Posted on 04/19/2007 11:52:47 AM PDT by areafiftyone
As Earth Day dawns Sunday, Americans should consider the relationship between environmentalists and the former mayor of the capital of Earth. From New York's City Hall, Rudolph W. Giuliani successfully confronted green zealots while advancing science and technology. Here again, Giuliani stands well right of where his detractors might expect.
_The West Nile virus debuted in the Western Hemisphere in the College Point community in the New York borough of Queens in August 1999. Among 62 New York state residents who contracted West Nile encephalitis (brain swelling) that year, seven died.
Rather than study the problem to death, that summer and in 2000, Giuliani launched widespread insecticide spraying against West Nile-carrying mosquitoes. Environmentalists went haywire.
The local No Spray Coalition sued to block fumigation. New York's Green Party callously declared: "These diseases only kill the old and people whose health is already poor."
Giuliani firmly told Newsday that spraying was "perfectly safe." He added:
"There are some people who are engaged in the business of wanting to frighten people out of their minds." In 2000, he told CNN: "The reality is that danger to human life is more important than birds, fish and insects."
Before releasing waterborne larvicide and aerial- and ground-level pesticide, hundreds of Health Department employees used fliers and home visits to urge Queens residents to remain indoors with windows and air ducts closed during nighttime spraying. A 75-person, 24-hour hotline answered 150,000 calls. Doctors and journalists also were briefed.
Giuliani's swift and thorough spraying programs yanked the wings off the mosquitoes that could have turned a manageable West Nile outbreak into a catastrophe.
"Unfortunately, West Nile has spread, largely because other mayors didn't spray when they were cowed by the greens," says John Berlau, author of "Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health." "But West Nile could have become an immediate nationwide epidemic if not for the quick action of Giuliani and his Health Department."
Given West Nile's documented human toll, Giuliani did the right thing. In 1999, a Russian flare-up sickened 500 people, killing 40. A 1996 outbreak of West Nile meningitis and encephalitis centered in Bucharest, Romania, infected 90,000 and hospitalized 835. Seventeen died.
_ Environmentalists whined when New York City and Consolidated Edison cooperated to build 10 new electrical generating plants and expand another facility.
"We object to the fact that our neighborhood is being slammed with pollution," East River Environmental Coalition President Susan Steinberg complained to gothamgazette.com. "Con Ed, let me breathe," demanded a placard at an April 2001 protest. One demonstrator's puppet puffed on an asthma nebulizer.
As Giuliani writes in his book, "Leadership": "I, too, would have preferred a public park or beautiful housing to a generator on the East River, but I also had to think about the 12,000 megawatts New Yorkers could consume in an hour on a hot day." Indeed, a 1999 blackout left 300,000 Washington Heights and Inwood residents in the dark for 30 hours.
"My administration's clear priority in this area is to see that the lights stay on and that electricity continues to flow in New York City," Giuliani said in a power-policy address that March. "There is no room for complacency as we prepare for the future."
_ Giuliani also privatized the management of Central Park. While the city still owns Gotham's gorgeous 843-acre rectangle of flora, bike paths, lakes, lawns and stages, the Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit, operates it.
For New York, this idea was as radical as an American president asking the National Geographic Society to manage Yellowstone National Park.
_ Today, Giuliani advocates broader domestic production to achieve energy independence as a national-security goal. As he told local supporters March 14: "We have to end our reliance on oil from sources that are enemies of the United States." Last June 13, he told a Manhattan Institute luncheon, "We have to diversify. That's our strength." He added, "You can be independent by being diversified." Giuliani embraces Alaskan oil drilling, plus natural gas, clean coal, ethanol and accelerated construction of atomic power plants.
None of this will help America's Mayor with the eco-freaks, but they hate him anyway. These facts, however, pour yet another spade full of earth on the myth that Rudolph W. Giuliani is some sort of liberal.
(New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.murdock(at)gmail.com.)
(((((RUDY PING)))))
oh boy, more rudy pimping from deroy murdock!
funny, he doesn’t mention rudy’s support for the global warming agenda.
