The world’s worst environmental villain?

38 Replies to “The world’s worst environmental villain?”

1. The English are still the best at irony and pointing out the obvious in a humourous, if snide manner.

2. I would have enjoyed hearing all three guess in succession, “George Bush” … perhaps with differing intonations…

3. God help Canada if Ignatieff ever discovers this birdie, he will abandon his beloved Puffins and condem Canadians to excessive moonwalking instead of just hiding our excrement.

4. That was a waste of 3 minutes for me and a lot of waste of skin on the screen.

5. Ridiculous.

6. You’re a tough crowd tonight.

7. I doubt if he’s #1, but Saddam Hussein surely did more damage with his burning of wells and draining the marshes, and those are just the things done in spite.
   Ford was a pretty good guess, too.
   I suppose they meant “Who, did the most damage while trying to do environmental good?” Even so, Rachael Carson has Midgley beat.

8. Lead paint. Delicious but deadly!

9. Unintended consequences cut all ways, indiscriminately…laughing about it is a recognition and a reminder.

10. The guy thought he was doing good and in fact he was. That there were environmental consequences is undeniable – but they have been largely addressed. Meanwhile for decades the lot of much of the worlds population benefitted greatly from his inventions.
    That these ignoramuses laughed at his agonies with polio and his grotesque and likely agonizing death is enraging.

11. Can’t think of the last time I treated anyone harmed by lead (except that it was traveling in a copper jacketed round).

12. Lead poisoning comes in various forms.

13. Hilarious.
    I don’t suppose anyone noticed that the English roofed their houses with lead for around 1000years and during that time drank the water that ran off into rain barrels.
    Additionally all the plumbing was a lead pipe cinch.
    The pewter they ate and drank off of?
    Lead and tin.(the lead prevented the tin from rusting)
    During the 18th and 19th centuries arsenic was taken daily by many Englishmen as a medicinal cure-all.
    The active ingredient was…lead.
    Lets toast to all that with some 24% lead chrystal shall we then?

14. Those four idiots could have used a little lead.

15. One mistake there for sure, freon doesn’t harm the ozone layer. On top of which the resulting refridgertion made life immesurably better for billions and saved millions of lives. We should be thanking him for that.

16. I agree with Gord Tulk. It’s funny that these hypocrites act holier than thou, then laugh about a man afflicted with a terrible disease who thought he was doing the world a favour. What if it was found one day that speaking in that awful British accent harmed the environment?

17. Ha! I remember the TEL building at a refinery I worked at (early on in my career as a planet-killer) as being the most feared location on the plot plan.
    “Here Be Dragons” sort of thing.

18. [Quote]Additionally all the plumbing was a lead pipe cinch.[/quote] OZ
    The Romans used lead pipe for all thier water works… I was surprised to see the Lead piping in the Roman baths @ Bath UK… Wine Corks covered with lead (keeps the Rats out, or do we want a little plague served with the Wine). Lead is not good for humans, but there are worse consequences and always “new” tradeoffs..
    Windmills will be the next curse, driving folks mentally insane…look @ Gore & Soros

19. oh Gord…lighten up…if you can steal a moment from refurbishing polio braces to send to african polio missions……remember what buster keaton said
    keaton said…’death is easy…comedy is hard’….

20. oz @ 12:14 a.m.: “During the 18th and 19th centuries arsenic was taken daily by many Englishmen as a medicinal cure-all.
    The active ingredient was … lead.”
    Arsenic (no. 33) and lead (no. 82) are two distinct chemical elements, in the periodic table. Neither one can be an “ingredient” in the other.

21. Makes me glad I downloaded the Jeeves and Wooster series instead of giving money to this smarmy preening idiot.

22. Let’s not help when they come crying for their country back again.

23. Speaking of ozone,there is a significant hole in the Arctic ozone but you don’t hear much about it from the Greenies. Why? Because it is the result of unusual cold.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12969167

24. That was funny Kate, sometimes a body just needs to take a moment and chill. Some folks need a colon cleanser.

25. The tragedy of modern England.
    It’s heartbreaking.

26. Popularizing hostility to technology in order to help people feel better about their ignorance is the order of the day. If you can do it in the name of being “green,” all the better. Greens are even trying to suggest that people like Norman Borlaug will be remembered as monsters for their work with GM crops. I hope I am not around for the mass starvation that results when we are all forced to eat “organic” food. What has happened to the ability to balance risk and reward in technological pursuits?

27. I guess one of their environmental heroes would be Rachel Carson.

28. And here I thought it was genuinely funny. Not everything is political, eh?

29. Politics can be very funny.

30. Strange, I would have nominated Karl Marx as the worst environmental villain.

31. I thought it was funny too, but I think the host was just covering for Bush. Who ever heard of Midgely?

32. What Gord Tulk said.
    This clip makes light of a person’s suffering, for a cheap and easy laugh. How is not finding that amusing, political?

33. OK so we know who put the lead in gasiline now please tell us who put the the pure pork fat between a progressive’s ears.

34. Kate, you started us off on the wrong note. You could have said, “Great chemistry has apocalyptic consequences.”
    Midgley was a prolific inventor, registering over a hundred patents in his lifetime. In high school he improved on the spitball. “Midgley hit upon the idea of using an extract of the inner bark of the slippery elm as an aid to that end, a practice which was later followed extensively by baseball pitchers.” This from a biographical memoir written three years after Midgley’s death by Charles F Kettering (a star researcher at General Motors).
    http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/tmidgley.pdf

35. I worked on a diamond drill rig when I was a teenager, and we washed our hands with leaded gasoline. Lots of kids used to syphon gas, and I can still remember getting a mouthful, while trying to get it started. Next time some of you younger folks started running down baby boomers, remember, we could have been better people, if not for this guy.
    WTF made this guy say George Bush? How could he have affected the environment? The America bashing on the BBC is relentless. I watched “Top Gear” a few times, and those snotty little weasels come out with some of the most ridiculous, inaccurate reporting I’ve ever heard.

36. Both entertaining and enlightening.

37. coach “Top Gear” members is famous for their arrogance it is all part of the show it is most entertaining when they get their comeuppance.
    Jeremy Clarkson is the king of arrogance……lol

38. I’ve also heard that CFC’s don’t actually destroy the ozone layer. Something about that story appearing just before 3M’s patent on a certain refrigerant expiring.
    I would argue Hitler caused a war which caused more destruction to the environment than any other human event in history. Would Japan have piled on if the US hadn’t been looking to Europe instead of toward the Pacific? Atomic bombs X2.
    I can’t even hazard a guess at the number of fuel tankers, transports and factories that were blown up.
    Great post Kate!