Aftermoth: A Legacy of Pain and Ethical Considerations About Spraying Untested Chemicals on Californians

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

After they made hundreds of people sick on the Central Coast, and nearly killed at least two children, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Secretary A. G. Kawamura of the CDFA are changing tactics and no longer aerial spraying highly populated cities with untested pesticides. For that, residents of Northern and Central California are grateful.

They were wrong about the public’s willingness to be aerial sprayed. Now, if only the Governor and Secretary would realize that they are also wrong about the threat LBAM poses.

To read Kawamura's statements in the press, you would think that the light brown apple moth is so voracious that New Zealand, where it has been established for 110 years, would be a barren landscape, with no surviving plants.

Yet New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and parts of the United Kingdom consider the apple moth to be an insignificant pest. The United States’ trade embargo and policies related to LBAM are the only things that do significant damage, and the damage is economic. The crusade against the apple moth is a political charade.

In his characteristically misleading way, Kawamura likes to say the apple moth was discovered in California in 2007. That might be true. But leading entomologists say there is no way the moth could be spread out from Los Angeles to Napa, over an area of 10,000 square miles, unless it has been here for at least 30-50 years. The moths only fly a short distance in their lifetime.

Scientists also note that the moth has caused no damage anywhere because it is the same as many other leaf-rolling species already in the state, and is probably being controlled by natural predators.

Two courts in Monterey and Santa Cruz have ruled that the state’s LBAM eradication campaign was launched under the pretense of a false emergency and therefore has been illegal. Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Kawamura have been willing to defy and break state environmental laws, in the opinion of two judges, who found there is no evidence of any damage caused by the moth in California.