Giuliani's Right On The Environment

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Deroy Murdock.

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As Earth Day dawns Sunday, Americans should consider the relationship between environmentalists and the former mayor of the capital of Earth. From New York's City Hall, Rudolph W. Giuliani successfully confronted green zealots while advancing science and technology. Here again, Giuliani stands well right of where his detractors might expect.

The West Nile virus debuted in the Western Hemisphere in Queens, New York's College Point community in August 1999. Among 62 New York State residents who contracted West Nile encephalitis (brain swelling) that year, seven died.

Rather than study the problem to death, that summer and in 2000, Giuliani launched widespread insecticide spraying against West Nile-carrying mosquitoes. Environmentalists went haywire.

The local No Spray Coalition sued to block fumigation. New York's Green party callously declared: "These diseases only kill the old and people whose health is already poor."

Giuliani firmly told Newsday that spraying was "perfectly safe." He added: "There are some people who are engaged in the business of wanting to frighten people out of their minds." In 2000, he told CNN: "The reality is that danger to human life is more important than birds, fish, and insects."

Before releasing water-borne larvicide and aerial- and ground-level pesticide, hundreds of Health Department employees used flyers and home visits to urge Queens residents to remain indoors with windows and air ducts closed during nighttime spraying. A 75-person, 24-hour hotline answered 150,000 calls. Doctors and journalists also were briefed.

"The response required daily, continuous communication among many agencies to coordinate," then-Assistant Health Commissioner Dr. Marcelle Layton told the New York Academy of Sciences on July 12, 2000. "The city also purchased 400,000 cans of mosquito repellent to distribute free of charge, an action modeled on our plans for mass medical distribution in case of bioterrorism. In retrospect, this was a very good decision because stores in some communities in Connecticut did run out of repellent."

I remember subsequently walking around the evening my Manhattan neighborhood was sprayed. While meandering through the East Village after I should have returned home, I heard an odd buzz and saw a small white pickup a block away, tailed by a white chemical cloud. I jogged to the next corner to avoid inhaling it. Minutes later, the buzz returned, and an insecticide-spewing truck turned the corner and headed toward me along a largely abandoned Third Avenue. I sprinted home and stayed there until morning.

While this was a bit creepy, the good news is that Giuliani's swift and thorough spraying programs yanked the wings off the mosquitoes that could have turned a manageable West Nile outbreak into a catastrophe.

"Unfortunately West Nile has spread, largely because other mayors didn't spray when they were cowed by the greens," says John Berlau, author of "Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health." "But West Nile could have become an immediate nationwide epidemic if not for the quick action of Giuliani and his Health Department," he adds.

Other New York politicians caved into the chemophobic activists. "We believe the risk of infection for...residents remains quite low," Nassau County's Health Commissioner announced after West Nile-infected mosquitoes reached Long Island in August 2001. But, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Angela Logomasini found, "the risk was not low enough for East Meadow residents Adeline Bisignano and Karl Fink. Both became ill with the virus at the end of that same month and died the following November."

Given West Nile's documented human toll, Giuliani did the right thing. In 1999, a Russian flare-up sickened 500 people, killing 40. A 1996 outbreak of West Nile meningitis and encephalitis centered in Bucharest, Romania, infected 90,000 and hospitalized 835. Seventeen died.

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[idlepugilist]

Pehaps making the decision to spray for mosquitos appears to be the point the NRO believes may be pivotal for Rudy to become the front runner. While some "Greens" or environmentalists may seem as extremist to you as Bush, Delay and Gingrich seem to the rest of the country, those of us in other states wonder what the significance of this mosquito story is. Especially Wisconsin and Minnesota residents, who know the little pest to be their state bird.
Whoopee for Rudy! He chose to do something other states have been doing for years. What a dynamic leader he'd make. The rest of us who don't worship the NRO are looking for something with a little substance out of Rudy. Like ethics. He'd be well advised to never speak with Gingrich or Delay, due to the guilt-by-association thing the NRO likes to play with environmentalists and Greens.

[clestes-2009]

Which is why Rudy has little chance of being elected. The time of the pro business, pro war, pro military candidate is PAST, thank God. The American people are finally waking up to the idea that the days when we can run over every one else, pollute the air as much as we want are history.

As for the pro business. Say hello to the new world leader CHINA. To whom we owe trillions of dollars thanks to our blunder in chief, that good ole boy dumb dubya.

Rest in peace you right wing has beens. You tried hard to start another world war and just showed the world how really stupid you are and woke the American people up.

[dallison7]

WOW!!

90,000 got sick and 17 died!

.00019% FATALITY!!

Sounds like the dreaded 'Hangnail'.

Giuliani is indeed a hero!

[gdmoore2]

Odd article. The author is contriving a confrontation where none existed with most of the conservation and environmental community. Perhaps the National Review believes that it succeeds when it is divisive. Well, the Bush days are coming to an end, and perhaps we shall grow beyond the automatic devisiveness that the neocons have come to thrive upon.

Rudy Giuliani is a moderate conservative. He will get along just fine with the conservation and environmental communities, particularly in the western states. There are other reasons for Democrats and moderate Conservatives to question Giuliani, particularly on his foreign policy, Iraq, and trade views, but spraying to prevent West Nile virus is not one of them.

[bm6005]

Didja ever notice that writers for this rag have elitist names. Never fails as far as I can tell. That said Rudy and DeRoy are MORONS!! No printable comments about Kerik!

[johnshaft4]

PS...Rudy, Baby (*itch) as a former Federal Prosecutor, YOU KNEW, or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN just how corrupt YOUR right hand man KERIK was/is.
After ALL of the corruption WE have experienced, do YOU think that WE are so stupid as to jump in bed with a slime bag as YOU?...
Then again STD's ARE on the rise.
What a creep Rudy is...

[johnshaft4]

This Murdock clown who wrote this piece of gibberish (apparently,in the throes of opiate withdrawl) is too stupid to remember BERNIE KERIK.
Take Bernie to your Rudy graves, YOU corrupt, lying, theiving JERKS!!!
ANYONE, who would contribute a red cent to ANY Republican would BE MUCH BETTER OF feeding their "so called" brains with crack cocaine.
What a bunch of idiots... Up yours Rudy...YOUR sins will ALWAYS find you out...

[mcvet]

This Nazi Rag spends much of our time spinning an action of Giuliani with a bunch of Mosquietos as if THAT somehow makes him someone we can look to clean up the mess that is Iraq and our losing in our efforts to stop the spread of World Wide Terrorist. I can't see, given his treatment of his own people, this clown winning very many Hearts and Minds. Now if we whated a Gestapo type to frighten the dickens out of everyone, like Bush, he'd be our man. Problem is, as the WORLD WIDE HATE for BUSH has shown, that is NOT a winning solution... NOT AT ALL. We had better wake up and smell the coffee here people. Without World Wide Allies and the ability to call upon the Strenght of that weapon, we can not do anything against Terrorism.