The Really Inconvenient Truths - book review

This is the kind of book you know instinctively that you'll have to handle with protective gloves and long-handled tongs. It's just going to be that messy. Iain Murray"s book's title with complete subtitle is "The Really Inconvenient Truths, Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About --- Because They Helped Cause Them". Is that a mouthful or what? And doesn't it just remind you of the little kid yelling to his mother, "Mom! Johnny hit me back first!"

Even if all the events are the environmental catastrophes promised and even if the "Liberals" (whoever they are) helped cause them (more on that later), what does that have to do with the target of the book's title, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"? I can't make our human rights record better by pointing out that China's is worse. It doesn't work that way.

The seven catastrophe's roughly paraphrased are as follows:
1. DDT vs Malaria
2. Ethanol vs gasoline
3. Birth control pill as a pollutant
4. Fire control in Yellowstone
5. Cuyahoga River pollution
6. Endangered Species Act
7. Communism's record - death of the Aral Sea.

To summarize a couple of these. There is compelling evidence that the use of DDT caused the elimination of several species and the near extincting of several others. Would the continued use of this very useful pesticide have resulted in a "Silent Spring" as Rachel Carson had predicted? Hard to guess. But discontinued use has allowed some species to return from the brink of extinction. Could we have found an alternative to DDT before banning it? Perhaps. Do we now have alternatives? Yes but they are more expensive and have their own side effects. But rather than use these, it appears at least this conservative would rather just play the blame game. And, by the way, do we really know how many Liberals vs non-Liberals voted to eliminate the use of DDT? I think not.

People seem to have forgotten why ethanol was chosen as AN alternative to gasoline. It wasn't because it was the only one or even a particularly good one. But it did have the redeeming characteristic that it was RENEWABLE. Corn and other crops can be planted again and again to produce ethanol where gasoline generally comes from non-renewable crude oil deposits. So for author Murray to now complain about all the detraction of corn is to show his lack of memory, not the conservatism of his ideas.

The use, misuse, management, and mismanagement of national parks, reserves, and all other limited use resources is undoubtedly the subject of hundreds or even thousands of books. Which books and whose research you cite depends on how you want to spin it. There are state and national monuments which are pig sties and some that are jewels. The same can be said about privately owned and operated areas. In general, however, you can do something about public land use that you can't with privately owned areas - use elected representatives to change or upgrade that usage. What Iain Murray chooses to show is that the best of privately run assets is done better than the worst of publicly run assets. No contest.

To summarize: this book reminds us that there are other things to cause alarm and make us mad besides global warming. Take the book with a grain of salt then start writing your elected representatives with a copy to all your friends.