So you may have heard that school officials have named an L.A. school after two greenies: Al Gore, and Rachel Carson, the dead author known for birthing the modern environmental movement.
The public school costs nearly 80 million bucks, and should open in days, for about 600 students. But there’s a prob: it’s located on a pile of toxic goo. Yep, according to activists, the soil there contained more than “a dozen underground storage tanks serving light industrial businesses,” and even more ooze may have come from tanks of a nearby gas station.
So the fact that this enviro-church sits on a vast mound of chemical poison may sound pretty ironic, at least to bloggers who might say, “hey, this sounds pretty ironic.”
But that would be an incorrect usage of the word irony.
Because, Rachel Carson’s ideology is poison, responsible in part for the deaths of millions of children worldwide. It seems only fitting that a structure named after her SHOULD be the cherry on the contaminated cake.
Carson, if you remember, wrote about DDT in her book , “Silent Spring,” back in 1962. In it she falsely wrote that the chemical – which kills malaria-carrying mosquitoes – caused harm to birds. She also linked it to cancer (more b.s.), and it was this alarmism that led to a DDT ban in 1972.
Now, decades later, the loss of DDT in the developing world has allowed up to two million human deaths each year from malaria. According to the American Council on Science and Health, 30 to 60 million have died since the ban took effect.
So anyway, that’s why irony doesn’t work here.
Side note: for all you folks panicky over the the rebirth of bedbugs, realize that experts blame the DDT ban, combined with global travel, for that, too. It’s kinda sad that something like that might bring DDT back, instead of large-scale death.
And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe who won’t fix me a nice lunch.
The delightful return of Greg Proops!
The delightful appearance of Patti Anne Browne!
The delightful dementia of Dana Vachon!
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