>These facts, however, pour yet another spade full of earth on the myth that Rudolph W. Giuliani is some sort of liberal.
I’ll see your spade full of Earth and raise you 2 dump trucks full of Earth (Guns & Dead Babies).
” Among 62 New York state residents who contracted West Nile encephalitis (brain swelling) that year, seven died. “
Why do you keep posting pro-liberal candidate propaganda on this conservative forum? Your efforts are not welcome.
Question: Do you believe there is a such thing as “global warming” and what about Governor Schwartzenegger’s position - do you support him in the legislation (unintelligible)
Rudy: I do. I do believe there’s global warming. Yes. And...and I...I think there are...I’m not a scientist all I can do is look at the reports. I think the last one said that...uh...ummm...fir-fir-first of all there’s definitely global warming as far as I can tell. I guess the big question has always been how much is it, how much of it is happening because of just natural climate changes and progressions and how much is happening because of human intervention - carbon in particular - and the overwhelming majority of the scientists believe that there’s significant human cause that’s making it more difficult, making it worse.
And I’ve always thought the debate was a little bit...uh...um...unnecessary because most of the things that are happening with global warming are happening with pollution and we should be, we should be dealing with pollution anyway. So, it seems to me there’s a community of interest here to do the things that are necessary to reduce polluting the environment.
Question: Have you seen “Inconvenient Truth” and there are some people that say that there aren’t a lot of solutions that are posed. You’ve basically condemned the movie.
Rudy: Oh, I didn’t condemn it. Condemn is a really bad...condemn...condemn...condemn is when you put somebody in jail or s...something like that. What I found...what I found indadequate...what I found inadequate about the movie wasit really didn’t have any (microphone problems - laughter) I thought this was a technology conference...Um...I didn’t think that it had any real strong suggestions about how, about how to deal with it. What...what...I would have been much more satisfied with that movie if it had listed, you know our...uh...what kind of research is going to be done on carbon sequestration, how are you gonna cuh...how are you gonna create clean coal. Is coal the way to go? How much are you going to increase ethanol and uh how much research and development and exactly how can that reduce the problem?
These are all things that we have to do. And we don’t do them because of the fluctuations very often of the price of gasoline. And we don’t do them because there are special interests that stop them and I did not detect in the movie the same zeal to take on those special interests as I did in explaining the problem.
Have you been appointed a moderator, Spiff?
What? A Flip-Flop? How Kerryesque.
And why are you on EVERY RUDY POST? You really must love him! My efforts are not for your benefit they are for the Rudy Ping list.
No, he is a particular type of liberal. One that goes in the guise of a conservative.
He’s a proud member of the RINO 3.
Member Opinion I'll go with Fred 71.4% 1,459 Other 12.6% 258 Undecided/pass 9.7% 198 I'm solid with Rudy 6.2% 127
There’s a hell of a lot more than three of them.
Very true!
I oppose liberals. That's what I do. I especially oppose liberals that are trying to hijack the Republican Party and whose propaganda is polluting this conservative website.
My efforts are not for your benefit they are for the Rudy Ping list.
Well, they certainly don't benefit the conservative mission of this website. In fact, they stand in opposition to that conservative mission. Look, you've already found a website where such pro-liberal candidate propaganda is welcome. May I suggest that you post it there instead?
LOL! NOW YOU KNOW I’m not leaving! ESPECIALLY if you say I should!
I didn't tell you to leave. I suggested that you post propaganda supporting liberal candidates in a more appropriate forum where such posting does not conflict with the intended purpose of the forum. Posting propaganda supporting a liberal candidate like Giuliani is the equivalent of posting similar propaganda supporting liberal candidates like Hillary or Obama. If this site was simply a pro-Republican website, and it didn't differentiate between liberal and conservative candidates, your constant propaganda postings in support of a liberal Republican candidate would be more appropriate. This site is a conservative forum, and as such propaganda supporting a liberal candidate OVER actual conservative candidates in the race really are not appropriate.
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