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The Notorious S.L.K.
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1314
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 8:34 pm: | 
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I am framing this masterpiece....
Breathe Easier
The world is getting cleaner, Al Gore notwithstanding-WSJ
Saturday, April 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
Today, April 22, is Earth Day, which has been marked each year since 1970 as a day of reflection on the state of the environment. At least that's the idea, so let's begin with some figures.
Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute.
Mr. Hayward compiles the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators" published around Earth Day each year by PRI and the American Enterprise Institute. It serves as an instructive antidote for the doom and gloom that normally pervades environmental coverage, especially of late.
This year, for example, Vanity Fair has inaugurated an "Earth Issue," comprising 246 glossy, non-recycled pages of fashion ads, celebrity worship and environmental apocalypse. Highlights include computer-generated images of New York City underwater and the Washington mall as one big reflecting pool. The magazine also includes a breathless essay by U.S. environmental conscience-in-chief Al Gore. The message is that we are headed for an environmental catastrophe of the first order, and only drastic changes to the way we live can possibly prevent it.
If arguments were won through the use of italics, Mr. Gore would prevail in a knockout. But as Mr. Hayward notes in his "Index," the environmental movement as a whole has developed a credibility problem since the first Earth Day 36 years ago. In the 1970s, prominent greens were issuing dire predictions about mass starvation, overpopulation and--of all things--global cooling. Since then, population-growth estimates have come way down, biotechnology advances have found ways to feed more people than the doomsayers believed possible, and the global-cooling crisis has become the global-warming crisis without missing a beat.
There's no doubt the greens have succeeded in promoting higher environmental standards, which in turn have contributed to cleaner air, water and land almost everywhere you look. Today, game fish have returned to countless American streams and lakes, the Northeast has more forestland that at any time since the 19th century and smog is down dramatically in places like Los Angeles. But environmental activists don't want to believe their own success, much less advertise it. They need another looming catastrophe to stay relevant, not to mention to keep raising money.
Thus the cause of global warming has come at a fortuitous moment for clean-air warriors looking for alarms to ring. It is global in scope, will take decades to come to fruition--or to be revealed as another false alarm--and provides endless opportunities for government intrusion into the economy. It is, if you'll pardon the deliberate reference to a faith-based phenomenon, the green equivalent of manna from heaven. Or would be, if the greens hadn't spent so much time over the last three decades talking up scares that never came to pass.
This credibility deficit, combined with the slow-motion nature of the putative warming, has led to some desperate tactics by the global-warming true believers. To cite just one example, careful expounders of the idea of human-caused global warming used to take pains to distinguish between "climate" and "weather." Thus, snow storms in April or cold snaps in September were merely "weather" and told us nothing about long-term trends.
Then Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and the environmental movement pounced. The image of an American city filled with water proved irresistible to those who have been warning for years about rising sea levels--never mind that the cause was one unusually powerful storm and that New Orleans was built below sea level in the first place. As Mr. Gore puts it, Katrina "may have been the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us over and over again until we act on the truth we have wished would go away." If that language sounds familiar, that's because Mr. Gore borrowed the image from Winston Churchill, who used it to describe the Nazi menace in Europe in the 1930s.
The comparison between global-warming skeptics and Nazis or their sympathizers is not an idle one, as full-scale demonization of anyone who questions the global warming orthodoxy is now under way. MIT's Richard Lindzen recently described in these pages how this intimidation is stifling scientific debate.
A separate article in the same issue of Vanity Fair compares anyone who doubts that the apocalypse is nigh (including us) to the tobacco-industry shills who denied the link between cancer and smoking. It also suggests that both are the products of the same bought-and-paid-for industry flacks. You can expect to hear more such comparisons going forward; having lost the debate over Kyoto, certain greens would now rather not debate the evidence at all and merely invoke some "consensus" that everyone allegedly knows to be true.
As optimists by nature, we're inclined instead to observe the happy environmental progress of recent decades; that this is in part the result of prosperity produced by economic growth; and that the solutions to any future environmental danger are also likely to emerge from the new technology and greater wealth produced by free markets and free people. So next time someone tells you that climate change is more dangerous than terrorism, bear in mind something else Churchill once said: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 4797
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 8:54 pm: |
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a couple things made me chuckle.
Quote:If that language sounds familiar, that's because Mr. Gore borrowed the image from Winston Churchill, who used it to describe the Nazi menace in Europe in the 1930s.
Need anyone remind you, Churchill was correct?
Quote:Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%.
None of which would have happened if free-market fanatics like the authors had any say in the matter. The EPA wouldn't even exist.
Quote:There's no doubt the greens have succeeded in promoting higher environmental standards, which in turn have contributed to cleaner air, water and land almost everywhere you look. Today, game fish have returned to countless American streams and lakes
Standards that you fought every step of the way.
