Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health!

Did you know that John Muir was a racist that successfully expelled Native Americans from national parks land? Or that environmental lobby groups exaggerated the dangers of DDT that led to its slow global disfavor and in turn has caused millions to suffer or die from malaria and various other maladies? Did you know that the push to stop the thinning of our national forests is the catalyst that creates massive wildfires that jeopardizes people, property and also pumps millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere? Did you know that CAFÉ standards make cars less safe and actually increases national gasoline consumption? Further, did you know that CAFÉ standards are actually the cause of the advent of the vehicle that environmentalists hate the most: the SUV? This book reveals the healthy inner skeptic. This book encourages you to ask: "What, where, why, when, how?" The sort of free query that the current environmental movement has tried to quell with they're shrill cry: "There is no debate on this! Do as we suggest or you doom us all!" Some critics of this book have been moved to cheap character assassination which is a failed desperate attempt to discredit a book when reason and facts can not be sufficiently manipulated. Others have avoided a riposte with facts and ideas and have resorted to the succor of ideological demagoguery. The reasonable among us, those that are not easily swayed by fervor, will realize (after reading this terrific book) the unyielding and uncompromising nature of the current environmental movement: Zealots parroting its vision of nature as-it-should-be over people. No accountability is taken if that utopian vision does terrible harm to the very people that it is meant to take to an eco-promised land: There is only the edification of the natural world through the collectivist ideal and the empowerment of big government. I have read several publications where some of the salient subjects in this book are aptly explained but I have found that Mr. Berlau writes in easily consumable vignettes at times: The man even has a sense of humor. This book is a smooth read; it is very informative, it has sound critical acumen and best of all it exposes an environmental movement that sadly will continue to do more harm than good.

Mr. Berlau has written a very informative expose of the environmentalists who are continuing to wreck havoc on the economy, health, and living standards of the United States and the world. Spcifically Berlau explains how the hard core environmentalists have banned DDT and help spread the vicious desease malaria to millions, stopped the use of abestos and added to the deaths from fire and the terror attack on the World Trade Center, place unreasonable restrictions on automobiles and automobile manufacturers, mismanaged forests and forest fire protection, and stopped dams and other means of flood control, thus causing the flooding of New Orleans during the Katrina hurricane. Berlau has a quite impressive rap sheet on the enviros. Wisely, Mr. Berlau avoids discussing global warming. Instead he refers readers to the book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years by Dennis Avery and S. Fred Singer. Thus Mr. Berlau does not have to repeat the arguments of Avery and Singer thru most of his book. A particular sensational expose is of the politican and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt who wanted to do away with levees on the Missouri River. Babbitt ignorantly stated that no cities existed on the flood plain of the Missouri. In reality St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City and smaller towns lie along the Missouri and are protected by levees. Babbitt demonstrates the pernicious wilfull ignorance found all too often in the environmental movement. Plainly it is time the United States and the world faced up to the problem of environmental extremism.

Eco-Freaks is a must read if you honestly want alternative perspectives on environmentalism. Berlau shook up my thoughts what it means to be an environmentalist. Personally I focus on minimizing consumption, eco-friendly choices, and promoting a clean environment. While I love trees and have just renewed my Arbor Day Foundation membership, I have more freedom to enjoy fresh air and warm sunshine in the back yard. Humankind has and is altering the environment of the world daily. Did my American Indian ancestors have their way with the environment as much as they could? I definitely believe so. Before reading Eco-Freaks I was perplexed when visiting my extended family in Napoli. They were extremely grateful to see the death of their friends and family stop with the spraying of DDT when the US troops invaded the Italian peninsula during WWII. Did this save my wife's family from dying of Typhus? I can't imagine having the arrogance to tell the 25% of Neapolitan's dieing of Typhus during WWII that there might be longer term health risks so we can't help them. My father spent 2 years in the South Pacific during WWII. I can't image not saving my family and friends and the local population from Malaria without at least a critical debate. Given that the Gates foundation has listed Malaria as one of the top three health hazards in the world, shouldn't we at least critically review our stance? I hope that we can move to a level where we can have debates without labeling and marginalizing each others positions. Berlau's insightful and down-to-earth writing style has me see that even the "greenest" environmentalist and the "worst" industrialist are more aligned than the "public debate" would have us think. Perhaps the greatest take-away from Berlau's Eco-Freaks is to really look at how our public debates on environmentalism are polarized into a very young "right" and "wrong" positions. This has the effect of hampering or eliminating dialogue on the subject at hand. Berlau didn't give me all of the answers, but I am definitely more critically looking at the assumptions that I make and inherit from others. -Tom

