One of the great themes (or maybe memes) of rightwing delusionism in recent years has been the alleged ban on the antimalarial use of DDT, supposed to have cost millions (or, on some accounts, billions) of lives. It’s not hard to prove that this ban is totally mythical and that the failure of DDT to eradicate malaria, evident well before the 1972 ban on agricultural use in the US, was primarily due to resistance and cost factors. It’s also possible to trace the myth to its roots in rightwing fringe movements like the LaRouchites and the John Birch Society, and document its popularisation by tobacco lobbyists like Roger Bate and Steve Milloy, who used it to attack WHO. (Search on DDT here or over at Tim Lambert’s site for the details) But it’s harder to tell when this fringe conspiracy theory became part of rightwing orthodoxy.

This 2001 debate between Bjorn Lomborg and Tom Burke in Prospect is unfortunately paywalled, but you can read much of the text here. The money quote from Lomborg

DDT has helped wipe out endemic malaria in both Europe and north America, and its cheap protection still works wonders for third world malaria

It’s unsurprising that Lomborg takes a favorable view of DDT. What’s notable here is that, as of 2001, he hadn’t got the memo about evil environmentalists banning it. On the other hand, as this old post of mine shows, the myth had made it into more general rightwing circulation by 2003, and it was taken as incontestable truth by most rightwingers a year or two later.

I’m doing my first videoconference presentation for the year on Friday, appropriately enough at a University of Sydney one-day seminar on the economics of sustainability. My talk will be on “Uncertainty, awareness and the precautionary principle”. Anyone interested can get details from Michael Harris M.Harris@usyd.edu.au. I’ve lined up two more videoconferences for the first half of this year, and I hope to do some more in the second half. Having been invited to the 2020 Summit in a few weeks time, and with some more bookings already in place, I don’t plan to accept any more invitations for physical travel this year.

The other part of my plan to reduce my carbon footprint and the amount of time I spend travelling is to make one trip cover multiple events. I’m in Melbourne right now, for a visit that includes three presentations and several meetings.

With all this, I’m still travelling a fair bit more than I would like. But I think there is a network effect here. The more people get used to videoconferencing as an alternative, the better it will work, and the more demand there will be for technical improvements.

Update I’ve just given the presentation and I thought it went pretty smoothly, certainly a lot easier than a trip to Sydney. The picture quality for my presentation was fine, and the computer link (using BridgIt) went well. The video and sound quality from the other end (a large lecture room as opposed to a talking head studio presentation) was adequate, but that’s certainly an area of potential improvement. Here’s the presentation in PDF format