I occasionally get emails from the other side of the world with a query about something environmental that is uniquely Australian.
It was not so many years ago that John Berlau emailed me about the Murray River and also bushfires. He was writing a book. It’s now published. Called ‘Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health’ the book includes chapters on DDT, Asbestos and Hurricane Katrina.
I’ve only read the first three chapters. There could be something in the following few about the Murray River and Australia or he may be saving that for another book.
Anyway, while the focus in 'Eco-Freaks' is on America, the issues Berlau chooses to explore are relevant to the whole world.
The second chapter on DDT, and entitled ‘Rachel Carson Kills Birds’, will have Tim Lambert in a spin. In fact Berlau references Lambert’s blog ‘Deltoid’ (footnote number 128). But it’s not complementary.
I have read a lot about DDT, Rachel Carson and environmentalism, but I still learnt a lot from that chapter.
And I was amused by the anecdotal. In particular, that Joseph Jacobs, a chemist who worked to mass-produce DDT to protect American troops during World War II, ended up with DDT poured over him when the valve at the bottom of a large vessel was accidentally opened. In his autobiography, Jacobs wrote:
“When it dried, I had DDT an inch thick all over me. In my hair, in my ears, and in my mouth and nose. I took off my clothes, showered, and scrubbed, but probably ingested more DDT during that one incident than is today considered safe to absorb over any years.”
Berlau goes on to comment about the fate of Joseph Jacobs:
“After all, in the years after Silent Spring, DDT was called ‘double death twice’. One touch could kill you. And sadly, after being exposed, Jacobs did die – more than sixty years later in 2004, at the tender young age of eighty-eight.”
‘Eco-Freaks’ is available from Amazons.com.
Africa is rich in resources, why is it poor?
Because it lacks infrastructure.
London businessman Saifee Durbar wants to change that.
He plans to link Africa’s coasts by building a railway from Cameroon to Sudan, via the Central African Republic.
Updates on the project can be found at:
http://saifdurbar.wordpress.com
http://saifeedurbar.wordpress.com
John Berlau gave a press conference when he released Eco-Freaks and could not answer the most basic scientific questions. It is one thing for him to poke fun at massive government bureaucracies, something else to venture into the realm of hard science.
Is it even fair to compare Berlau to Stephen Hawking? Berlau thinks global warming is a fiction. Hawking thinks it is real and a problem. Hawking is also one of the most respected scientists of all time.
Will people still be reading Hawking's book A Brief History of Time in ten years? Of course they will! I'll bet Eco-Freaks goes straight to the remainder table.
Hawking does not take himself seriously. That is a very good thing.
Berlau, on the other hand, is self important beyond description. He's got his own little slave, Andrew Langer, to blog in his defense. He's also got some very self important friends, such as Myron Ebell, Solveig Singleton, Brooke Oberwetter, Clyde Wayne Crews, Jacob Sullum, Charles Paul Freund and Marlo Lewis. None of them would be in The Simpsons!