End environmental experiments on Africans! ... Fiona Kobusingye

End environmental experiments on Africans!
Fiona Kobusingye

I wish I had a shilling for every time someone told me spraying homes with
DDT to prevent malaria is like using Africans in evil experiments. I would
be a rich woman.

That claim is a blatant falsehood. Even worse, it hides the many ways poor
Africans really are being used in environmental experiments that cause
increased poverty, disease and death.

If any people were ever used in DDT experiments, it was Americans and
Europeans. During World War II, this insecticide and mosquito repellant was
sprayed on tents and around camps to keep American and British soldiers from
getting malaria. After the war, millions of concentration camp survivors,
and millions of German and Italian citizens were sprayed with DDT (right on
their bodies) to prevent typhus.

Then in the 1950s and 1960s, America and Europe sprayed huge amounts of DDT
all over, as a critical part of their campaign to eradicate malaria. Yes,
they still had malaria in those countries! But not anymore.

Numerous scientific and medical studies found that DDT was safe, and that it
did not cause cancer or other health problems worse that skin rashes, even
with high levels of exposure. Anti-insecticide activists still say "some
experts think" DDT "may be linked" to things such as low birth weights in
newborn babies, lactation failure in nursing mothers or slight reductions in
mental power. However, they have never been able to prove any of this - and
we know malaria clearly does cause these problems.

America and Europe banned DDT anyway, but only after they had used it to
eliminate malaria. And in Africa we only want to spray a little on the walls
of houses, to keep mosquitoes out, keep them from biting if they do come in
the house, and save millions of lives! Nothing else works as well, at any
price.

America and Europe used a chemical (DDT) that environmentalists now claim is
dangerous. But the chemical got rid of malaria. Nobody got cancer or other
health problems from DDT.

Just as important, around the same time, thousands of brave American and
Canadian parents let their children be used in another health experiment:
they had them inoculated with the Salk vaccine, to see if it would prevent
polio. It worked! And it started a worldwide program that has almost
eliminated that terrible disease.

If Africans used DDT for indoor residual spraying, they will be using a
chemical that America, Europe, India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Mozambique,
Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all shown is effective in
fighting malaria, and safe for people and the environment.

But environmentalists still say, don't do it in Uganda, Rwanda and other
countries where malaria is still killing our parents and babies. They say we
should just use bed nets, ACT drugs and maybe some Icon. These things
certainly help. But they only reduce malaria by 30% or so - whereas we could
prevent and almost eradicate this disease, if we would also use DDT.

Bluntly put, environmentalists are using African parents and children in
anti-DDT experiments. Against all the evidence from decades of using only
nets and drugs and maybe other insecticides, they want to keep ignoring DDT
as a long-lasting spatial insect repellant. They want to keep us doing what
has at best worked only partially, on the assumption that maybe it will work
better next year - or that a 30% malaria reduction is good enough.

They are playing with our lives. So are the government agencies, health NGOs
and others who support their policies. This is wrong and immoral. And it is
only one of the ways they use Africans as experimental laboratory animals.
They are also denying us access to other modern technologies that can
improve and save lives.

600 million people in sub-Sahara Africa live on two million shillings ($900
USD) or less per year. Nearly 700 million never have electric power for
lights, refrigeration, schools, shops and clinics - or have it only a few
hours per week. Millions die from diseases that would be prevented, if they
did not have to burn wood and dung, and had safe water, better healthcare
and higher living standards that reliable, affordable electrical power would
bring.

But environmentalists constantly block coal, gas and hydro-electric power
plants. They want us to live in experimental societies where people get
whatever limited electrical power can be generated day to day with wind
turbines or solar panels. They pressured the World Bank to reject loan
applications for power plants in Ghana and South Africa, and support
President Obama when he says Africans should focus on wind, solar and
bio-fuel power, instead of fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, they live in wealthy countries, with all the electrical power
they need. With the health, opportunity and prosperity electrical power
brings. With freedom and mobility that cars and fossil fuels bring. With
blessings most Africans can only dream of.

Radical greenies also oppose agricultural technologies that would bring a
green revolution to Africa. They denounce seeds that have been "touched by
corporations" - even hybrid, but especially biotech seeds - that produce
bigger, more nutritious crops, resist plant diseases like banana wilt and
cassava brown streak, survive droughts, thrive in nutrient-poor or saline
soils, and require fewer pesticide applications.

They want us to rely on traditional "open-pollinated" seeds that have lower
germination rates and crop yields - seeds that require more land and more
backbreaking labor, but generate so little income that farmers stay
impoverished for life, and people continue to starve.

China and India put up with this immoral eco-colonialism for decades.
Finally, they had enough. They refused to be the environmentalists'
experimental pawns any longer. They took charge of their own destinies,
charted their own future, financed their own projects, and refused to be
stopped again by anti-development green policies, politicians and pressure
groups.

Uganda, the Great Lakes Region and all of Africa need to do the same thing.
We have the land and natural resources, the bright and hard working people.
Let us be brave and bold! Let us become prosperous and healthy together.
__________
Fiona Kobusingye is co-chair of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now coalition.

