Yor're absolutely right, Tom. But (and you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you) why is it that the environmentalists always seem to be in some sort of conspiracy against free enterprise?

I am old enough to remember the controversy surrounding Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" that attacked the unrestricted use of pesticides because of its damage to the environment. This book pretty much single-handedly started the current environmental movement. By today's standards, it was a very gentle and reasoned book, it did not recommend banning any but a very few pesticides, and only asked that they be applied in ways that would minimize their impact, using strategies that took into account insect life cycles and collateral damage to wildlife. For example, she suggested rotating pesticides so pests would not build up resistance to them thereby requiring ever-more concentrated chemical attacks; and selecting chemicals targeting specific species at their most vulnerable life stage, instead of broad spectrum killers that also attacked insect predators and parasites.

I was a big fan of Ms Carson, because I had been deeply impressed by her books on oceanography, and when I watched chemical company executives and PR flunkies rip her apart on TV, using every lie and rhetorical trick and innuendo to discredit her, including irrelevant personal attacks on her character, I realized these people cared about nothing but their own short-term profit. Their greed was so over the top they were even willing to threaten their own long-term business success. I was just a kid, but from that moment I suddenly became more interested in the environment than in oceanography. Needless to say, Carson's book has been thoroughly vindicated, we still have our bald eagles, and the pesticide industry is still doing OK. But the pesticide problem is still there too, barely under control.

An irrelevant personal aside, perhaps, but I think a lot of the conflicts industry in general has with the environmental movement can be traced to this attitude of pre-emptive strike and knee-jerk reaction, not necessarily the Carson case, but in every other similar issue. It's no surprise people simply don't trust them any more, even when they're right That's why the temptation is to err on the side of caution and to Follow the Money.