Re: Are the Greens Wrong?

October 3, 2001

Just some more food for thought about the environmental movment:

<http://www.capitalism.net/Environmentalism's%20Toxicity.htm>

<Recently a popular imported mineral water was removed from the market because

tests showed that samples of it contained thirty-five parts per billion of

benzene. Although this was an amount so small that only fifteen years ago it

would have been impossible even to detect, it was assumed that considerations of

public health required withdrawal of the product.

Such a case, of course, is not unusual nowadays. The presence of parts per

billion of a toxic substance is routinely extrapolated into being regarded as a

cause of human deaths. And whenever the number of projected deaths exceeds one

in a million (or less), environmentalists demand that the government remove the

offending pesticide, preservative, or other alleged bearer of toxic pollution

from the market. They do so, even though a level of risk of one in a million is

one-third as great as that of an airplane falling from the sky on one's home.

While it is not necessary to question the good intentions and sincerity of the

overwhelming majority of the members of the environmental or ecology movement,

it is vital that the public realize that in this seemingly lofty and noble

movement itself can be found more than a little evidence of the most profound

toxicity. Consider, for example, the following quotation from M. Graber, a

research biologist with the National Park Service, in his prominently featured

Los Angeles Times book review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature:...... >

Tobias Saueressig

Germany

----- Original Message -----

From: <Mcsiff@...>

Here is the review of a book that is having a great impact on suuporters and

critics of the so-called " Green Movement " , which has virtually condemned a

huge number of modern technological improvements, some of them justly and

some others, well, a little bit prematurely. Any comments by those who may

have read this text?

----------------------------------------

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

Author: Bjørn Lomborg

>From this website:

<http://www.booksonline.co.uk/>

Reviewed by Matt Ridley

27 August 2001

The Greens have got it wrong

Matt Ridley considers this to be 'probably the most important book on the

environment ever written'

<EACH DECADE sees its new environmental obsessions. In the 1960s it was

pesticides and the population explosion. In the 1970s there was the oil

crisis, the imminent failure of the food supply and the fear of nuclear

power. In the 1980s the deserts were advancing, acid rain was killing trees,

the ozone layer was thinning and the elephant was on the brink of

extinction.

In the 1990s we had retreating rain forests, falling sperm counts, plagues

of

new diseases, genetically modified crops and, of course, climate change.

How many of these came true? If you take the trouble to examine the facts,

you will find a remarkable thing. On all but the most recent scares, where

the jury is still out, the alarmists were badly wrong. There has been no

rise

in cancer caused by chemicals, population growth slowed rather than

accelerated, oil reserves grew rather than fell, food production per head

increased even in poor countries, nuclear accidents were few and minor,

deserts did not advance, acid rain killed no forests, the damage to the

ozone

layer was minimal, the elephant was never in danger of extinction, rain

forests are still 80 per cent intact, sperm counts did not fall.

The extreme greens have been so wrong for so long that you would think

somebody might have noticed. One American, n Simon, did try to point

this out in a series of books, but nobody wanted to listen. The temptation

of

indulging in environmental guilt was too strong; repeating its message was

almost reassuring: the planet is in ever greater pain and it is all our

fault.

Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish statistics professor, came across Simon's argument

and set out to prove it wrong. Instead he ended up proving Simon right in

almost every respect. Four years later he has put his conclusions in a

remarkable book, probably the most important book on the environment ever

written.

Its importance lies partly in its relentless statistics. With 173 charts,

nine tables and a staggering 2,930 footnotes, The Skeptical Environmentalist

will be a source of reference for years to come. But it is also a readable,

accessible and simple account of the state of the world, told as much in the

illuminating charts as in the text itself. And it is a fascinating polemic,

too. Lomborg exposes the fibs, half-truths and sleights of hand that have

been used to sustain the ultra-pessimism that so effectively gets us all

reaching for our cheque books.

There is the 'evidence' for falling food supplies consisting of three bad

years but ignoring 50 good ones on either side. There is the widely cited

soil erosion statistic that turns out to be based on one study of a

0.11-hectare sloping plot of Belgian farmland. There is the much-quoted

figure of 40,000 species going extinct each year, which started as an

assumption for argument's sake and then became a " fact " . There is the

endless

citation by the press of worst-case figures for global warming, rather than

most likely.

Does it matter? Perhaps excessive alarmism alerts us to the fact that there

is indeed a serious problem. Lomborg argues that instead it leads us in the

wrong direction. Greens from Al Gore to Monbiot are perpetually

urging

that we abandon consumerism so that we can avoid eco-catastrophe. But

actually it is by investing and inventing that we avoid it. We replace

copper

wires with glass fibres, coal power stations with gas, and wild with farmed

salmon.

