Center For Biological Diversity files uniformly predictable lawsuit

While legislators on the East Coast were railing against the perils of teenagers guzzling caffeinated beverages, a radical environmentalist group called the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accusing them of being lax on pesticides.

The ostensible legal grounding for the suit lies in the Endangered Species Act. The group claims that the Act requires the EPA to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service concerning potential effects of pesticides on threatened species. While the suit admits that the EPA has indeed consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service in making its regulations, it says that it has not done this frequently enough — according to its own definition — over the last seventeen years.

The lawsuit states: "The [EPA’s] ecological risk assessment does not consider the cumulative or synergistic effects posed by multiple pesticides on wildlife or the environment, nor does it address delayed effects of pesticides, referred to as 'lag effects.'"

There is, of course, no scientific evidence that any of these “effects” exist.

ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross observes: “The Center for Biological Diversity’s ultimate aim is to de-register all legal pesticides until the EPA agrees to schedule even more consultations with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Although the likelihood of this fringe group being successful is small — even with the current chemophobes running the EPA — a win would deprive farmers of safe and useful chemicals and cause havoc, food shortages and massive increases in the price of food. But I’m sure the Center’s zealots couldn’t care less.”