February 26, 2008
San Francisco Screams NO to Apple Moth Spraying
Guess who in this photo from last night really really doesn't want Light Brown Apple Moth spraying anytime soon. Now check this awesome video from Robert Lyles (or search for "lyles" here) to see if you're right. Larger photo here
Yesterday's "scoping" meeting in Golden Gate Park went the way you might imagine. Lots of yelling for sure.
See you after the jump.
You had your pro-spraying government representatives, a court reporter, a hundred-something riled residents and a neutral "facilitator" to help everyone get along. First, the crowd was introduced to representatives from the offices of antispraying pols Senator Carole Migden and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma. Then word came down that nobody from the state or federal government was there to answer questions.
The whole exercise was just to get public input. So you'd be allowed to rant and rave for a few minutes, and then the next person, and then on and on for two hours. Many people there were expecting more of a town hall meeting approach.
We had to leave during the opening PowerPoint-ish presentation but you should read all about it.
Everything's on a fast track and the people that want to spray have "emergency powers", so what you think about all this isn't supposed to matter much. Grass roots groups beg to differ.
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This is San Francisco! City of tolerance! What's wrong with promoting a little diversity of gender identity in apple moths?
Nice. Seems they also thought DDT was safe at one time, I seem to recall some footage of people standing about half a block away from nuclear blasts thinking they'd be okay and I seem to recall some little thing called Agent Orange that turned out to be pretty bad.
Go back to sleep, America, your government is in control.
I am strongly opposed to the spray.
MOTHRA might be hurt! She has enough troubles as it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBdRLW3v5xQ
What are the alternatives to the spraying we're all leery about?
spaying.
One of the gentlemen there was a Vietnam Vet and he brought up Agent Orange and people jumped out of their seats and cheered. It made me start laughing so hard I had to leave the room, not because he was exposed to Agent Orange but because people at the meeting were absolutely nuts.
The woman with the shaved head in the photo screamed about testing on people. She was my favorite screamer.
On the news a representative from the CDFA or the USDA said, regardless of these meetings and people's objections spraying will occur on August 1, 2008.
You think the apple moth spraying is bad? Wait until they try to eradicate the google moth.
From wikipedia:
Ultimately the infestation was eradicated, but the scale of the action has remained controversial ever since. Some people claimed that malathion was toxic to humans, as well as insects. Many people complained that, while the malathion was not very toxic to humans, the aerosol spray containing it was corrosive to car-paint.
During Brown's anti-medfly campaign, Apple Computer cofounder Stephen Wozniak ordered 3000 bumper stickers, reading "Save the Medfly," from a printer and gave them out to random people.
Brown delayed too long and had no choice but to spray on a much larger scale than originally proposed.