Alas, we've already screwed up--sorry, Alabama, we should have left well enough alone

Two members of the Alabama Public Service Commission, a member-elect and an Alabama representative to the Republican National Committee said proposed EPA regulations that aim to reduce power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent represent "an assault on our way of life" and are a purposeful attempt by the Obama administration to kill coal-related jobs.

...

At their news conference today Cavanaugh and PSC commissioner-elect Chip Beeker invoked the name of God in stating their opposition to the EPA proposal. Beeker, a Republican who is running unopposed for a PSC seat, said coal was created in Alabama by God, and the federal government should not enact policy that runs counter to God's plan.

"Who has the right to take what God's given a state?" he said.

- Stan Diel, "Pray God blocks EPA plan, chief regulator

of Alabama utilities tells consumers"

AL.com, July 28^th, 2014.

The federal government drove out malaria from the American South in the early part of the 20th century. And the lessons learned from that successful campaign could help control the disease in developing countries, says Daniel Sledge, a political scientist at the University of Texas, Arlington.

"It's almost impossible for us to imagine," Sledge says. "But in the rural South, as late as the 1930s, the extent of malaria was in many ways comparable to what it is today in sub-Saharan Africa."

Sledge and his colleague recently analyzed archived public records to try to determine what factors helped to eliminate malaria in Alabama.

The findings were surprising. It wasn't getting people to sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets, or getting better medications to people who do get infected — two major tactics used to control malaria today in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Instead, the parasite left the U.S., in large part, because the government destroyed mosquito breeding grounds.

"The primary factor leading to the demise of malaria was large-scale drainage projects, which were backed up by the creation of local public health infrastructure," he says. Sledge and his colleague described their findings this September in the American Journal of Public Health.

- Jason Beaubien, "Why Ending Malaria May Be More About
Backhoes Than Bed Nets"

NPR, January 3^rd, 2014.

As an American citizen, I would like to apologize on behalf of my country to the citizens of the great state of Alabama.  I am so, so, so very sorry right now we took away all your God-given mosquito breeding grounds and your God-given amoebic parasites.

Sometimes, when you're dealing with a problem that affects the public well-being all across the nation (and even the world), you lose sight of God's plans.  And I just want all y'all to know, Alabama: if it were in my power to give God's malaria back to you, why, right now, I would, I would, I would in a heartbeat, even if I regretted it a few weeks or months or years later.

Because, seriously, I had no idea it meant that much to you.

(H/t Salon.)