RE: Harvard Crimson: Requiem for Environmentalism and Earth Day

At 06:00 PM 4/21/2006, Tjalle T Vandergraaf wrote:

>The original quote was that “the U.S. population
>has more than doubled since 1970.” My comment
>was that, based on the cited website, the
>increase was “only” 33%. “More than doubling”
>means an increase of >100%, not 50%. So we’re
>not talking about a 17% discrepancy, but a
>difference of a factor of three
>(100%/33%). This is an important difference
>because the premise was pollution had decreased
>in spite of a very large increase in population. ..." - Chuck

@ You have to be KIDDING!!!!! That wasn't "the
premise" of his commentary at all. "Population
increase" wasn't even mentioned until the 8th
paragraph! I've copied it again below in plain black and white.

The third time is the charm! I'm outta your boat.

~ Janice

>
>----------
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
>[mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Janice Matchett
>Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 12:58 PM
>To: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: RE: Harvard Crimson: Requiem for Environmentalism and Earth Day
>
>At 02:26 PM 4/20/2006, Tjalle T Vandergraaf wrote:
>
>
>Huh? “The U.S. population has more than doubled
>since 1970....” Am I missing something?
>
>@ Yeah. The substance of the commentary - the
>part you snipped off (which I restored
>below). You seem to have a natural instinct for
>how best to distract people as you drag your red herrings across the trail.
>
>
>According to
><http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm>http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm,
>the population in the US was 205,052,174 in 1970
>and 272,690,813 in 1999, or an increase of ‘only’ 33%.
>
>@ "Only" 33%??? 50 % or 33 % = a 17 %
>difference. BIG DEAL! Using logic, please
>explain how that 17% would change the bottom
>line --- point by point -- of what he wrote.
>
>( As an aside - Brezezinski may have mistakenly
>obtained his numbers from organizations like
>this: http://dieoff.org/page54.htm -- where
>they say: "More than 50 percent of population
>growth since 1970 has been caused by immigrants
>and their descendants. The institutionalization
>of environmentalism began around 1970, and a
>presidential commission recommended population
>stability, yet federal immigration policies have
>resulted in an additional 24 million Americans,
>with no end in sight. Baby boomers surprised
>demographers by having small families and thus
>reducing the expected population growth. But
>immigration doubled that growth. .." )
>
>
>However, I wonder how much of the pollution has
>been “exported” by the developed world to third-world countries. - Chuck
>
>@ Ah yes... lets ignore the bottom line --(
>ie: the fact that environmentalism is dead
>because the movement has "lost its credibility
>with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological
>ballast") -- and change the subject again ...
>this time with another red herring (the
>supposed pure, pristine, "innocent victims" of the eeeevil West).
>
>Who other than the credulous - (who typically
>buy into negative and/or alarmist rhetoric) - will fall for that?
>
>~ Janice

Requiem for Environmentalism and Earth Day: Long Live the Environment!
The Harvard University Crimson ^ | Thursday,
April 20, 2006 2:21 AM | PIOTR C. BRZEZINSKI
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512890
Posted on 04/20/2006 10:18:19 AM EDT by rface
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618257/posts

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 weekend­a
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.

Alarmism­the environmental movement’s basic
strategy­has 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.
Oops­in 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
pollutants­sulfur, suspended particulates, and
carbon monoxide­have 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.
Received on Fri Apr 21 18:25:45 2006