Technology, not regulation, is the solution to environmental problems.

Lomborg is confident that cheapening solar power will make fossil fuels and

their emissions redundant long before they run out or cause damaging global

warming. He points out that then it would only require 2.6 per cent of the

Sahara desert to supply all our power needs.

A counsel of despair is wrong for other reasons, too. In the 1960s the

best-selling environmentalist Ehrlich suggested that India should be

denied Western emergency aid because it was in such environmental straits:

" sober analysis shows a hopeless imbalance between food production and

population " . Within years of his appalling claim, Western pesticides,

fertilisers and new ( " terminator " ) hybrid seeds had transformed Indian

agriculture so that it now supports twice as many people on one-third more

calories per head. Thank goodness we ignored Ehrlich.

With many such dud forecasts coming home to roost at the Millennium, global

warming came as a godsend to alarmists. It will be a century before we know

if the alarmists are right, so they can paint doomsday futures to their

hearts' content and rely on a compliant press to repeat them.

Lomborg concedes that mankind probably is adding to natural warming trends

by

producing greenhouse gases. But he is scathing about the exaggerated claims

and mistaken remedies offered by the environmental movement, and argues

cogently that we should be spending money now on improving the lot of the

developing world, rather than trying to limit carbon dioxide emissions by

regulation. " Global warming is not anywhere near the most important problem

facing the world " .

The Big Green organisations will not like it. They will accuse Lomborg of

defending Big Business, no doubt, as they did n Simon. But the charge

cannot stick. He has an impeccably Leftish background and a transparent

independence of mind. And he is not complacent: " By far the majority of

indicators show that mankind's lot has vastly improved. This does not,

however, mean that everything is good enough " . >

--------------------------

Dr Mel C Siff

October 3, 2001

Dr. Siff wrote:

<Here is the review of a book that is having a great impact on supporters

and critics of the so-called " Green Movement " , which has virtually condemned

a huge number of modern technological improvements, some of them justly and

some others, well, a little bit prematurely. Any comments by those who may

have read this text?>

***Dr. Siff, I have not read the book in question (yet), but I did see this

article (written by that book's author) on " The Economist " a while back:

<http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=718860>

The " Greens, " I think, generally have some defensible points, but they are

so fundamentally harmed by their own misinfo and disinfo that (much or most

of) their movement is becoming more like an apocalyptic cult than like a

scientistific movement. Witness the violent and destructive antics of the

Earth Liberation Front or the bizarre nature of groups like www.vhemt.org .

Not many people know this, but the Unabomber was an unapologetic greenie.

Buddhadev Chakraborty

Gobi Desert

October 4, 2001

Mel - What about the polution problem in large cities around the globe such as

LA, Chicago, Mexico City to name a few? At times smog is so bad that it isn't

even possible to go outside for a run because the thickness of smog can actually

cause respiratory problems.

[Note very carefully that I am not in the least opposed to environmental

awareness, engineering and planning, nor the solid critical analysis of our food

production and lifestyle practices. There is so-called good and bad in all

disciplines, but we must be a little more critical of what some eloquent or

powerful groups extol as the truth. Thus, we need to learn to distinguish wise

" Greens " from " Unwise Greens " just as we need to distinguish between wise and

unwise, " good " and " bad " scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs and so on. I

posted that recent series of articles on both sides of the enviromental and

health issues to encourage some more critical thinking. Mel Siff]

Also granted that people may exaggerate these problems that we face in our

global society, but I don't think that research based on the last 40 years is

evidence enough to show a global problem considering how old the earth is.

Hopefully technology will bring out benefits in the enviroment in the long run.

I just have a problem with the fact that we still rely on fossil fuels and oil

to dominate our fuel needs when there is already technology out there that could

help eliminate these sources of fuel. A majority of it has to do with the

almighty dollar, since the oil industry would probably go bankrupt if a car was

able to run on other fuel sources besides oil. Oh and by the way, there are

other fuel sources that cars can run on. There is actually a car right now that

is traveling around North America on hemp oil. It is an UNCONVERTED Deisel

Mercedes Benz Station Wagon called the Hemp Car.

[This letter was edited to omit highly controversial opinion on terrorism, US

energy politics, US leadership and so on, which was far too peripheral to this

current discussion to encourage some relevant sports, fitness and health

oriented education. Mel Siff]

Damon

Springfield IL

October 8, 2001

I found this very illuminating. When I worked on an organic farm, we ran

blind tests on carrots and could not detect which had been grown organically

and which commercially (except by appearance). They were both grown in the

same world with the same sun and the same rain. Generally, the organic

carrots were not as attractive but there was little indication that they