The world is getting cleaner, Al Gore notwithstanding.

[RETIREDFAN1]

Breathe Easier

The world is getting cleaner, Al Gore notwithstanding.

 

Saturday, April 22, 2006 12:01 a.m.

 

Today, April 22, is Earth Day, which has been marked each year since 1970 as a day of reflection on the state of the environment. At least that's the idea, so let's begin with some figures.

Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute.

 

Mr. Hayward compiles the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators" published around Earth Day each year by PRI and the American Enterprise Institute. It serves as an instructive antidote for the doom and gloom that normally pervades environmental coverage, especially of late.

 

This year, for example, Vanity Fair has inaugurated an "Earth Issue," comprising 246 glossy, non-recycled pages of fashion ads, celebrity worship and environmental apocalypse. Highlights include computer-generated images of New York City underwater and the Washington mall as one big reflecting pool. The magazine also includes a breathless essay by U.S. environmental conscience-in-chief Al Gore. The message is that we are headed for an environmental catastrophe of the first order, and only drastic changes to the way we live can possibly prevent it.

 

If arguments were won through the use of italics, Mr. Gore would prevail in a knockout. But as Mr. Hayward notes in his "Index," the environmental movement as a whole has developed a credibility problem since the first Earth Day 36 years ago. In the 1970s, prominent greens were issuing dire predictions about mass starvation, overpopulation and--of all things--global cooling. Since then, population-growth estimates have come way down, biotechnology advances have found ways to feed more people than the doomsayers believed possible, and the global-cooling crisis has become the global-warming crisis without missing a beat.

 

 

 

 

 

There's no doubt the greens have succeeded in promoting higher environmental standards, which in turn have contributed to cleaner air, water and land almost everywhere you look. Today, game fish have returned to countless American streams and lakes, the Northeast has more forestland that at any time since the 19th century and smog is down dramatically in places like Los Angeles. But environmental activists don't want to believe their own success, much less advertise it. They need another looming catastrophe to stay relevant, not to mention to keep raising money.

Thus the cause of global warming has come at a fortuitous moment for clean-air warriors looking for alarms to ring. It is global in scope, will take decades to come to fruition--or to be revealed as another false alarm--and provides endless opportunities for government intrusion into the economy. It is, if you'll pardon the deliberate reference to a faith-based phenomenon, the green equivalent of manna from heaven. Or would be, if the greens hadn't spent so much time over the last three decades talking up scares that never came to pass.

 

This credibility deficit, combined with the slow-motion nature of the putative warming, has led to some desperate tactics by the global-warming true believers. To cite just one example, careful expounders of the idea of human-caused global warming used to take pains to distinguish between "climate" and "weather." Thus, snow storms in April or cold snaps in September were merely "weather" and told us nothing about long-term trends.

 

Then Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and the environmental movement pounced. The image of an American city filled with water proved irresistible to those who have been warning for years about rising sea levels--never mind that the cause was one unusually powerful storm and that New Orleans was built below sea level in the first place. As Mr. Gore puts it, Katrina "may have been the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us over and over again until we act on the truth we have wished would go away." If that language sounds familiar, that's because Mr. Gore borrowed the image from Winston Churchill, who used it to describe the Nazi menace in Europe in the 1930s.

 

The comparison between global-warming skeptics and Nazis or their sympathizers is not an idle one, as full-scale demonization of anyone who questions the global warming orthodoxy is now under way. MIT's Richard Lindzen recently described in these pages how this intimidation is stifling scientific debate.

 

A separate article in the same issue of Vanity Fair compares anyone who doubts that the apocalypse is nigh (including us) to the tobacco-industry shills who denied the link between cancer and smoking. It also suggests that both are the products of the same bought-and-paid-for industry flacks. You can expect to hear more such comparisons going forward; having lost the debate over Kyoto, certain greens would now rather not debate the evidence at all and merely invoke some "consensus" that everyone allegedly knows to be true.

