity comes from the plug in the wall.
Not only that, they are innumerate. Modern analysis technology can detect things at femptomolar concentrations. When we were doing assays for opioid metabolites, we had to get control baseline blood from someone who had not eaten poppy seeds for the past week, not even one bagel.
NB Just realized that GPS controlled plowing will make contour plowing to reduce runoff much more efficient.
The rank and file certainly don’t, and need to read Bastiat on the seen and the unseen.
But they are only pawns. The leadership know, and actually want civilization destroyed.
<< Do any “environmentalists” actually understand how the environment works? >>
No.
And, another question to ask: How many environmentalists have spent one full day, just one, in the hot sun farming? I am quite certain less than 1% have. If any of these environmentalists actually had to farm, they would be begging for GM seed, modern chemicals, and modern tractors. I have a small garden every year, and I only spend a half day in the hot sun periodically, and that is enough for me to appreciate modern farming.
It has been my observation that the biggest experts on a subject are the ones who no first-hand experience in that subject. I am being facetious, but it is true that most of the people who are considered experts only have book knowledge, never real-world knowledge.
‘Expert’ has two meanings. One is the kind of person who can do something reliably, landing a jet liner for instance. The other meaning refers to someone with a lot of book learning. Other than reciting book learning, that kind of expert can’t actually do anything.
Philip Tetlock spent decades studying the predictive ability of experts. link What he found is that experts can’t meaningfully predict the behavior of humans, individually or in groups. The secretary is often better at predicting whether a criminal will re-offend than is her boss the psychiatrist. Economists are woeful at predicting the economy. Political scientists can’t predict the outcome of political events. Since the climate is a non-linear chaotic system, climate scientists can’t predict the climate.
We often hear something like, If you don’t trust experts, you’d better not fly or go to the doctor. What we need is language that prevents the one kind of expert from pretending they have the kind of reliable performance of the other kind of expert.
Dr. Michael Mann is an actual expert. So is Paul R. Ehrlich. We need a word that better defines what kind of expert they are.
Neither Mann, nor Ehrlich are the sort of experts I would want making scientific predictions. Writing propaganda, yes. But no useful skills.
That’s the key part: we don’t and we don’t have to. Even with the best experts, planes are still doing test flights.
And there is a mountain of real life data (not “brain-trust” conclusions, not “studies”, not “reports”) on plane system reliability. We know stuff from that data, not “trusted experts”
What is the “test flight” equivalent for all the ideas they are advocating?
Marxists of course go on theory, evading the ‘test flights’ of history.
Marxism never achieved the end it used to justify its oppressive means – feed people.
It actually starved people deliberately as in the Ukraine under Stalin and Communist China under Mao. (Note the latter was done in the guise of advancing its society/economy, never mind what peasants wanted. The former was deliberate starvation for ideological reasons, starving the USSR’s most productive farmers.)
There are those who talk, or those that do. These are mutually exclusive.
From what I’ve seen they definitely do not understand how things are interconnected. First-order thinking only, no consideration for second or third-order effects.
I love the shock people express when I tell them plants produce their own toxic pesticides to protect themselves
Indeed. Especially volatile organic compounds that can and usually produce ozone. EPA once established background levels for ozone of 55 ppm. And there are still some “experts” out there who still insist that we reduce existing ozone levels (which have been reduced over the years thanks to the catalytic converter and fuel injection engines) to about 60 ppm, a prospect which is economically daunting and as costly as what they would do to the farmers in this article.
It’s all about cost-benefit, folks.
ppb
That look of shock is likely because they suspect you are a complete … .
We live in ranch and Lupine country. Future Farmers of America and 4-H participants learn early.
You mean, like, nicotine?
My son soaked cigarettes in water to spry his pot plants when infected with whitefly.
Cars can harm, injure, or kill endangered species – no question about it, don’t need a study.
The Soviets spent a lot of time and resources studying how to defeat the U.S. food supply, power grid, and military.
Then they discovered nonprofit NGOs were a more efficient method.
