Insects Make Me Scream And Shout

New at Reason: As brickbats come in from both sides, Ron Bailey walks on eggshells in the debate over miskeeters, birds, and global DDT bans.

Comments

[I Will Remain Anon on this One]

"The 500 million people who come down with malaria every year might well wonder what authoritarian made that decision"

Call me a liberal traitor but isn't 500 million really only about 10% of the world population? It seems to be that is a reasonable collateral damage figure to maintain the world food web balance. If the food web was to get out of flux, wouldn't we see many times more worldwide deaths? Besides, of the 500 million, how many die from malaria?

Now I wonder what the acceptable collateral damage figure for Plan Columbia is or the general war on drugs.

Anyway, good job Ron, its always best to have two sides of the stories before taking drastic measures.

[Del Simmons]

And I thought I was the only one alive that remembered that old Oingo Boingo tune!

I guess not...

Sorry to be so off topic. I just couldn't resist..

[Ron Bailey]

Anon: First, the World Health Organization estimates that as many at 2.7 million people die of malaria each year.

Second, as I never tire of pointing out, food production has more than quadrupled since 1950 while population tripled--meaning that there is more food per capita. Meanwhile the amount of land devoted to agriculture has been essentially flat since the 1960s (about 12% of land surface is devoted to ag reports U. Wisc. professor Navin Ramankutty at a International Geosphere-Biosphere Conference earlier this year.) How do we do it? By getting 4 blades of grass (grain) to grow where 1 grew before.

Third, I can't believe that you really think it moral to write off 500 million of your fellow human beings as some sort ecological collateral damage.

[Dan]

If the food web was to get out of flux, wouldn't we see many times more worldwide deaths?

Assuming it's even possible for the "food web" to "get out of flux" (a statement which makes the odd assumption that there's a way nature is "supposed to work")? No, I doubt we'd see any human deaths at all. A lot of bird deaths, though. But -- from a human perspective -- the main benefit of birds is that they kill insects. If we're killing the insects ourselves, we don't need the birds, except for aesthetic reasons.

The simple fact of the matter is that we could destroy most of the species in the world without endangering ourselves at all. England (Europe in general, actually) destroyed most of its biodiversity -- throwing the "food web" WAY "out of flux", to use your terminology -- and people still survive there quite nicely.

[Russ]

Ron,

Your 4 blades of grass explanation is pretty weak.

While actual plants per acre may have increased, it would be reasonable to conclude that much of the gains in crop yields have come from advances in irrigation, fertilization, crop rotation, pollenation, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, selective breeding and (our favourite...) genetic modification.

After it leaves the farm, some credit should go to improvements in refrigeration, processing, preservation, storage, transportation and distribution that allow more unspoiled food to reach people's mouths.

[Ron Bailey]

Russ: How do you think you can get 4 blades of grass to grow in place of one? Fertilization, irrigation, genetic modifications.... 🙂

And of course, you're right about refrigeration, processing etc. But it is true that we're producing more and preserving more.

[fyodor]

Dan,

"from a human perspective -- the main benefit of birds is that they kill insects"

They also look and sound beautiful.

And if that's not a "human perspective," what is?

[Jean Bart]

Ron Bailey,

Are you suggesting that DDT is no longer used in areas where malaria is a problem? If that is the case, then you need to check your facts.

[Chuck]

According to the World Health Organization there are 300 to 500 million clinical cases of malaria each year resulting in 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths.

80 to 90% of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa where 90% of the infected people live

Are these countries the ones able to afford DDT and benefit from it? It is unlikely that subsaharan africa would be able to afford the mass quantities of DDT to prevent malaria. Is that a resonable assumption?

[Jean Bart]

BTW, famine is almost never caused by crop failure; its caused by failures in the human management systems that deal with food distribution.

[Jean Bart]

Chuck,

DDT by itself will never conquer malaria; there are too many issues involving resistance by the various species of mosquitoes and the like involved. (a) You need a cheap post-infection treatment for the disease; and (b) those areas of the world where it is predominant need to undertake the sorts of eradication projects that in the rest of the world reduced or eliminated malaria.

[R. C. Dean]

DDT is the most cost-effective way to reduce malaria. You can spray it once every few months on the walls of your dwelling and dramatically reduce your risk of contracting the disease.

Because it is the most cost-effective, it is the best use of whatever funds are spent on anti-malaria programs by poor countries. There is some resistance to it, and of course it is not a treatment for the already infected, but you get more public health bang for your buck from DDT than anything else.

[I Will Continue to Remain Anon]

"Third, I can't believe that you really think it moral to write off 500 million of your fellow human beings as some sort ecological collateral damage."

Ron, I was really speaking with tongue in cheak, thats why I brought up the issue of what is acceptable collateral damage in the war on drugs, and for that matter, any operation conducted by humans against humans.

However, keep in mind that morality is subjective. Case in point, the statement, "what is good for the many outweigh the good for a few." Or simply put, we can sterilize the world to save less than 10% of the population that live in a less hospitable environment.

H&R Note: Cold words tend to come from the devil's advocate.