 

 

 

 

 

As optimists by nature, we're inclined instead to observe the happy environmental progress of recent decades; that this is in part the result of prosperity produced by economic growth; and that the solutions to any future environmental danger are also likely to emerge from the new technology and greater wealth produced by free markets and free people. So next time someone tells you that climate change is more dangerous than terrorism, bear in mind something else Churchill once said: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

 

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Colligula]

Those crazy geologists and climatologists. When will they learn that only theories that make the united states look super cool are allowed in the public discourse.

 

There are alot of things that are getting better (no thanks to anyone on the right). But to deny that there will be serious consequences to the enviromental changes happening right now is blatant ignorance.

 

I think ill go with the 95% or scientists who concur, rather than the 5% who are payed off by EXXON

[Voted4Dubya]

You seem to forget Colligula, Republicans don't believe in gravity

[50pinch]

And Democrats believe that Bush causes hurricanes:yay:

[Observer]

Since the Democrats think that pollution is so bad... they are all donating their cars to charity and are going to ride bicycles..... they will only eat food they can grow... they don't want trucks involved in their food.... and NO cows... they create more greenhouse gases than do cars....

 

Wait.... this just in... they don't believe pollution is THAT bad!

 

:whome:

[RETIREDFAN1]

Originally posted by Colligula

 

I think ill go with the 95% or scientists who concur, rather than the 5% who are payed off by EXXON

 

I'll take the word of the ones paid off by EXXON over the ones paid off by the environmental movement any day of the week.

[Bobama]

I promise Exxon has more money than the environmental movement.

 

Why are you republicans such a fan of the multi-billion dollar conglomerates?

[RETIREDFAN1]

Originally posted by BoBellCrew

I promise Exxon has more money than the environmental movement.

 

Why are you republicans such a fan of the multi-billion dollar conglomerates?

 

I doubt very seriously that EXXON even has as much money as the environmental movement. :whistle:

 

We support the corporations that provide jobs for people that keeps them off the welfare rolls. Multi-billion dollar conglomerates provide these jobs.

[KirtFalcon]

aLGore has been sniffing airplane glue . . . again!

 

[Colligula]

Originally posted by Colmesneilfan1

 

I doubt very seriously that EXXON even has as much money as the environmental movement. :whistle:

 

We support the corporations that provide jobs for people that keeps them off the welfare rolls. Multi-billion dollar conglomerates provide these jobs.

Then they take them overseas....

[50pinch]

Originally posted by Colligula

Originally posted by Colmesneilfan1

 

I doubt very seriously that EXXON even has as much money as the environmental movement. :whistle:

 

We support the corporations that provide jobs for people that keeps them off the welfare rolls. Multi-billion dollar conglomerates provide these jobs.

Then they take them overseas....

 

Like Theresa Heinz Kerry?

[Voted4Dubya]

What does Theresa Heinz Kerry have to do with oil companies? Typical brainwashed Republican response.

 

Oil companies own the Republican party. Therefore Colligula, the people on here that swear an oath to the Republican Party and Fox News have to believe everything they put out.

[RETIREDFAN1]

Originally posted by Voted4Dubya

Typical brainwashed Republican response.

 

The only brainwashing going on today is in the Socialist/Communist infested colleges and universities. It is a shame that good kids are wasting their time and money and learning nothing but garbage in our nations higher education establishments.

[50pinch]

Originally posted by Colmesneilfan1

Originally posted by Voted4Dubya

Typical brainwashed Republican response.

 

The only brainwashing going on today is in the Socialist/Communist infested colleges and universities. It is a shame that good kids are wasting their time and money and learning nothing but garbage in our nations higher education establishments.

 

You are right about that. When they grow up though they'll see.

[KirtFalcon]

If this topic doesn't get back on track fast I will shut it down! :w00t:

[DeuceChunker03]

I think we should do all that is feasible to protect the environment. However, I'm very skeptical of the "sky is falling" attitude of the environmental wackjobs. The earth's climate swings and changes in cycles. The average temperature has only gone up one degree in the past 100 years. Big deal. If it were to go up five to ten degrees, then something drastic would need to be done. For now, things are just fine. :thumbsup:

[Five0pd310]

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