Editor, The Times:
There is a modern fable that you can take a frog, stick it in a pot of cold water, then put the pot on a hot stove. As the water heats up the frog will sit there. He can jump at anytime but simply doesn’t and boils to death!
But frogs are stupid (Kermit would disagree); not smart like us humans, eh?
I just finished reading On A Farther Shore: the Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder.
Rachel Carson is, as many know, regarded as the godmother of the modern environmental movement. Her big concern was the overuse of DDT, which had grown to ludicrous proportions after World War II. Her book Silent Spring sounded the alarm as to the damage done, especially to birds and other creatures, including frogs.
It was greeting by derision and put down. Hee Ho Ho Ho you drink a glass of DDT it was so safe! — Actually that is how thousands of Indian farmers indebted way over their heads ended their lives, but that’s another story. Was Rachel Carson a communist trying to undermine the American way of life?
Carson was quite ill and died in her mid-fifties of cancer while writing Silent Spring. Fortunately the New Yorker (bless William Shawn) serialized the book. Others such as the Readers Digest had turned it down.
While reading William Souder’s book I (as happens from time to time) stumbled onto something else.
It appears that the dangers of global warming were already a ‘hot topic’ in 1962. Actually, my daughter Vanessa informs me global warming was being discussed in the mid-50’s. Again the deniers were many, fuelled by money from the big energy. The Earth was cooling. The more carbon dioxide and other pollutants one dumped into the atmosphere the better!
Now, to top it all off, we have as president-elect of still the biggest though most indebted nation on this Earth, the US of A, who is a climate changer denier. Top that one!
We could have jumped but we didn’t!
Dumb frogs!
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
