When are your editors going to banish Harold Henderson? His article entitled “Natural Facts” [August 11] is another example of the twisted turn to the right his so-called environmental reporting has taken. Clearly Henderson’s diatribes would be more appropriate in a conservative rag rather than a publication such as the Reader which targets a progressive and socially concerned audience.
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Allow me to refute two of his statements in this recent article. First of all, Henderson accuses Vice President Al Gore of “environmental pessimism” because in the foreword of the reissue of Silent Spring, Gore laments that the environmental -crisis has gotten worse rather than better since the book was originally written in 1962. His article then tries to explain how much better the environment is now. Hogwash! Henderson’s poor research is quite evident. In fact, he readily ignored the most obvious environmental indicator having to do with Silent Spring–pesticide usage. In 1962, less than 300 million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on crops in the U.S. In the 1990s the average annual pesticide usage on American food crops has been nearly 1 billion pounds. And what is the local impact of these numbers? According to the Environmental Working Group, here in the midwest, much of the groundwater is poisoned with these pesticides at levels up to 20 times the minimum EPA standards, thus dramatically increasing the risk of cancer for those drinking it. Clearly there is no improvement there, Harold.
If anyone is guilty of pessimism, it is Harold Henderson, whose pessimistic writing castigates environmentalists as ignorant or fanatical, while eagerly reporting the greenwashing propaganda of polluters. I hope the Reader takes note of his bias and gives him the boot!
Harold Henderson replies:
