From the WSJ Opinion Archives
OUTSIDE THE BOX
PAT Answers
It's time to stop taking the likes of Paul Erlich seriously.
On April 22 we will be celebrating three decades of environmental progress since the first Earth Day in 1970.Our air and water are cleaner, forest growth and food production are increasing, world hunger is decreasing, and the predicted population apocalypse never came. And all this good environmental news has come about because of an increasing economic prosperity that was supposed to doom us to death, disease and environmental destruction.
The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times foresaw "intolerable deterioration and possible extinction" for the human race as the result of pollution. We were "in an environmental crisis," according to biologist Barry Commoner. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years" unless we take immediate action, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted.
In 1970 Life magazine reported that scientists had strong evidence to conclude that "in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution," and that "by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." But the Environmental Protection Agency reports that sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide in the ambient air have decreased 75% since 1970. Particulates--soot, smoke and dust--are down by nearly the same amount. Total car mileage traveled has doubled, and yet total vehicle emissions are half what they were in 1960.
The director of the Sierra Club predicted in 1970 that "we are prospecting for our very last of our resources." A Scientific American article said lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone by 1990, and copper by 2000. Today the supply of all these minerals is up, their prices are down and estimated mineral reserves are substantial.
Paul Ehrlich, perhaps the most famous doomsayer, predicted that four billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish from famine in the 1980s in what he called "The Great Die-Off." Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown worried about the environmental consequences of trying to feed the seven billion people the world would have in 2000. We now have but six billion people, food production is increasing (up 60% between 1980 and 1997 alone), food prices are decreasing, and global hunger is receding.
What was missing in this view was the greatest resource of all--the human mind and its ability to develop efficient technologies that would improve the quality of life. Missing was the understanding that more electricity for more operating rooms to do more heart surgery was a good thing. More fertilizer meant less acreage had to be tilled, thus saving--and actually expanding--the forests. More production of goods meant more jobs, more opportunity and more national income to devote to environmental improvement.
In short, I = PAT posited not even a zero-sum society (your gain is my loss), but a negative-sum society (your gain is always the world's loss). It was a cost-benefit analysis in which there was only cost, never benefit. And it was dead wrong.
A great many people deserve credit for our three decades of environmental improvement. Environmentalists work hard to remind us that there are serious environmental challenges to meet. Federal legislators did some good things too--like insisting that we get the lead out of gasoline, which improved air quality.
But the Environmental Oscar should go to those millions of workers and entrepreneurs who made the American and world economies grow, for prosperity is the most important factor in creating a cleaner world. Only after people can meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are they able to concern themselves with improving their environment. It turns out that freedom matters too; a University of Chicago/Reason Institute study found that repressive societies have more polluted environments, worse public health and shorter life expectancies than free ones.
Recall the famous 1989 explanation of environmental strategy by global-warming crusader Stephen Schneider: to save the world: "We need . . . to capture the public's imagination. That of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we have." And "each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Ehrlichthink is with us still, though in somewhat less strident form, but the good news is that over 32 years we have cleaned up the water, cleaned up the air, produced the food and the goods needed to feed the hungry and help the needy. And we have raised the quality of life for everyone. As the United Nations reported, the world has done more to reduce poverty in the past 50 years than in the previous 500, and new technologies from agriculture to the Internet have vastly improved the quality of our lives.
And, yes, the world's environment is cleaner too.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