More Agenda 21. The goal here is to consolidate agriculture into government run farms for the purpose of controlling what is grown and where it goes. By removing efficiency from private farming they can outproduce and run them out of business….. by using the very methods they outlaw. Who’s to check the government? It’s always called conspiracy theory until it happens.
I’m sure it was denounced as a “conspiracy theory” when Stalin was doing it too.
There is one simple rule: If it works, the greens oppose it.
Of course. Greens are natural misanthropes.
We went to mostly no till on my Wisconsin dairy farm when the technology became available over two decades ago. We are in the Uplands, so quite hilly and erosion prone even with forests on the steeper slopes. Great deer, turkey, and trout country, tho.
We plow and disc only when converting a contour from a row crop to alfalfa on the 2/3 standard rotation. That means once every 5 years, because you can seed drill the alfalfa contour for a row crop. You cannot plant alfalfa from a seed drill, and cannot cut it for hay until year two, so we co-sow oats and harvest and sell the oats on alfalfa year 1. You have to use glyphosate with the no till RoundUp Ready row crops—for me a mix of about 2/3 corn and 1/3 soybeans. We ‘sell’ all the corn for ethanol and net back the distillers grain from that tonnage, which is an ideal ruminant protein enriched (yeast) food supplement to the alfalfa. We crush the soy as a second minor hay supplement to help keep milk at ‘ideal’ butterfat, and sell what we don’t use.
We spot apply brush killer from a 25 gallon electrically driven spray tank mounted on the back of my Honda 350 4wheeler (usually spraying atrazine) in the cow grazing fields, where invasive multiflora rose is a continuous problem thanks to birds liking rose hips.
All farmers know they have to be careful stewards of their soil. City slickers writing reports like this clearly are NOT farmers.
Rud, it certainly sounds like you and family are modern agriculture practioners. My father, where we lived in SW Oregon, fought against blackberry encroachment his whole life. He burned it, dug it up, put herbicides on it. Where his ashes are scattered is now covered by blackberry bushes. I hope your efforts are more successful.
Wisconsin’s multiflora rose problem is as bad as your father’s Oregon blackberry. Nope, I now have 37 years of abject failure. Reason is, I cannot go get the MF infesting my steep forest slopes in places. My forest backpack handpump sprayer simply does not hold enough.
So the wild birds feed there, then poop over my pastures. The invasive MF battle is endless. Darned stupid original NE settlers that brought it over here centuries ago as an ornamental in New England. They had no idea what it would then do wild in the upper Midwest. Little flowers, big thorns, long wiry canes. Becomes a clumpy ‘bush’. My cows also hate it, because they will not eat the pasture grass in and around a clump.
So when I annually fall mow my pastures with a 6 foot two blade BrushHog behind my 4wd diesel tractor, the MF just comes back stronger. AHA. It is a much smaller clump after mowing, so easier to spray and completely kill the following spring using the 4 wheeler. An annual two part ritual.
Then the birds repeat the summer pasture reseeding, and life goes on.
Some people in UK are using Highland Cattle to keep down both the Rubus and the Rosa. They must have very tough mouths, I guess. Not sure they are useful for dairy, though.
Deer here in the US central-Appalachians eat the younger stems of multifloral rose (thorns and all), but there’s still way too much of it, even in wooded areas.
Maybe the boffins in Wuhan could GenEng a virus which would cause the MF seeds to become sterile?
Let’s get Gates and Fauci on it right away, OK?
Most people here in BC think blackberries are ‘native’. The only good thing about them is the wine.
There’s talk of Soil Erosion and how chemicals prevent it.
Which type of Erosion, physical or chemical
Physical:
For the food growing parts of the US, trying to prevent the soil removal is quite pathetic.
All your good soil blew away in the Dust Bowl.
Gone. End Of, Finito
All you’re preserving now is sand, gravel and rock
It has all gone and is NOT coming back any time soon
Chemical:
As long as nitrogen fertiliser is used, also animal manure in large amounts, chemical erosion rages.
