Why must every Earth Day be about environmental gloom, doom and apocalypse?
50th Anniversary of Earth Day
It’s Getting Better All the Time
By: George Noga – April 26, 2020
This is the fifth and final post in our series marking the 50th anniversary of Earth Day; the prior four posts are easily viewable on our website at www.mllg.us. This post celebrates the astounding environmental successes of the past 50 years. We conclude by outlining five environmental principles for the next 50 years of Earth Days.
In all the years I have been blogging, I cannot recall seeing even one prediction by environmentalists that was upbeat; everything is gloom, doom and apocalypse. The earth is overpopulated; mass starvation is inevitable; air pollution will poison the air; we are headed for an ice age followed by global warming; we will run out of natural gas, oil and most minerals; there will be mass extinctions of animals; ad infinitum.
What actually transpired the past 50 years has been the opposite; virtually every measure of human and environmental wellbeing is the best it ever has been and is getting better all the time! Earth’s population has doubled since 1970, but food is more plentiful and is produced with a smaller environmental footprint. Malnutrition is at its lowest level in history. Obesity has replaced starvation as a major concern. Billions of people have been lifted out of poverty and extreme poverty is nearly eradicated.
Natural resources are more plentiful, their prices are falling and there is a veritable glut of oil and natural gas. Other key metrics that are doing great include: deaths from extreme weather, ambient air and water quality, life expectancy, emissions per unit of GDP, waterways suitable for swimming and fishing, oil spills, wastewater treatment, energy use per unit of GDP, auto fuel economy and timber growth and utilization.
This amazing human and environmental progress is well documented in recent publications: It’s Better than it Looks, It’s Getting Better All the Time, The Moral Arc, Enlightenment Now, Progress, Abundance and Rational Optimist. To understand the vapidity of the environmental movement, I recommend you read Green Tyranny by Rupert Darwell and Science Left Behind by Berszow and Campbell.
Earth Day: The Next 50 Years
To achieve optimum, human and environmental progress for the next half century, we outline five fundamental principles that must be scrupulously followed.
1. Capitalism: The only path to a better environment is through free market capitalism. Nations must be affluent to lavish money on the environment. Incredulously, leaders of the green movement all advocate collectivist principles which brought about the worst environmental disaster in human history – the former USSR and its satellites.
2. Nuclear Energy: Nuclear represents the best solution to achieve a clean environment while also combating climate change. Until environmentalists embrace nuclear, you will know they are unserious. More people died at Chappaquiddick than at Three Mile Island and Fukushima (from radiation) combined.
3. Cost/Benefit Analysis: There must be a rigorous and rational economic calculus. We cannot spend humongous amounts of money for putative, infinitesimal and uncertain benefits in the distant future while ignoring the present needs of humanity.
4. Human Wellbeing: While people may need to make sacrifices for the environment, they must not be left entirely out of the equation. Human wellbeing must be considered in situations where the benefit to the environment is uncertain or minimal, while the cost and suffering to people is immediate, apparent and massive.
5. Science Not Religion: Policies must be based on empiricism and science and not on religion. As demonstrated in our post of April 12th, environmentalism is a religion replete with its own gods, dogma, angels, demons, Eucharist and sacraments.
You will know environmentalism has become mainstream when Earth Day is no longer about only environmental apocalypse and when environmentalist leaders are not afraid to recognize and to celebrate the successes that have been achieved. Maybe there even will come a time when they can acknowledge that human and environmental wellbeing is the best it ever has been and it is getting better all the time!