By Roger Bate, a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and co-editor of Fearing Food (Butterworth Heinemann).
According to the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, our first moral obligation is to think clearly. With his introduction to "Earth Report 2000: Revisiting The True State of The Planet" (New York: McGraw Hill, $19.95, 364 pages), theologian Michael Novak reminds us of Pascal's dictum, and this helps set the tone for an impressive and clear thinking book. "Earth Report 2000," a collection of papers by experts in fields relevant to environmental thought, explains why we are not heading toward environmental Armageddon, and why policies designed by bureaucrats to save us are more likely to harm us. Stephen Safe, Professor of Toxicology at Texas A&M University, Roy Spencer from NASA, and Harvard University's Nicholas Eberstadt are just three of the experts who write chapters reminding us that things are, on the whole, getting better.
The final chapter of the book is a collection of over 30 environmental benchmarks collated by staff of the Washington, D.C. think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Nearly all these measures, from air and water quality to energy efficiency, have improved in recent decades, which neatly exposes the unfounded doom and gloom of environmental reporters. Since the book is predominantly optimistic, it should not come as a surprise to find that it is dedicated to the memory of the arch clear thinker and renowned optimist, the late Julian Simon.
Simon used to enthuse, almost uniquely, that population growth was good for the planet, because for each mouth that had to be fed came a brain and two hands with which to think and work. But Mr. Eberstadt shows that, far from suffering a population explosion, 79 countries have reproductive rates too low to replace current population levels, and numerous other countries have decelerating growth rates (soon to fall below replacement level). By implication, Simon would be concerned that there were not going to be enough people in the new millennium.
Editor Ronald Bailey's chapter "The Progress Explosion: Permanently Escaping the Malthusian Trap" furthers our understanding of the Simon thesis that human ingenuity and desires have always overcome pressures of larger populations. Mr. Bailey dismisses arguments that higher agricultural production will simply lead to more people, putting more pressure on ecosystems. He amusingly explains that for developed countries "more food doesn't mean more children, it means more fat, old people." Mr. Bailey also exposes the malign effects of certain neo-Malthusians who, for example, try to deny oral-rehydration therapy to young children in developing countries because they might grow up into poverty and possible starvation.
Perhaps the most controversial chapter is written by Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Along with NASA's Mr. Spencer, he explains why only very limited global warming is ever likely, given negative feedbacks in our environment (such as increasing carbon dioxide absorption by plants as atmospheric concentrations rise). Furthermore, the idea that we in the North will be inundated with malaria and infectious diseases as temperatures rise is shown to be folly. Alleviating these problems can be addressed far more effectively and cheaply with methods, such as pesticide spraying, other than reducing carbon emissions. In short, Mr. Goklany exposes the U.N.'s Kyoto Climate Protocol as pointless: it would reduce temperatures at most by 0.07 degrees Celsius, and adaptation to climate change (which will occur naturally anyway) is a cheaper and more sensible option for developed and especially developing countries.
Other chapters on wildlife management and energy policies are interesting but not particularly controversial, and the chapter on fisheries is the only depressing one in the book. Fish stocks are depleting quickly in many areas because of inappropriate institutional structures. There is no clear ownership (and hence stewardship) of the oceans, and without this, the world's fishermen race to catch fish, inevitably depleting stocks. Only in the seas controlled by New Zealand and Iceland, where a tradable quota (i.e., the market) has operated, have stocks recovered and profits risen. Privatizing the seas would undoubtedly save the fish in them, but does not appear to be a solution favorable to the world's politicians.
Having lost the scientific arguments that ambient levels of synthetic chemicals cause cancer, the latest anxiety campaign by the environmental activists has been that these same chemicals cause hormonal and reproductive problems in humans. Professor Safe explains that at most their claims are overplayed, at worst completely unfounded. Sperm counts are probably not falling and if they are, there is no evidence it has anything to do with modern chemicals. Furthermore, the estrogenic (feminizing) effects of synthetics, such as from pesticides like DDT, do exist but are dwarfed (by several thousand times) by naturally occurring estrogen-mimicking substances in our food. The only synthetic substance that has a major effect on reproduction is ethynyl estradiol. But that should come as no surprise, since it is the main ingredient in the contraceptive pill. In short, the Greenies have targeted substances they don't like rather than those most likely to have an effect.
In fact, the book taken as a whole shows the mendacity of the green lobby. Their forecasts of impending disaster may be good for fund raising but have led to poor environmental policies and slowed economic growth, thereby harming the very people whom they say they want to help in the developing world. "Earth Report 2000" is an antidote to all this alarmism. It should be read by all those interested in the fate of our planet in the next century.
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