Of all the things liberals have done, the banning of DDT should rank right up there with Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainians and Mao's "Great Leap Forward".
DDT was the most environmentally friendly highly effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes, and through the use of DDT, there were places in the world where it was nearly eradicated before it was banned. There was overuse of DDT on crops, but who could blame people for doing that? Against mosquitoes, DDT was the equivalent of penicillin against bacteria.
I live in Massachusetts, and I have the occasional misfortune to walk by this mural on the side of a building on occasion:
This despicable mural highlights one of the fundamental reasons that liberalism is a cancer on society, and that claim isn't based on fraudulent science as Rachel Carson's was. Look at that slogan: "Indication of harm, not proof of harm, is our call to action."
That pretty much encapsulates everything from "Silent Spring" to Anthropogenic Global Warming, and everything that is wrong with those movements. The banning of DDT has resulted in human carnage that ranks right up there with the worst mass murderers in the world. Approximately a million people die worldwide each year from malaria which was banned in 1972. If one assumes for the purpose of a rough estimate that number is somewhat constant, we are talking 40 million deaths.
And the use of DDT to combat everything from lice to to the Elm Bark Beetle (the only thing that worked on THAT was DDT) was curtailed, resulting in human misery and the destruction of the vast majority of Elm trees in North America.
It is a crime. Liberals should be called to account for this blood on their hands, but they won't be. And our country, via arm twisting throughout the world, has made sure that those areas that could use it most...can't. Because we tie foreign aid money to things like not using DDT, it is much the same way the federal government uses the highway funds to force states to toe the line of various legislative things that the individual states would surely otherwise reject out of hand. Of course, the federal government says to these foreign countries and to the individual states here: "It is your choice. We aren't impinging on your sovereignty or rights. You are free to make your choice. But if you reject our mandate, don't expect any of that foreign aid/highway funds. It's up to you..."