Earth Day Nonsense
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. It was the result of the alarm bells of the environmental doom and gloom movement going off nonstop.
As Ronald Bailey observes,
Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. “We have about five more years at the outside to do something,” ecologist Kenneth Watt declared to a Swarthmore College audience on April 19, 1970. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. The day after Earth Day, even the staid New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Very Apocalypse Now.
Reality check. We are still here. And, we are making progress. As Bailey points out, air and water quality for example have improved since the 1970s.
In the name of protecting the environment, environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace routinely shun technological progress. They oppose the use of nuclear power, the safest and cleanest form of energy we have at our disposal currently (just compare the number of oil spills to nuclear power plant accidents). Or, take the issue of genetically modified foods. This technology is a tremendous hope for countries dealing with mass hunger and starvation. The World Health Organization says:
GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.
Yet, Greenpeace seems to want to let millions of people continue to starve to death than possibly harm the environment, and that harm is by no means proven.
Incidentally, a recent report shows that scientists experience political pressure to misrepresent findings:
Nearly 400 scientists said they had witnessed EPA officials misrepresenting scientific findings, 284 said they had seen the “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome” and 224 scientists said they had been directed to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information” in an EPA document. Nearly 200 of the respondents said they had been in situations where they or their colleagues actively objected to or resigned from projects “because of pressure to change scientific findings.”
Political pressure from environmental interest groups probably has something to do with it. To ensure integrity in science we must separate state and science, just as we have a separation of church and state.
What really bothers me though is the hypocrisy of the environmental movement. What started out perhaps as a genuine concern, and thinking about using our resources well is a genuine concern, has turned into an all-out war against capitalism, the very system which has enabled and continues to enable technological innovation and progress to deal with environmental problems. Not only that, what do environmentalists use to spread their message? Capitalist achievements such as airplanes and cars to transport themselves to protest venues, internet and email to communicate, and of course the greater income and free time that a capitalist economy provides.
April 25th, 2008Topic: News, Science Tags: Capitalism, Earth Day, environmentalism, EPA, Greenpeace
May 7th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Regarding the “hypocrisy”– First of all, to say “an all out war on capitalism” has been waged is, generally speaking, an over exaggeration. That aside, if capitalism is the system which is enabling the technological innovation and progress to deal with the environmental problems which are caused by capitalism in the first place…
Well, you do the math. Remove capitalism from the equation and you no longer need the technology. Of course you no longer need the environmentalists then do you?
Back to the beginning of the article where we speak of environmental alarmists, –the “doomsdayers” Indeed we have made great “progress”. But we must look at how we define progress. We are, it can be argued, causing less damage than we were in the 70′s. That is not to say however that we are causing no damage, or less damage is acceptable. If, everyday when you came home from work you found that your dog,( yes your dog ) had defecated all over the living room carpet. You would likely say “bad dog” indeed. Then after years of correcting and training, you came home only to find that said dog was only crapping on a few areas of the rug… could you really muster the enthusiasm to say “good dog” Still a bad dog, just less bad.
And what if we didn’t have the doomsdayers proclaiming the end of the world if we don’t correct our behavior?
Consider where we might be, what kind of world we might be living in if we didn’t have these folks screaming about the future?
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I totally agree with your opinion concerning most of these groups. most started out with a noble idea, then everything just spun out control. So, I say “no” to all of these hippy outfits. No to animal rights, yes to beef and the other stuff they stand for. I do believe in the “organic” movement.