Originally Posted by mulp

Ah, the old myth that banning DDT would cause disaster to crop production and plagues of disease to humans.

The fact is DDT's inventor and all its licensees were happy to see DDT banned for general use because all the patents had expired and competitors had driven them from that market, and DDT wasn't actually effective unless you applied so much that you suffocated the pests in a thin layer of DDT. And they all had new products protected by patents already on the market that were far better than DDT.

With DDT banned for general use in most of the world, with DDT being so ineffective that tons needed to be used making it as expensive as alternatives, and with the approved uses, such as targeting malaria and dengue fever, the market was so small, only one factory can product more than the entire world can use.

As it turns out, bed nets treated with permethrin is more effective than DDT, and far easier to implement, and doesn't make living quarters dusty with a yellow powder, so in the end is far more cost effective than DDT.

And as DDT in the environment has declined, the top predator and scavenger birds have recovered significantly even as their habitate has been dramatically reduced.

If we take DDT as an analogy for carbon emission, the cost of dealing with cutting carbon emissions and moving to sustainability will be exaggerated by the opponents who have no stake in the game but just hate all change, while industry will by and large enthusiastically support "bans on carbon" just as they did "bans on DDT", and people will find zero carbon housing and lifestyle to be more cost effective as well, and will ignore lower oil prices once shifts are well underway because using no oil is cheaper than cheaper oil.