Posted on 04/18/2006 9:35:11 AM PDT by Graybeard58
ABC News reporter John Stossel once did a show called "Tampering With Nature" in which he quizzed schoolchildren on their perceptions of the health of the environment. He asked the children "whether America's air and water were getting more polluted. The kids loudly agreed that they were," recounted Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute in a July 2001 article. "When Stossel told the kids that Environmental Protection Agency monitoring shows the air and water getting rapidly cleaner, they shouted 'No!' One little boy yelled 'They lie!'"
Not much has changed. Environmental alarmism remains dominant in the popular culture. But there's another side to the story.
Every April, the free-market Pacific Research Institute lists positive environmental developments. This year's findings include:
Air quality in Los Angeles exceeded ozone standards 75 times last year, compared with 201 in 1975.
Tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles have declined by 96 percent per vehicle-mile driven since the 1950s.
Grizzly bears are becoming so prevalent, they may soon be removed from the list of endangered species.
Hazardous or toxic chemicals in human blood declined last year "almost across the board."
The full report is available at www.pacificresearch.org. It's worth perusing as a counterbalance to the gloom and doom that's sure to dominate this year's Earth Day coverage.
Young skulls full of mush. I remember in seventh grade, I was subjected to an Environmental Science class. Complete joke.
Growing up as a kid in the 60's-70's in New York we actually used to have "smog" days. You could see it, smell it, etc.; it was a daily feature of the weather report.
Completely gone now, and no one ever, ever mentions it.
(Another beautiful, bright, crisp, clear day today, BTW.)
I take my kids out of school when they bring in D.A.R.E.
I am against illegal mind altering drugs of course, but when they throw tobacco in there as though its the same thing it really P's me off. I also don't want my kids thinking that taking meth is the same as smoking a cig.
I'm going to celebrate upcoming Earth Day by burning some yard waste and smoking a cigar.
And then we can move them over to the Dangerous Species list and monitor their growth so that the sleuth can be thinned for public safety.
If tobacco is so evil, the government should ban it outright (not just in businesses like bars and nightclubs and hotel rooms and apartments and the park and...). And they should stop collecting so much money from its sale in "sin taxes".
Or if we are going to have groups come into a school to educate the students about how government exploits the addictions of some citizens who don't understand what's at stake, how about letting speakers come into math class to discuss how unlikely it is to ever win the state lottery jackpot.
When my son was in kindergarten his teacher was well on the way to filling his head with enviro BS.
The alarm bells went off in my head one day when we were driving past a future home, where they were in the process of digging a basement.
My son exclaimed from the back seat, in a fit of enviro-hysteria, "Oh no, Mom look, they're digging a hole in Nature!"
Well he got the real facts that day, and every day since, and now he's just about normal:)
"Young skulls full of mush. I remember in seventh grade, I was subjected to an Environmental Science class. Complete joke."
I was subjected to "Duck and Cover" drills. My how times have changed.
Me, too! Like it would have helped during a nuclear strike ...
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