Editor’s Note: the following article was written by Carol Van Strum, an long-time environmental advocate and someone we’re honored to know here at Planet Waves. Below are her reactions to a recently published report on Gypsy Moth management, which can be reviewedВ here. –RA
Comments on “Gypsy Moth Management in the United States: a cooperative approach, Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement USDA NA-MR-01-08 June 2008
John Quincy Adams once famously wondered how two phrenologists could look each other in the eye without laughing.(1) The same could certainly be said about the pseudo-scientist authors of this EIS, who must be hard pressed to keep a straight face perpetrating a 100-year-old con game no more scientific than phrenology.
The tangled web of deceptions, omissions, assumptions and invented math(2) В used to justify this pre-ordained spray program is so devoid of actual data as to preclude meaningful comment. Furthermore, in my very long — three decades -– experience commenting on environmental impact statements, I have yet to see a government program altered or halted by public comments or indeed by anything short of a court order. Cynicism regarding the present program is certainly appropriate, but in the interests of propriety I limit comments to some of the most glaringly fraudulent omissions in this document.
The most blatant omission is the total failure to consider any alternatives other than the “current” spray program and proposed additional spray programs. Considering that more than one hundred years of intensive spray programs have failed utterly to eliminate gypsy moths in the US, the failure even to consider any alternative but spraying would be laughable if it weren’t so costly and so deadly. Indeed, based on the government’s record of failure, a program of prayer and smoke signals would be an equally effective –- and far safer and cheaper — alternative.