In Borneo in the early 1950s, the Dayak people suffered from malaria, and the World Health Organization had a solution: they would simply spray DDT all over. They did, the mosquitoes died, the malaria declined; so far, so good, but there were many side effects. The roofs of people's houses, for example, began to fall down on their heads, because the DDT had also killed tiny parasitic wasps that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Then the DDT-poisoned bugs were eaten by geckoes, which were eaten by cats. As the DDT built up in the food chain, it killed the cats. Without the cats, the rats flourished and multiplied. The World Health Organization was threatened by outbreaks of typhus and plague, which it had itself created, and was thereby obliged to parachute live cats into Borneo.
— Armory B. Lovins, Crisis and the Renewal of Creation by Jeffrey Golliher, editor, William B. Logan, editor