CATCHING UP WITH ECOTERRORISM?

A woman charged with damaging a transmission tower also is suspected in half a dozen other ecoterror crimes, including a firebombing at a Colorado ski resort, one of the costliest such crimes in the U.S. Chelsea Gerlach was ordered held without bail after Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl made the allegations against her.

Federal public defender Craig Weinerman argued that the evidence against Gerlach was meager. Gerlach, 28, was among six people arrested in five states last week on indictments alleging they set fires and damaged property between 1998 and 2001 in Oregon and Washington. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for most of the crimes. Gerlach, of Portland, is charged with helping two others topple a Bonneville Power Administration high-tension line 25 miles east of Bend in 1999.

Engdahl said he will present evidence to a grand jury Wednesday seeking indictments against Gerlach in a 1999 meatpacking fire in Eugene and a 2001 firebombing at a tree farm in Clatskanie. The prosecutor also said Gerlach is suspected in the 1998 firebombing of the ski resort at Vail, Colo. Four buildings and four chairlifts at the top of the mountain were damaged or destroyed, and damages were set at $12 million. No one has been arrested in the case, despite a reward offer of $50,000. Engdahl said she is suspected as well in a 1998 attempted arson at Bureau of Land Management wild horse corrals in Rock Springs, Wyo.; a 1999 the arson at a Boise Cascade office in Monmouth, Ore.; and a 2001 firebombing of a University of Washington horticultural research center in Seattle.

Weinerman said the evidence against Gerlach so far amounted only to statements from two informants involved in the meatpacking plant arson.

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"Save the World" Enviros Are Killing Millions of African Kids

They've been at it again. In Montreal, a bunch of politicians and activists just finished another round of negotiations among themselves about just how much of our freedom to take away in pursuit of a greener planet. That's "green," as in "envious" -- of the people who were able to invent, build industries and develop economies in generations past, before the environmentalists convinced world "leaders" that products that improve human life, and the factories that make those products, must be limited in the name of the Earth.

Meanwhile, in Ntinda, Uganda, that country's vice president was calling on world leaders to help save human lives -- by supporting Uganda's use of a chemical the fear of which galvanized the environmental movement decades ago. On the surface, these are two different environmental stories: one about chemicals that supposedly might raise temperatures, and one about a chemical that can damage eggshells. But the underlying issue is the same: Should the law promote human life, or should it sacrifice human beings and their quality of life on the altar of Gaia?

Two to three million people die of malaria every year, Uganda's health minister has said, because the U.S. government is afraid of a chemical called DDT. The United States does spend your tax dollars trying to fight malaria in Africa, but it won't fund DDT. The money goes for things like mosquito netting over beds (even though not everyone in Africa even has a bed). The office that dispenses those funds, the Agency for International Development, acknowledges DDT is safe, but it will not spend a penny on it. Why? Fifty years ago, Americans sprayed tons of DDT everywhere. Farmers used it to repel bugs, and health officials to fight mosquitoes that carry malaria. Nobody worried much about chemicals then. People really did just sit there and eat in clouds of DDT. When the trucks came to spray, people often acted as if the ice cream truck had come. They were so happy to have mosquitoes repelled. Huge amounts of DDT were sprayed on food and people, who just breathed it in. Did they all get cancer and die? Nope.

Amazingly, there's no evidence that all this spraying hurt people. It killed mosquitoes. (DDT also kills bedbugs, which are now making a comeback.) It did cause some harm, however. It threatened bird populations by thinning eggshells. In 1962, the book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson made the damage famous and helped create our fear of chemicals. The book raised some serious questions about the use of DDT, but the legitimate nature of those questions was lost in the media feeding frenzy that followed. DDT was a "Killer Chemical," and the press was off on another fear campaign. DDT was banned.

But fear campaigns kill people, too. DDT is a great pesticide. The amount was the reason for the DDT problems. We sprayed far more than is needed to prevent the spread of malaria. It's sprayed on walls, and one spraying will keep mosquitoes at bay for half a year. It's a very efficient malaria fighter. But today, DDT is rarely used. America's demonization of it caused others to shun it. And while the U.S. government spends tax money fighting malaria in Africa, it refuses to put that money into DDT. It might save lives, but it might offend environmentalist zealots and create political fallout.

