Environment: Doomsday--for Whom?

A television ad broadcast in California last week could have been mistaken for a scene from some late-night end-of-the-world movie. The camera panned across a clear blue sky, then suddenly shifted to a breadline, then to empty shelves in a supermarket, a blacked-out city, and finally to a swarm of buzzing mosquitoes. Throughout these scenes of desolation, a voice intoned: "Everybody is in favor of clean air—but losing your job won't solve the pollution problem. Banning pesticides that protect your home from termites and protect you from epidemic disease such as malaria won't...