The Harvard Crimson printed "DDT" without smearing it?!
Students really will rebel against their teachers...
Posted on 04/20/2006 7:18:19 AM PDT by rface
Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. environment is getting healthier. The U.S. population has more than doubled since 1970, yet forest coverage has increased. Measurements of major air pollutants—sulfur, suspended particulates, and carbon monoxide—have registered declines of 15 to 75 percent. Likewise, the number of healthy rivers and lakes has roughly doubled since the first Earth Day, and Lake Erie, declared “dead” in the 1970s, now supports a healthy fishing industry. There are exceptions to this positive trend, but the overall direction is unmistakable: The U.S. natural environment is improving.......
Environmentalism is dead; long live the environment!
This pronouncement might seem a touch premature, especially to the 500 million people who will celebrate the 37th Earth Day this weekend—a collective “not dead yet” wheeze. However, these numbers mask the growing irrelevance of the environmentalist movement. Having lost its credibility with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological ballast, the movement must develop a moderate discourse while challenging its previous assumptions and outdated theories.
The contemporary environmentalist movement faces a stark choice: change tactics or fade into irrelevance. Over the past decade, environmentalists have achieved few political victories and utterly failed to influence the general public. As indicated by a recent MIT study, the public knows little about environmental problems, and cares less. Out of 21 national and international issues, Americans ranked environmental problems 13th, well below terrorism, taxes, crime, and drugs.
Alarmism—the environmental movement’s basic strategy—has led to this dead end. Since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the movement has been dominated by doomsday scenarios. Even on the first Earth Day in 1970, biologist George Wald predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken” while the New York Times warned that “man must stop pollution and conserve his resources…to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Fortunately, such forecasts have repeatedly proven to be wrong.
Take biologist Paul Ehrlich’s popular Malthusian broadside, “The Population Bomb.” Farsighted Ehrlich predicted that a “population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” causing world-wide famine and the death of “hundreds of millions of people” annually from starvation. Oops—in the subsequent 35 years, increased agricultural productivity exceeded population growth and the total amount of cultivated land barely increased.
Ehrlich is hardly alone; the environmental movement has spawned a remarkable number of would-be Cassandras. Between 1970 and 2006, global cooling predictions mysteriously morphed into global warming fears. Concerns about rampant Dodo-ism proved baseless: the rate of animal extinction in the U.S. has been declining since the 1930s, and only seven species have gone extinct since 1973. And rather than running out of resources, the world has experienced a commodity glut, with the prices of most metals and minerals dropping by 30 to 50 percent. The litany of failed apocalypses goes on.
Not that this history of crying wolf has chastened contemporary environmentalists. Activists and researchers still issue dire warnings with mind-numbing regularity. Just three weeks ago, a panic-stricken Time magazine story on global warming shouted, “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.” Harping on worst-case scenarios like a 220-foot rise in the ocean’s water level, the article more closely resembled “The Day After Tomorrow” than a serious report.
Although such scare mongering persists, it has reached the point of diminishing returns. Knowing the movement’s track record of false alarms, the American public dismiss dire environmental warnings out of hand. Plus, these alarming reports attract a disproportionate amount of media attention, discrediting the environmentalist movement twice over: First when the sensational predictions drown out more plausible reports, then again when the highly-publicized disaster fails to occur.
Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. environment is getting healthier. The U.S. population has more than doubled since 1970, yet forest coverage has increased. Measurements of major air pollutants—sulfur, suspended particulates, and carbon monoxide—have registered declines of 15 to 75 percent. Likewise, the number of healthy rivers and lakes has roughly doubled since the first Earth Day, and Lake Erie, declared “dead” in the 1970s, now supports a healthy fishing industry. There are exceptions to this positive trend, but the overall direction is unmistakable: The U.S. natural environment is improving.
Of course, environmentalists claim credit for this trend. Alarmists can’t lose: either doomsday comes true, or their warnings averted disaster. Certainly, part of the positive trend is due to activism and government regulations, but much of the change is a result of increased technological efficiency as well as longstanding trends that predate the rise of environmentalism.
Although the impact of these past achievements is uncertain, the movement’s future success clearly depends on a fundamental reevaluation of long-unquestioned theories and policies. Doomsday warnings no longer shock the public into action; instead, environmentalists need to develop moderate arguments that don’t depend on some calamity. This means abandoning Soviet-style “command-and-control” regulation, epitomized by the Kyoto Treaty, and exploring ideas, like the use of DDT, that are currently considered heretical.
Thus, on the 37th anniversary of Earth Day, the environmental movement is looking increasingly long in the tooth. Alarmist environmentalists have overshadowed moderate, careful researchers, and undermined the credibility of the entire movement. Until environmentalists cease depending on nightmare scenarios, they will fail to influence the public at large. Let the next generation of environmentalists begin to reestablish the movement’s credibility by exploring currently heretical ideas and producing moderate, nuanced reports, even if they do not make for good press.
Piotr C. Brzezinski ’07, an editorial associate chair, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. He is a member of the Resource Efficiency Program. On April 22, there will be an Earth Day celebration in Winthrop House from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Harvard Crimson printed "DDT" without smearing it?!
Students really will rebel against their teachers...
Like Unionism, social welfare, and other causes of the past...they don't know when they have crossed the line from "We have a problem" to "We ARE the problem".
There were valid reasons for environmental alarmism back in the 60's and 70's, but the USA has gotten the issue on track and is working on it. Now they are just silly.
However, if the enviro-wackos want to keep busy, they should run on over to China and start giving THEM sh1t as the Chinese are the biggest source of pollution in the world. Of course, protests don't go over too well there, but thats OK with me. Send the protesters to Tienemen Square!
I agree - it's the environmentalists that have destroyed the environmental movement.
As part of my celebration of the artificial, pseudo-holiday so-called Earth Day, I'm looking for a good monster truck rally to attend.
You'll know this has happened when the eco-freak groups come out in favor of drastically expanded use of nuclear power.
I would credit the American people with dutifully cooperating with recycling and waiting in line for emissions checks because we are not indifferent pigs, after all. Now can the term enviornment and go back to nature conservation. It's much nicer.
Where did he come up with this "doubled" statistic? I don't think it's correct: "The U.S. population has more than doubled since 1970".
203 million in 1970, 300 million today.
Not double, obviously. Perhaps his article was satire?
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