Daily Transcript columnist Carolyn Chase reports for
this coming 35th Earth Day (April 22nd) rather
than celebrate we should be in mourning. She's sorry to say, "...that things
have, in the main gotten worse
for most global measures." Carolyn has been reading too many comic books about,
The Late, Great,
Planet Earth and the Population Bomb.
On the first Earth Day in 1970 Professor Kenneth Watt warned that by the year
2000 the earth would be
11 degrees cooler. Throughout the 1970s the "scare the pants off you" crowd was
warning of impending
doom because of "global cooling" and a coming ice age due to elevated carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere.
In 1971, Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich published: "The continued rapid
cooling of the earth since World
War II is also in accord with the increased global air pollution associated with
industrialization, mechanization,
urbanization, and an exploding population." Ehrlich also stated that by the year
2000 hundreds of millions of
people would be starving to death. Science magazine's March 1, 1975
issue said: "According to the
academy [National Academy of Sciences] report on climate, we may be approaching
the end of a major
interglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age a real
possibility...with ice packs
building up relatively quickly from local snowfall that ceases to melt from
winter to winter."
In the 1980s Global Warming became the rage and now, thirty-five years after the
first Earth Day we're
warned by the Doomsday Lobby that the earth may become one degree warmer this
century unless we
mend our wicked, wicked ways. We will die from global warming, as Carolyn
suggests, you guessed it,
due to elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For the
apocalypse crowd there are
only two choices, we either freeze or burn, either scenario works, so we might
just as well go home and
turn on the gas.
In 1990, then-Senator Timothy Wirth said, "We've got to ride the global
warming issue. Even if the
theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of
economic policy
and environmental policy." Richard Benedick, an employee of the State
Department, said "A global
climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to
back the green house
effect," And Dr. Stephen Schneider told a group of scientists, "We have
to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we
may have.
Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and
being honest."
Contrary to what Carolyn asseverates, by most any measure, since 1970 things
have gotten considerably
better, thanks in part to many environmental organizations raising our
awareness. The air is cleaner in all
respects than even in 1900 when you could not see past a couple of blocks in
large cities due to the smoke
from home wood and coal burning stoves and factory smokestacks while 20 million
horses plied the streets
and roads before cars and trucks came into their own. Streams and rivers are
cleaner because of far fewer
horses feeding off 25% of all farmland, and thank god, no horse urine and tons
of manure "urban runoff."
Carolyn says, "more land has been claimed for agriculture in the last 60 years
than in the 18th and 19th
centuries combined." Sounds impressive. Not surprising when you consider
that since 1960 human population
has doubled while the world's economic output increased six-fold. Her
claim, however, depends
on the
selection of the baseline year, as Ronald Bailey points out in REASON. If
the UN authors (Carolyn
cites) had chosen 1961 as the baseline, as U.S. Department of Interior analyst
Indur Goklany points out,
between 1961 and 1995 cropland increased by only 10 percent (from 1.34 billion
hectares to 1.48 billion
hectares) and total land area devoted to agriculture also increased only 10
percent (from 4.5 billion hectares
to 4.9 billion hectares). That sounds a lot less alarming. In fact, deeper in
the report, the UN authors
acknowledge, "Most of the increase in food demand of the past 50 years has been
met by intensification
of crop, livestock, and aquaculture systems rather than expansion of production
area."
There are more U.S. forest lands today than when George Washington was
President. Food is more
abundant than ever, even in third world nations, as mortality rates plummet.
Natural resources are becoming
increasingly available while finite perhaps but evidently inexhaustible. The
proof is in the pudding as the long
term prices of all natural resources have been falling for over 50 years except
for occasional price spikes.
One of the occasional price spikes is in the present price of oil (still cheaper
than in 1980 inflation adjusted
dollars) due to increased world demand by countries such as China and India,
above short term production.
As Pacific Research Institute (http://www.pacificresearch.org)
points out "Air pollution in the United States
fell again in 2004 to its lowest level ever recorded. Bald eagles, whales, ocean
fish stocks, forestlands, and
wetlands all showed increases in numbers." Where fish are diminishing, it is due
to a lack of property rights
and the "tragedy of commons." When governments own the fishing grounds from 12
miles to 200 miles out,
everyone owns the fish therein, so nobody owns them, and there is no incentive
towards stewardship. Most
of the serious problems we hear about are occurring in socialist run countries,
that have always had perpetual
shortages. For most of humanity however, while a lot of work remains to be
done, the earth is becoming
more beautiful every day.
Permission granted to quote or forward.
Fred
Schnaubelt