Chemical erosion disappears the micro nutrients and trace elements that keep plants and critters happy & healthy
The very fact that (human) diseases, perfectly unknown 100 yeras ago, now sweep through the population with all the clinical and ruthless efficiency of a 1200 horse combine harvestor running a 36 metre header. In a prairie field of dwarf wheat = no resistance what so ever and at a speed Olympic Athletes can only dream about.
Despite a medical machine that now costs (in the UK), every single person, £2,000 annually. Just for the NHS
Countless more billions go into Social Care for nappy-wearing 60+yr old adults.
You mention Copper. toxic toxic toxic
Without copper plumbing in your home and without epic medical intervention, you would possess all the life signs of the average Dodo.
used in your Immune System and also, very strangely, in baby production.
Hmmmm, maybe all those sour-faced girls at the far end of the room, with their arms and legs firmly crossed, are not that way because you are sooooo rich and intelligent or because today’s tie clashes with your socks
What about Iodine.
If dairy farmers didn’t use it as a disinfectant sanitiser at every milking, every last one of us would identical clones of The Elephant Man
There are 50 more chemical elements I could mention
Here’s some nice concurrent soil erosions – the results of same.
Texas right now
Scotland right now
Innit crazy how highly eroded places, viz: deserts, are such cold places?
All that clever farming is not clever, it is borne of Pure Complete Utter Desperation, for both food and money.
Wouldn’t it beautiful if those ‘weeds’ you’re so desperate to be rid, actually were more nutritious than the corn you’re growing.
In fact and concerning corn, it is impossible that they could ever be less nutritious
Be careful little Duracell Bunny, not only has your head fallen off, but your battery and arse appear to be on fire.
Blame it on those Chinese-made rose tinted shades – its always someone else’s fault these days.
I’ll leave out mentioning the bit where you blow your own foot completely off. for now at least.
In any case, alert readers will be seeing it from miiiiiles away.
Only magical thinkers would miss
(I really am on ‘your side’ but ‘we’ really must do better that this sort of Warmist-Grade junk)
“Without copper plumbing in your home and without epic medical intervention, you would possess all the life signs of the average Dodo. ”
Never heard of PEX ?
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q4/drinking-water-odors,-chemicals-above-health-standards-caused-by-green-building-plumbing.html
And good luck if chlorine ever touches PEX
Toxicity of many materials depends on the what form they’re in. Metallic copper is practically inert when used for pipework at normal temperatures. It CAN react with some potable waters but tends to passivate itself with an oxide/carbonate coating. That fact and its relatively soft ductile and malleable nature made copper a good material for water pipes….and it was better than it’s predecessor, lead.
Copper sulphate, is a whole different thing because the copper is present as divalent cupric (Cu2+) ions which are toxic to many species (including us) at relatively Low concentrations. So, yes, copper is toxic under certain circumstances but it’s also essential to us when ingested at appropriate dietary concentrations. It features in some of our body chemistry and we’d die without it.
As usual, it’s important to look at the detail and there are reasons for using the specific materials we do under the specific conditions where we apply them.
Copper also has excellent antibacterial/antiviral properties when used in door knobs/handles, handrails, etc.
Finally a piece on the insanity of always relying on the “precautionary principle” the most damaging logical fallacy of all because because it always SEEMS so reasonable, but rarely is. It happens when there is an appeal to common sense … like wearing masks, so the sick can walk among us and the well must protect others from their lack of symptoms.
Whenever they appeal to the “precautionary principle”, you can be sure they’re trying to slip one past us. There’s nothing common about good sense.
Joey Biden will fix any problem….and his fav ice cream is chocolate chip….and his dog’s name is….uh, I forget.
Zoophilia?
Umm, Crotch-smeller? Nut-Licker?
You’re dealing with low info people trying to feel important.
ve abundant crustaceans but they completely disappeared when diuron was banned and atrazine was taken up in the seventies by the local sugar cane farmers. However if one travels upstream above the farms, the crustaceans reappear again in abundance. Banning of diuron was the big mistake by government and allowing much,much cheaper atrazine to be used with a large gap in its safety testing, was the cover up.
