Nature Profits From Prosperity

Mon, 05/23/2011 - 23:00 — admin

Last Thursday was the 23rd anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day should have been an occasion to celebrate our increasing environmental knowledge and the progress we've made to clean up the nation's environment. It wasn't, so let's begin the process.

  • America's environmental spending as a percentage of GDP is the highest in the world. Spending in 1993 will approach 2.5% of gross domestic product (nearly $125 billion), up from $26 billion in 1972.

  • By almost any measure, America's air and water are getting cleaner, not dirtier.

  • The U.S. has more trees today than it had 70 years ago, and reforestation has increased nearly 80% from 1970 to 1990.

    • And, with each passing year we learn more about the environment.

    For example:

    • Nature kills more species than people do.

    • Poor, authoritarian nations pollute; rich, democratic nations clean up the environment.

    • China is a greater threat to the global environment over the next 100 years than all the industrialized nations combined.

    • Early stages of economic development tend to increase pollution but, with increasing per capita income, pressures for a clean environment grow and birth rates decline.

      • These are just a sample of the lessons we've learned. A major punch line: Economic development helps the environment. Reason: Prosperity reduces population growth and increases demands for economic and political freedom. The forces of democracy increase pressures for a better quality of life and capitalism fosters the invention of new technologies that facilitate conservation.

      One of the most serious environmental problems is the pollution of the public dialogue by hyperbole, alarmism and stark misrepresentation. To some, anything goes if it gets public attention. And eco-evangelists include the nation's top scientists -- people like Stephen Schneider, a Stanford atmospheric scientist and global warming enthusiast.

      Professor Schneider said in the October 1989 issue of Discover magazine, "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we have...Each of us has to decide what is the right balance between being effective and being honest."

      The latest example of Schneider's comfort with misrepresentation was last week's television drama The Fire Next Time. with Schneider serving as technical adviser, Fire invoked global warming as the cause for devastating floods, ferocious hurricanes, grinding poverty and America's economic collapse.

      Unfortunately, the alarms of apocalyptic environmentalism are seldom challenged in our public schools or in the media. Result: Elected officials now invoke widespread fears of global warming to justify new taxes (e.g., taxes on carbon and Btu's), bigger government and slower economic growth.

      Respected environmental writer Gregg Easterbrook is concerned that "Fashionable alarmism may eventually create a Chicken Little backlash: As the years pass and nature doesn't end, people may stop listening when environmentalists issue warnings."

      So, as we move to a new round of environmental legislation in the 103rd Congress, let's hope that legislators and the public will learn that those who kill prosperity will ultimately hurt the environment.

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