Week of September 8, 1996

by F.R. Duplantier

When it comes to environmentalism, the popular wisdom, more often than not, is wrong.

Pollution is a growing problem, right? Wrong! "The environment is cleaner than at any time in the past half-century," observes Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute, co-author of a new book called Eco-Sanity, A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism. "The average American [today] is exposed to fewer potentially harmful pollutants than at any time since the 1930s. Air and water pollution, which had risen during the 1940s and 1950s, have fallen consistently and considerably since that time. Today, pollution of all kinds is responsible for less than 1 percent of cancer deaths."

Speaking of cancer, aren't cancer rates going up and up? Actually, they're not. "Cancer rates are falling, not rising," says Bast. "We've lived with pesticides, automobiles, and electromagnetic fields for nearly a century. During this period, overall cancer rates among the non-elderly population went down, not up. Cancer rates among the elderly appear to have increased, but this is due partly to better diagnosis and partly to the rapid decline of other causes of death."

So, maybe we're healthier, and living longer, but an environmental cataclysm is bound to occur eventually, right? Wrong again. "Predictions of impending global ecological disasters are untrue. There is no scientific validity to claims that acid rain, global warming, deforestation, or ozone depletion will cause global environmental disasters at any time in the future," says Bast. "Most environmental problems have been or are being solved. Automobile emissions, for example, have been reduced by 90 to 97 percent during the past twenty years. The threats of deforestation and resource depletion have been eliminated from the developed countries of the world, and remain problems only in Third World countries torn by civil war and acute poverty. Oil spills are less common and cause less ecological harm than in the past. Landfill technology has advanced . . . in the past decade."

But aren't our resources running out? Won't we have to learn to live with less? No to both questions. "Innovation and the use of reason to solve problems, not any change in human nature or in the amount of natural resources, make us wealthier than our grandparents," says Bast. "The 'gloom and doom' school of thought within the environmental movement systematically overlooks the role of ideas in finding new resources, managing waste, and protecting human health and the environment. Their zero-sum solutions are unnecessary and often don't work."

Prosperity is a mixed blessing, though, isn't it? Not at all. "Prosperity is good for the environment," says Joseph Bast. "The fear that prosperity leads to environmental destruction saturates the literature of the environmental movement. But prosperity has made it possible for us to invest in parks and wildlife preserves, clean our air and water, and treat or store our wastes," says Bast. "Prosperity is not only compatible with a clean environment; it is environmental protection's necessary precondition."

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