Regarding atrazine -“Over a dozen government studies since it was first introduced in 1958 have concluded it is safe for humans, animals and the environment.”
Wut? Did you even look at the data?
“almost incomprehensible spreadsheets that can involve over 1,800 rows and 30 columns.”
Umm, that’s not very much.
Is the author available to defend himself? I would like to know; in which universe you multiply the uncertainties in studies you don’t agree with, while citing “a dozen studies” supporting your own claims as holy gospel? I would like to know exactly how the author determined that glyphosate and atrazine are “constantly monitored”, and how “monitoring” is the same as “controlled”. I would like the author to tell me why monsanto itself giggles when it admits our fear of glyphosate in roundup is ridiculed by the fact that Roundup contains over forty other unnamed chemicals “some a thousand times more poisonous”?
I would like the esteemed author to tell me when he actually ever did a hard day’s labour in a field drenched by chemicals PROVEN to cause developmental problems in children and cancers in every living organism. I would like to know his view on all the studies done to prove the toxicity of GMOs.
But mostly, mister author, I would like to know who pays you to disseminate this dreck, because his website is very silent on funding, except for the usual begging bowl, while his “partners” is a long list of people, many of them well-known eugenicist globalist Bolshevik propagandists, like “lord” Monkton, Avery, Novak, Idso, Sirico, Zhou… those are just the ones I recognise from reading similar claptrap.
And just to be sure, you evil little shit, proper organic farming is being practiced, and secondly, GMOs have NOT shown significant production of FOOD. You know, stuff we can eat without poisoning the seed in the womb?
As for the farmers complaining about weeds, shame, maybe sell your fancy computerised tractor fleet, and employ people to do it properly and safely. So what if they are illegal aliens? But you prefer them in the cities, don’t you, where they deal in drugs and underage prostitutes, just to stay alive. People living close to the land would lynch you rather than fund you, and you damn well know it!
You really need to start taking your meds.
Is that supposed to be an insult? Go back to your Roundup-drenched GMO corn pops soaked in MSG, aspartame and HFC syrup. You can take my place in the queue for the ‘vaccine’ too.
P.S. Does your mama know what you do in the basement all day? You sure ain’t using the internet to find out basic stuff, like every commercial breakfast cereal tested so far, contains glyphosate. Why do you think that is, or don’t you think about things that far?
I have found that perpetual victims insist others undergo the same trauma they did. Like the gangrape victim that introduces one to their tormentors with a wink and a smile. Is that why you want me on pills?
We dont want you on pills. We want you to grow a second brain cell so you can understand something, anything.
I have no doubt that when used as the manufacturer directs the commercial herbicides and pesticides are safe as well as effective. However, farmers have a habit of using these chemicals for purposes that were never intended by the manufacturer. A case in point is the common hebicide Glyphosphate. In Warwickshire where I live farmers habitually spray their fields of wheat in late summer to “ripen” (as they put it) their crop. While it gives them a degree of certainty over when to get the combine harvester out, it also causes the high levels of glyphosphate frequently found in grain products.
Many defenders of glyphosate in France don’t even understand that it can be found on non GMO crops.
“The plant would die!” they say. Well, indeed it does.
Perhaps you should investigate the label for glyphosate where it lists its use as a desiccant as being legally allowed. That would also fall into the notion of manufacturer directed, as reviewed by your country’s regulatory agency.
Define “high levels”. That it can be found does not mean it is dangerous. Back in the Jurassic when I was in school it was prohibitively expensive to test to the ppm level. Now as I near retirement it’s dirt cheap to do ppb testing and ppt isn’t even close to prohibitive in price.
Glyphosate’s LD50 is remarkably low – lower than salt, sugar, caffeine, alcohol to name a few common items in most everyone’s diet. IIRC oral LD50 (rat) is ballpark 5000, alcohol (you can call it beer, wine, whisk(e)y, etc.) runs almost ten times that in and around 600.
