Silent Spring annoys me, but her heart was in the right place, as was her science. But if the Western world had used our money and influence to press the attack with DDT, for just one more decade, we could have wiped out malaria. Just as we did in the United States.

Once we wiped it out? Typical America, "not my problem". So we said, "Use DDT all you want, but the most powerful nation on Earth won't trade with you any longer." That's a ban in all but name.

Fuck me. Just 10 more years and we could have saved tens of millions of lives. But they were brown people, whatever.

And I'll say that at the same time as stating that we should ban all pesticides and herbicides for non-professional use, and tighten the grip like hell on farms and professionals.

Worked the outside lawn and garden at Lowe's. Had a coworker tell me, "If it's for killing, it's inside. If it's for growing, it's outside." I saw us sell tons of it into urban lawns. And that doesn't count professional killers. Recommended some poison to a guy one day, "What do you use?" "I don't use any chemicals excepting fire ant bait (hydramethylnon!) because they're invasive and destructive." Man looked at me like I was crazy. "You don't kill anything?" "Ya got me, I also trap carpenter bees, destructive little fuckers, but that's it."