Bringing light, health and prosperity to Africa

Bringing light, health and prosperity to Africa
US energy and environmental policies must help Africa improve the lives of its people
Roy Innis and Niger Innis
********************

“I see Africa as a … partner with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children,” President Obama declared in Ghana last July.

However, three months later, the President signed an executive order requiring that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and other federal agencies reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with their projects by 30% over the next ten years. The order undermines the ability of Sub-Saharan African nations to achieve energy, economic and human rights progress.

Ghana is trying to build a 130-MW gas-fired power plant, to bring electricity’s blessings to more of its people, schools, hospitals and businesses. Today, almost half of Ghanaians never have access to electricity, or get it only a few hours a week, leaving their futures bleak.

Most people in Ghana are forced to cook and heat with wood, crop wastes or dung, says Franklin Cudjoe, director of the Imani (Hope) Center for Policy and Education, in Accra. The indoor air pollution from these fires causes blindness, asthma and severe lung infections that kill a million women and young children every year. Countless more Africans die from intestinal diseases caused by eating unrefrigerated, spoiled food.

But when Ghana turned to its United States “partner” and asked OPIC to support the $185-million project, OPIC refused to finance even part of it – thus adding as much as 20% to its financing cost. Repeated across Africa, these extra costs for meeting “climate change prevention” policies will threaten numerous projects, and prolong poverty and disease for millions.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 800 million people, 80% of whom live on less than $2.50 per day. Over 700 million people – twice the population of the USA and Canada combined – rarely or never have access to the lifesaving, prosperity-creating benefits of electricity, notes Cudjoe.

Even in South Africa, the most advanced nation in this region, 25% of the populace still has no electricity. Pervasively insufficient electrical power has meant frequent brownouts that have hampered factory output and forced gold and diamond mines to shut down, because of risks that miners would suffocate in darkness deep underground. The country also suffers from maternal mortality rates 36 times higher than in the US, and tuberculosis rates 237 times higher.

And yet President Obama told his Ghanaian audience last July that Africa is gravely “threatened” by global warming, which he argues “will spread disease, shrink water resources and deplete crops,” leading to more famine and conflict. Africa, he says, can “increase access to power, while skipping – leapfrogging – the dirtier phase of development,” by using its “bountiful” wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels energy.

The President made these remarks before the scandalous “Climategate” emails were made public, and headline-grabbing claims about melting glaciers, burning Amazon rainforests and disappearing African agriculture were shown to be mere speculation and exaggeration from climate activists. He is also getting awful advice on climate change and renewable energy.

Literally thousands of scientists disagree with claims that we face an imminent manmade global warming disaster, or that warming is connected to disease or harvests. Africa has faced drought, famine and disease since before Biblical times, and armed conflict is far more likely where a lack of electricity perpetuates poverty, scarcity and dashed hopes.

Wind and solar power can help remote villages, but are too costly, intermittent and land-intensive to meet the needs of emerging economies. A single turbine requires 700-1000 tons of concrete, steel, copper and fiberglass – far more raw materials than involved with coal or gas-fired power plants, generating equal amounts of electricity far more reliably and cheaply. And biofuels mean dedicating scarce farmland and famine-level crops to producing energy.

That is why rapidly-developing nations like China and India are building power plants at the rate of one per week. In India alone, 400 million people still have no electricity at all; tens of millions more have it only a few hours a day. Nearly all this electricity must be based on coal.

Wind power is constrained by high cost and limited reliability. Nuclear energy faces major cost and political obstacles. To electrify India in the absence of coal, the country would have to find 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, build 250 nuclear power plants, or construct the equivalent of 450 Hoover Dams, Penn State University professor Frank Clemente calculates. Those alternatives are unrealistic.

Blessed with abundant supplies of coal, South Africa has applied for a World Bank loan to continue building its 4,800-megawatt Medupi power plant. The Medupi plant would be equipped with the latest in “supercritical clean coal,” pollution control and “carbon capture” technologies.

However, the project and loan have run into a buzz saw of opposition, led by the Center for American Progress, Africa Action, Friends of the Earth and Sierra Club. These radical groups claim to champion justice and better health for Africa, but oppose the very technologies that would make that possible.

“Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be generated with wind turbines or solar panels – is misguided at best and immoral at worst,” Cudjoe declares.

The proposed Ghana and South Africa power plants already leapfrog dirtier development phases, by providing state-of-the-art pollution control technology. The energy alternatives President Obama envisions would do little to address the desperate crises that threaten Africans’ health, welfare and lives.

China and India are showing Africa the way forward. Those of us in already developed countries should support Africa’s aspirations – and help it address real health and environmental problems, by using affordable, dependable energy that truly is the lifeblood of modern societies, and the key to a better future for children everywhere.
____________

Roy Innis is national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. Niger Innis is national spokesman for CORE and co-chair of the Affordable Power Alliance.