DDT was banned in America after we started celebrating Earth Day. Environmentalists made a lot of claims then -- I have an amusing clip of an environmentalist exclaiming, "You are breathing probably the last of the oxygen!" Soon after that the environmentalists mounted their campaign against DDT. The result? A huge resurgence of malaria, more than 50 million dead, mostly children. "If it's a chemical, it must be bad," said scientist Amir Attaran. "If it's DDT, it must be awful. And that's fine if you're a rich, white environmentalist. It's not so fine if you're a poor black kid who is about to lose his life from malaria."

Attaran is leading a campaign of hundreds of scientists urging the use of DDT to combat malaria. It's needed especially in Africa, he says, because malaria kills thousands there every day. "If I were to characterize what USAID does on malaria," he said, "I'd call it medical malpractice, I would call it murderous."

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KYOTO VS JOBS: 'CLIMATE TAX IS DESTROYING BRITISH JOBS AND BUSINESSES'

The leader of a manufacturing pressure group is calling on the Government to lift a 'green' tax which he claims could destroy thousands of businesses. Stan Hardy, the projects director of the Confederation of British Metalforming (CBM), will tomorrow urge Environment Minister Elliot Morley to impose a moratorium on the Climate Change Levy.

The levy was introduced in April 2001, as part of the Government's strategy to cut the UK's greenhouse emissions by 12 per cent by 2010. It taxes companies' energy use, and partly offsets this through a reduction in employers' National Insurance contributions. Mr Hardy said the moratorium was vital, because his 400 members were already reeling from massive increases in energy costs. He claimed that the Government, having failed to meet environmental targets set by the Kyoto Protocol, was hitting the easiest industries first. The Kyoto agreement aims to curb gas emissions which are believed to be partly responsible for global warming.

Mr Hardy added: "Perhaps it (the Government) should look at its beloved service sector industries which use far more energy than manufacturing, or do they believe that the service sector is powered by Tinkerbell or Father Christmas? We want to see this relaxation of emission targets continued through to the original target date and certainly until 2010. We also want to see an early resolution of the long-running bizarre situation whereby heat treatment and the use of lasers are not permitted activities for levy rebate."

Mr Hardy will raise the issue when he meets Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in January. "My meeting with John Prescott is opportune in that we have a shared interest in promoting UK sales and business in and with China," he said. "But there may well be a massive attrition of UK companies thanks to the energy and Climate Change Levy situation and an increase in offshoring and joint ventures which will export UK jobs and skills overseas. "This isn't what Mr Prescott wants, nor can the country afford it. Mr Prescott was intimately involved in the Kyoto agreement and I believe that if we are able to have a full and frank debate, we can achieve an agreement which meets the needs of both the Government and industry."

Mr Hardy said the Climate Change Levy was having a particularly damaging impact in Yorkshire, where the CBM has 100 members. Mr Hardy was also concerned about the UK's loss of "strategic control" over its energy supply, with many utilities owned by foreign companies. He added: "The UK's coal powered electricity generating power stations are almost entirely reliant on coal imported from Australia, South Africa, Poland and South America. The UK is now a net importer of gas...On any given day up to 16 per cent of the electricity we need is purchased from the French nuclear power industry."

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GLOBAL COOLING? ONE OF THE COLDEST MONTHS FOR 100 YEARS?

A weather expert says December 2005 is on pace to become one of the 10 coldest in more than 100 years, despite claims at a global conference on climate change this week that the Earth is getting warmer. Joe Bastardi, senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com, says present weather patterns across the country show below-normal temperatures in the single digits, with still colder air forecast in the coming weeks. All told, he said, "the current look and pace may bring December 2005 in as a top 10 month for cold Decembers nationwide since the late 1800s."

Some examples of the abnormally cold temps include: Omaha, Neb., (17.5 degrees below normal); Indianapolis, Ind., (14.1 degrees below normal); Chicago, Ill., (13.9 degrees below normal); and Denver, Colo., (11.9 degrees below normal). "The cold is widespread, with below-normal temperatures recorded from eastern Washington and Oregon south into Texas and into the Northeast," said the weather service. And it could get worse. Accuweather.com "is forecasting another week of unseasonably cold weather, with the potential for another major snowstorm developing on Wednesday."

While the current weather pattern may be considered anecdotal by some, it is timely nonetheless, as it comes on the heels of a United Nations-sponsored event in which most of the more than 150 nations participating claimed the world is getting warmer - a phenomenon most blamed on the United States....

State climatologist George Taylor of Oregon told the Washington Post recent data suggesting the Earth could warm from 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 are "mighty preliminary." "I just don't trust it," he said.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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