[s.m. koppelman]

Mr. Bailey wonders how anyone [raising hand] could point to his statement last week about the apparent benefit of the DDT ban as it relates certain endangered bird species and still find it objectionable.

It's objectionable, of course, because Mr. Bailey seems to be of the opinion that DDT shouldn't be banned at all:

http://reason.com/rb/rb061202.shtml

It's the bait-and-switch that makes him a "disingenous industry stooge" or whatever. For the duration of one article, he argues that the Endangered Species Act should be dropped because regulation of the root causes of wildlife depletion, like the DDT ban, are more effective ways to save wildlife. The rest of the time, of course, he decries that very regulation. (Starlink corn kills Monarch butterflies and dilutes the pollen supply that non-GM corn relies on to reproduce? So what! Begone, Luddites!, et al)

Sorry, bubbele. You're still an industry flack to me.

[Dan]

Dan,"

from a human perspective -- the main benefit of birds is that they kill insects"

They also look and sound beautiful.
And if that's not a "human perspective," what is?

Fyodor,

In the same post, I said "we don't need the birds, except for aesthetic reasons." Aesthetic means "relating to beauty". So, you see, I already addressed the fact that we do need the birds for their value as beautiful things.

Yes, birds are beautiful. So are living human beings. In the long run we'll create our own birds, anyway. 🙂

[s.m. koppelman]

...and conversely, it would have been easy for a libertarian unfamiliar with Mr. Bailey's other output to read last week's piece and, on seeing that line about the beneficial effect of the DDT ban on the reproductive success of birds of prey, mistake him for a pro-regulation environmentalist.

Which he ain't, honey.

[Mange]

S.M.,
So you have data that shows the number of monarch butterflies decreasing? And a drop-dead argument about why farmers choosing to grow non-GM corn have a right to force others to grow the same in order to make it easier for them to pollinate their crop? Otherwise, it's hard to see your point. Maybe Ron's right to call you a luddite. (Which he probably hasn't.)

[Todd Fletcher]

s.m. koppelman,
The point I got from Ron's article was that, yes, the DDT ban was effective at saving raptors, but at a cost in human lives.

[s.m. koppelman]

Todd, That's just it. This article and the earlier one of his I cited on DDT argued against the continuation of the DDT ban because the health and environmental risks were presumably dwarfed by the health benefits of its role in reducing the spread of malaria.

On the other hand, last week in the course of arguing against the Endangered Species Act, he cited the selfsame DDT ban as the kind of measure that saves wildlife more effectively than the ESA does.

On used-car lots, this is what's called bait-and-switch. Unless I'm terribly mistaken, Mr. Bailey advocates the repeal of the Endangered Species Act *and* things like the DDT ban.

[B.P.]

Perhaps Bailey feels that the DDT ban is effective at perserving wildlife in North America, where malaria isn't much of a threat and the populace places great value in birds and bird habitat, while it's a bad idea for sub-Saharan Africa, where folks cling to life due in part to malaria infestation. I don't know, you'll have to ask him. Also, I thought that whole monarch butterfly canard was conclusively blown out of the water a coupla years ago.

[Dan]

Koppelman,

There's no bait-and-switch; he's arguing two different, unrelated points.

Point 1: The DDT ban, not the ESA, saved birds' lives.

Point 2: The DDT ban causes a net loss of human life.

Bailey argued that the ESA hasn't done jack to save predatory birds -- that it was the DDT ban that did that. This is factually true.

Now he argues that the DDT ban causes a net loss of human lives. This is also factually true.

You seem to think that he was arguing that the DDT ban was a good thing, and is now arguing that it's a bad thing. He never argued that the DDT ban was good; he argued that ESA proponents were wrongly claiming responsibility for something that should properly be attributed to the DDT ban.

Unless I'm terribly mistaken, Mr. Bailey advocates the repeal of the Endangered Species Act *and* things like the DDT ban

Probably. Has he ever denied it? He favors the repeal of the Endangered Species Act on the grounds that it (a) costs money and (b) utterly fails to accomplish its goals. I'd imagine he favors repealing the DDT ban on the grounds that humans are more imporant than birds.

[ed]

Birds also taste good.
Burp.

[skolix]

The kestrel experiment compared captive birds fed a DDE laced diet to wild birds. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to compare them to other captive birds fed a DDE free diet?

[joe]

RC, says "DDT is the most cost-effective way to reduce malaria. You can spray it once every few months on the walls of your dwelling and dramatically reduce your risk of contracting the disease."

Which will take care of the problem in an urbanized town, in which the residents work within the built up area. However, most of the places suffering from high malaria rates have economies which are heavily dependent on agriculture, meaning there are large, extensive fields/orchards/patties/bogs/whatever surrounding the towns, and the people spend a good amount of time working in those fields. So, in order to achieve a significant reduction in the number of malarial mosquitoes that the people are exposed to, you'd have to apply the DDT not just to the homes, but throughout the acres and acres of extensive fields, which puts a lot more of the stuff into the ecosystem, food supply, skin of workers, etc. than your example would suggest.