According to a leading environmentalist, Syria’s use of chemical weapons on its citizens is akin to American farmers using pesticides in food.
In an open letter to President Barack Obama, Maria Rodale, CEO of Rodale, Inc. — the world’s largest publisher of environmental content — chastised America for being “no better” than Syria because while President Bashar Assad used sarin gas on Syrians, Americans are using pesticides on plants.
“We’ve been trying to tell you for years that chemical companies…are poisoning our children and our environment with your support and even, it seems, your encouragement,” Rodale wrote. “Just because the bodies aren’t lined up wrapped in sheets on the front pages of the newspapers around the world doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
Rodale urged the President to fight his war on chemical weapons at home, not in Syria where the government allegedly killed more than 1,400 people in the world’s worst chemical weapons attack in recent history.
“We have been using chemical weapons on our own children — and ourselves — for decades, the chemical weapons we use in agriculture to win the war on pests, weeds, and the false need for ever greater yields,” Rodale argued. “While the effects of these ‘legal’ chemical weapons might not be immediate and direct, they are no less deadly.”
She said that Obama has the chance to be a “real hero” if he turns away from the theatrics of a foreign war and instead focuses his energy on leaving a “legacy of peace” by fighting the use of chemicals in weed killers.
“Both our children and Syria’s deserve the chance to grow up free from chemical contamination and warfare,” Rodale wrote. “But that hope takes a different sort of action and courage, one that does not come with missiles and guns, drones, and destruction.”