Several reviews below are informative, correct but a bit long. Here's a quick overview. The Hoover Dam saves lives & prevents flooding. Environmentalists (Eco-Freaks) would like it blown up. There is no evidence DDT kills or even harms hardly anything. It can and has saved millions of lives. Eco-Freaks support it's ban. Asbestos is a fire prevention wonder and it's few negatives can easily be controlled. Eco-Freaks are against asbestos use. Trees put way more hydrocarbons in the atmosphere than cars. Eco-Freaks love trees and hate cars. The Netherlands has a wonder life-saving system of water & flood control. Eco-Freaks pursue lawsuits rather than allow a system like that to save lives in New Orleans. The book points out many other examples. Environmentalists are amazing in their consistent ability to be wrong on everything. Being stubbornly wrong in the face of mountains of contrary evidence propels them to honorary status with the liberal left. The brainlock that will not budge in the face of logic is the hallmark of the liberal left. The author presents the scientific backup that Eco-Freaks have chosen to ignore for decades. Here's hoping a few finally see the logic.

Of course, with a title like that it is unlikely to appeal to mainstream professional environmentalists; those thousands of groups who make a nice living by misleading the rest of us about many environmental issues, but then I am a different kind of environmentalist. I care both about the environment and humanity, and so does this author. I found it to be a highly informative narrative, and one that should be read by anyone who wants to learn how most environmentalists actually operate against both humanity and the environment. The author deals with many thorny issues and corrects many of the incorrect impressions that too many special interest factions attempt to leave us with, and which cost us so dearly. In one chapter the author deals extensively with DDT. You may not have heard the recent news, but after 30 years of suspension, the use of this miracle insecticide is about to be widely restored in Africa. This could not happen, of course, if anything demonizing it over the last 30 years had actually been true, but it has taken 30 years to demolish the various scary mythologies that have long been believed. It does not kill birds. It does not cause eggshell thinning. And it is not a human carcinogen. In the 30 years that its use has been suspended in most of the world, there have been about 60 million needless human deaths from malaria, and about 1 billion sufferers. The economies of many Third World societies have been severely damaged by the ravages of this ongoing disease and many others spread by insects, all of which would have been controlled by DDT. The many alternatives to DDT, forced upon society by this ban, were significantly more dangerous and significantly less effective, as we have all too clearly seen. Later chapters cover Asbestos, Public health, Forest management, Hurricanes, and the role of some extreme environmentalists in Eco-terrorism. The chapter on asbestos points out how many more lives have been lost by a hysterical perception of the dangers of asbestos than by using it where it can do the most good and with the least harm to humans. The most obvious example is possibly the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Part way into the construction of the two towers, asbestos was banned from use in these buildings. Warnings were issued even then by engineers about the substandard quality of fire protection. After the collapse, specialists in construction noted that had asbestos been used throughout the two buildings as had been originally planned and specified, it is very likely that the steel would not have softened to such a degree that the buildings would have collapsed. The New York authorities' ban of asbestos in these buildings - following environmentalist dogma - may have actually caused most of the 3000 deaths which resulted from the collapse, along with the loss of hundreds of firefighters. And the needless loss of billions of dollars. In clamoring for public safety, the `do-gooders' in society f