December 1997 Vol. 218 No. 12  Editorial Comment

Bob Scott

Food for thought

A couple of new Catch-22s re the environuts' rush to eliminate Freon and other chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from planet earth because of their hypothesized effect on the ozone "hole" which ain't:

• The British medical journal Lancet recently reported confirmed cases of liver damage among European workers accidentally exposed to two of the new substitutes for the old Freon used in large industrial AC systems. In other words, the new stuff is toxic to human beings. So people who work around such stuff can now be positively assured of liver damage instead of maybe perhaps someday getting over-sunburned if ozone "holes" are ever proven to be a problem.

• In an equally stupid move related to non-O₃ "holes," the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has a plan to phase out present asthma inhalers because they contain CFCs. This will only affect 18 million American citizens or so, as compared to absolutely no one in the whole world that has ever been sickened by any reaction to any O₃ "hole." Even liberal asthmatics in the Congress are raising hell about this one, seriously risking their past reputations as avid environmental types.

Unfortunately, as long as the politicians continue to kiss the goofygreens' butts, we will be faced with such stuff. But then, as the old saying goes, it does seem to make a difference whose ox is getting gored, doesn't it?

The burgeoning use of mobile telephones around the world is a phenomenon right up there with the hula hoop—everybody has to have one. And oilpatch people are major users for legitimate business reasons. However, a caution may be in order.

At a recent mobile phone safety meeting in Brussels, a Washington University investigator reported that for the first time microwave radiation from phones has been shown to cause loss of concentration or short-term memory loss.

Reckon that's why so many such phone users are involved in accidents?

The endangered species bunch will no doubt get a serious case of indigestion when they learn that "lit-up buildings and smoke stacks kill 100 million (migrating) birds annually in North America." That number comes from one Daniel Klem of the University of Pennsylvania, who apparently knows something about birds.

As further revealed in the British publication New Scientist, some 10,000 birds in "long term decline" (maybe that means semi-endangered) die each year in Toronto's 173-acre financial district alone. Worse, seagulls have learned to herd the migrating flocks so that they collide with the Toronto buildings. Ergo: easy meals for seagulls.

Reckon the ecowackos will demand the buildings be moved or go along with a seagull shoot?

You may be interested in a recent analysis of regulatory changes and trends in the 1998 federal budget conducted by the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

You will be enthralled to know, we are sure, that the cost of the 126,000-employee federal regulatory bureaucracy this year will total $16.7 billion (up 9.2% over 1996) and $17.2 billion (+3%) next year, a prime example, no doubt, of Ozone Gore's government downsizing effort.

And can you possibly guess which bunch of regulators is by far the largest in the entire government, with a $5.2 billion budget and 18,000 employees? Sure you can—it's the EPA.

Indeed, EPA will spend 87% of all money spent on environmental regulations by six different agencies. Since 1960, spending on environmental regulations alone has gone up from $21 million to $5.9 billion (all in current dollars), a 281-fold increase. We might also add that EPA has the biggest bunch of goofygreen Gestapo types on its payroll.

Unfortunately, the above cost is just our tax dollars. For every dollar spent on government administration of these regulations, businesses must pay $20 to comply. That is up from $9 in 1977.

Whose fault? Well, it's mainly that of the congress who left far too many bureaucratic loopholes in the social regulatory laws it has passed over the years. And it's also the fault of mostly Republican presidents who were in office when the more onerous and extensive environmental laws came into being. Consider and weep.

Republican Representative Edward Royace sent the Washington Times the following taken from a radio interview between a youth club leader and a female reporter.

Reporter: "So Mr. Jones, what are you going to do with these children on this adventure holiday?"

Mr. Jones: "We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, shooting. . ."

Reporter: "Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?"

Mr. Jones: "I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the range."

Reporter: "Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?"

Mr. Jones: "I don't see how, we will be teaching them proper range discipline before they even touch a firearm."

Reporter: "But you're equipping them to become violent killers."

Mr. Jones: "Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute but you're not one, are you?"

Hooray for Mr. Jones.

A typo, not infrequent herein unfortunately, occurred on this page last month in the item about center fuel tanks on 747s. The word brobdingian was supposed to be brobdingnagian meaning "big." You may recall Brobdingnag was the country in which Gulliver found the giants during his travels. Just shows what can happen when you try and slip in a big word occasionally when a little bitty one would do.

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Copyright © 1999 Gulf Publishing Company