As has always been the case through history when talking of toxicity, the dose makes the poison.
That said you’ll be able to rejoice in the not too distant future when resistance to glyphosate is sufficiently widespread that farmers won’t use it any longer. It’s not a matter of if, rather of when.
‘Crop staging’, ‘dessication’ or ‘death-spray’ (totspritzen) in Germany, to boost sales, are actively promoted by the manufacturer. https://www.roundup.ca/_uploads/documents/MON-Preharvest%20Staging%20Guide.pdf
Lawfare is the preferred procedure for compelling EPA regulations now because Leftists know their radical ideas are unpopular. The EPA is staffed with bureaucrats sympathetic to radical environmentalist groups. If Congress hasn’t given the EPA the mandate to regulate a specific pollutant, environmentalist groups shop for a Leftist judge and sue with the blessing of the EPA. Rather than challenge the meritless lawsuit, the EPA bureaucrats embrace it and voila! A new regulation is born that Congress never contemplated when they enacted the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, which is the only authority the EPA has to regulate anything.
It is time for us to sue the EPA for overstepping its regulatory authority under the laws passed by Congress and place the responsibility of regulation back on Congress where it belongs. Study and debate by elected representatives of the people is the only legitimate procedure for thoughtful, reasoned, and accountable government.
There is a website and blog of an academic in Belgium, the Risk Monger who is well worth reading. He shows how activists have infiltrated the science and corrupted it. He specifically details glyphosate and the neonics
The Risk-Monger – Let’s examine hard decisions! (risk-monger.com)
If you use anything without reading and following the manufacturer instructions there will be bad results.Funny how none of this is based on actual science, just a judge’s ruling in Belgium and a jury’s vote in San Francisco.
Don’t know about atrazine, but I researched glyphosate several years ago and came to the conclusion that the worst problem was runoff into streams and rivers. Also, it appears to be a favourite 3rd world suicide method. If someone is a rabid ‘organic’ gardener, I keep very quiet about spot use of same.
An interesting fact is that glyphosate is only absorbed and transported to the roots if applied when the plant is actively photosynthesizing. It doesn’t work applied in the evening, late summer, or very dull days. The local council doesn’t know this when they treated Japanese knotweed. Hence the local myth it does not work. It even works of horsetails when applied appropriately but garden honcho on the radio says it doesn’t.
It’s amazing how many greenies seem to think that farmers and food manufacturers use agrochemicals just for the hell of it, rather than because they actually bring real benefits.
Fortunately, even my mother has noticed that expensive “organic” food from the supermarket tends to spoil much faster than regular food. Organic food costs more, goes mouldy faster, and generally provides no extra benefits or less.
Decades of mis-educating children despite facts being publicized.
Facts and motivations as in:
Toxic Terror by Elizabeth Whelen, circa 1980s
Trashing the Planet by Dixie Lee Ray and Lou Guzzo, early 90s
(I met Ms. Ray in the early 1990s at a book signing, despite recovering from illness she was spending energy talking about the need for Facts.
Unfortunately she relapsed and die of pneumonia not long afterward.)
And George Reisman decades ago.
The Toxicity of Environmentalism This 24 page pamphlet, written on the foundation of Objectivist philosophy and procapitalist economic theory, is the most powerful and convincing critique of environmentalism available. From “intrinsic value” to “global warming,” it exposes the rampant errors and contradictions of the movement and shows its profound hatred of human values. It demonstrates why the real problem of the industrialized world is not “environmental pollution” but philosophical corruption, of which environmentalism, with its hatred of science and technology, is the leading contemporary manifestation. The pamphlet concludes with a call for a cleanup of the environment—the philosophical-intellectual environment—based on the introduction of the writings of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises into college and university curricula. $4.25. Read an excerpt.
(His blog was targeted several years go: http://www.capitalism.net/articles/A_Blog_05_09.html#05_01_09_2)