Enviro-Jihad

Last Week's WSU class covered Environmental Revolution. I had "faced" the "instructor" before. In a seminar on Eco-terrorism she had justified spiking trees and burning down sky lodges by claiming that 100 species a day are going extinct. I had asked her to name the last species which had become extinct. She said she didn’t know. I asked her to name any species which had gone extinct since the passenger pigeon. She could not. She said these lists were kept somewhere. Where? I asked.. She sugested the web sittes of several activist groops. My son later explained to me how environmentalists come up with the estimated "100 species a day extinct" number. They dig through the ruins of a harvested rain forest tree and see how many creatures they can discover that they don’t have a name for. They then assume these were new and unique species and that now their tree is gone they are extinct. Multiply that number of species by the number of trees cut down a day and you come up with the per-day number of species becomeing extinct. Weard isn’t it!?!

This week the professor unleashed her assault on America and modernization. An attack which probably goes over wonderfully well with the entranced "tweens" of her WSU classes. There were many flashes in the running two hour battle that the “discussion” developed into. Here I note only the climax. She handed round a “quiz”. It was a Sierra Club survey from the January/February 2003 Sierra magazine. It claimed to be able to determine how many acres of land one requires to live. No effort was expended in explaining the rational behind any of the formulas: – vegens are scored at 0.46 while those who almost always eat meat get a 1.14, a person who eats unpackaged local food is graded at 0.69 while those who eat out of package imports rate a 1.1. Then these numbers are run through a mysterious formula Q1 X Q2 X 5.5 = the number of acres required to provide your food. Other factors including shelter and mobility are cranked through equally obscure formula and in the end one’s total “foot print” on the earth is established. Though no questions could get the professor to justify the math; she boldly claimed that the average American exploits 24 acres in living while there are only 5 acres of land per person in the world. Her conclusion: the rest of the world cannot develop the standard of living that Americans enjoy. Her implication: Americans use more than their fair share - therefore it is OK to hate them. The Sierra Club’s quiz culminates with this ominious perdiction: “Population growth will reduce resources available to each person in the future.” -- Oh yah, there was a special “TAKE ACTION note” “ . . . go to the Sierra Club’s Web site at www.sierraclub.org/footprint . . . A second section invites you to "become a member of the Sierra Club’s activist network. It’s one good way for busy people to work for changes that will reduce everyone’s footprint. – K. T.” The Professor went on to list a host of ecological disasters: deforestation, shortage of fresh water, global climate change, depletion of the ocean fisheries, the continued production of DDT. She said that it was impossible for the people of the Africa to ever live at the standard of living that “we here in the US enjoy.” I asked her how her predictions of gloom and doom differed from those of Malthus from the 19th century. She replied that Malthus may well have been right – that the earth will someday reach its carrying capacity. I pointed out the technology had trumped Malthus, She said she preferred the word postponed. I asked here if she was aware of the aqua farming that was producing the endless supply of seafood Americans now consume at the Sizzler’s all you can eat buffet. She said that there are reports that indicate there are higher levels of Mercury in Farm Razed fish. I replied if such was the case – surely that could be fixed. She said she didn’t want to live in a world were there were no wild salmon. I said if it came down to African people having a decent standard of living or maintaining populations of wild salmon; I was for the Africans. She said it didn’t have to come to that. I said, that I knew that and that people say these things just for political purposes. Realizing that the discussion had led her in the opposite direction from where she had intended the class to go, she ended her lecture. As you consider my “arrogant” rant against my professor please also consider these two articles available last week.


The Readers Digest (Not the most prestigious scientific journal but considered quite reliable) carried an article by Gregg Easterbrook (A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Progress Paradox) He begins, “So here’s the good news: our air is cleaner, our lakes are purer, our forests are healthier, endangered species are recovering, toxic emissions are down, and acid rain has diminished dramatically.” (pg81) Easterbrook goes on to support these claims specifically. Among the arguments for good news no the environment is some pretty convincing impractical evidence. “Improved Air Quality – Los Angeles went from 150 days per year in violation of smog standards in 1990 to just 27 in 2004” (pg82); “Better Water Quality – just a generation ago, factories and municipal plants actually discharged untreated wastewater directly into rivers; today . . . almost all wastewater in the United States is treated before discharge.. . The Chicago River went from smelly and dirty to sparkling , and is now the setting for dinner cruises.” (pg 85); “Animals are Back – Only one animal species is know to have gone extinct in the United States in the last 15 years, the dusky seaside sparrow. During the same period, numerous other species once described as certain to become extinct – including the Arctic peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the gray whale, and the bald eagle. . . have recovered sufficiently enough that they are no longer classified as imperiled.” (pg 85) “Forests Are Growing - . . . early in the 19th century, the state of Connecticut was 25 percent forest; today, Connecticut is fully 59 percent forested, though its population has increased twelve fold, from 275,000 to 3.46 million” (pgs 85 – 86). Least anyone claim that these gains are not to be credited to Reagan and the Bush as well as Carter and Clinton; “ Steady environmental improvements have taken place across th4e board, regardless of which party is in the White house or controlling Congress. During the last four years air pollution has continued to decline improvements in technology have reduced emissions, the amount of protected lands is on the uptick . . .”(pg 86) Easterbrook goes on to paint a most hopeful and positive picture of the environment under the “1st world” control of the United States. It seems clear that giving Africans the same standard of living as we enjoy here in the US would probably greatly improve the world’s environment.
The Readers Digest is not alone in recognizing the success of technology and nature. Surprisingly, Nicholas D. Kristof, took a partial break from Bush Bashing in the New York Times to dedicate his March 12th column to debunking the “natural disaster on its way myth”. The following quotes are from “I Have a Nightmare”
1. Kristof begins by quoting Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus:’s web article “The Death of Environmentalism”. “. . . modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, out dated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live.”
2. “The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmist. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public.”
3. “In the 1970’s, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou heard. Since then, it has quintupled.
4. “When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: “Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend . . . but they are all most unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”
5. “Environmentalists were right about DDT’s threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.”
Unfortunately Kristof’s break from bashing the President couldn’t be sustained for a single page editorial. He claims in paragraph three of his piece that “Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, [It is now in the budget] and there’s been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.” He then ends his editorial with this self-contradictory claim. “ . . . irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration’s plans to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness, and to do essentially nothing on global warming. “

Kristof can’t see that his fears about ANWR and global warming are just as “alarmist” and incredible as the promised devastation that was to have followed the Alaska pipeline or the Ice Age that was bearing down on us in the 70”s. Even as Kristof attempts to present objective truth his hate for Bush pulls him back into Lahlah land to make the same silly claims with which enviro-fanatics are embarrassed themselves out of existence. Kristof probably doesn’t expect his readers to finish his article or to see it in context of “The Death of Environmentalism”.

Oil exploration on ANWR will do almost no environmental damage. If the precedent of Connecticut and the Alaska Pipeline are accepted, it will no doubt improve the Alaskan environment. The resulting fuel supply might well power the wealth necessary to bring a higher and safer standard of living to millions in the US and around the world. But environmentalism has been co-opted by anti-American politics. The purpose of its propaganda is to fuel the hatred of America. By justifying the anger of the people of other nations against America, environmental alarmists join many others in their drive to destroy America and the freedom America seeks to spread throughout the world. Wheather these people are motivated by money, like the Sierra Club, or politics, like the New York Times; rather than channeling the world energy resources into solving the challenges of living on earth and improving the lives of all peoples, such fanatics stir up fear and hate that topples reason.