And so on. More fatous nonsense from the crowd whose solution to global warming is to have the limo driver turn up the AC. |
Foj
Citizen
Username: Foger
Post Number: 1193
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 11:11 pm: |
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I didnt know Nixon was a green?
CLean Air Act.
CLean water Act.
Enviromental Protection Agency, 1972.
OSHA.
Well yeah, compared to some of the nut cases these days, I guess Nixon was a lib.
Unless libs are libs and the right took a hard turn, and hasnt come back. Which would mean Nixon was a republican, who had good sound domestic policy. Except for that Watergate thing, of course. |
Southerner
Citizen
Username: Southerner
Post Number: 926
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 5:59 am: |
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Boy,
The libs have really made some strides with Earth Day. The parade was awesome and I couldn't believe the world wide celebrations. This Earth Day was a day I'll remember for years. Long, live, mother earch and all her beautiful inhabitants. |
tulip
Citizen
Username: Braveheart
Post Number: 3451
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 7:25 am: |
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Southerner: I do believe you see yourself aligned against (in reverse chronological order) the Democrats of the 21st century, the Clinton Dems of the 1990s, the Carter Democrats of the 1970s, the "liberals" and "hippies" of the 1960's, the New Dealers of the 1940's, the Roosevelt Conservationists of the early 1900's, the Reconstructionists of the 1870s, the Union Army of the 1860's and the abolitionists of the 1800s to 1860s. That must be exhausting!!! |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 4798
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 9:12 am: |
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southerner, were you alive in the '60s and early '70s? |
SO Ref
Citizen
Username: So_refugee
Post Number: 1723
Registered: 2-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 11:02 am: |
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Southerner obviously hates earth. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1162
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 11:18 am: |
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tom - I was about to post something similar to yours. You said it best. The improvements made to the environment would never have happened without the environmentalists.
SLK - you can believe what you want. Support the unsupportable, just like your president and the industries that want to continue to pollute when there is no need to.
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 4799
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 3:03 pm: |
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Hoops, thanks. The reason I asked is, unlike the current problems we face which for whatever reason are controversial -- the ozone layer is invisible, people can argue against global warming, extinction of non-cute non-furry creatures doesn't get the attention it deservers -- back then it was painfully obvious to anyone that there were serious problems. Air you couldn't see through or breathe, beaches closed, rivers afire, fish die-offs, woodland streams running with detergent suds. Even the simple pop-top soda or beer can was a problem, because they used to be designed to come off when you opened the can, and people dropped them everywhere. They were as ubiquitous as cigarette butts are today.
Big things and small, all fought for by environmentalists (and fought against by people like the editorial page writers of the Wall Street Journal). If you weren't around then, it's no wonder you don't have an appreciation for what's been done.
Contrary to the implications of the authors above, I do recognize the progress and I'm happy about it every time I go out the door, because I remember. But just because progress has been made doesn't mean we need to stop. Just because the spread of cancer in a patient has slowed doesn't mean you send him home and pronounce him cured. There's still more work to be done. The naysayers will dispute this, but they don't have a record to stand on. They argued against change then and they were wrong. There's no reason to believe they are any more right today. |
Southerner
Citizen
Username: Southerner
Post Number: 929
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 5:17 pm: |
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tom and SO,
What gives? I was serious. I only wish more people and more countries were as resolute as our nation. What did I say to have you believe I hate mother earth? That is crazy. Can't we disagree on some topics and agree on others? |
Foj
Citizen
Username: Foger
Post Number: 1199
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 12:01 am: |
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TOm-- I remember not being allowed to swim in the Housatonic RIver in CONN. And didnt a river in Ohio CATCH FIRE... in a '68 or '69?
You are so right about how much things are cleaned up, But Drinking water is just that. It shouldnt include mercury, & lead, etc. SO yes, we have some more work to do. |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 3191
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 10:54 am: |
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"Fatuous" is probably the best possible word for that essay. Good choice, tom.
Anyone who holds that editorial up as some kind of evidence that the hard work of environmentalists is unnecessary is a complete and utter tool.
What brazen stupidity... "In the 1970s, prominent greens were issuing dire predictions about mass starvation, overpopulation and--of all things--global cooling."
Hunger continues to be a massive problem. Overpopulation is still a concern, although it has been tempered somewhat by two main factors: the promotion of birth control in the Third World and the prevalence of AIDS. Global cooling was a theory which had nowhere near the acceptance that global warming now does; it was based on a tiny fraction of the evidence that is now available; and mankind (especially the U.S.) had not yet put the emissions into the atmosphere that are significantly responsible for global warming.
What a patently stupid editorial. How does such tripe get into a major newspaper? I just hope somebody whose head is not lodged either in the sand or up his own colon bothers to write to the editor and point out the successes of the environmental movement and the profound benefits to humanity that this dunderheaded author so blithely dismisses. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 4802
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 3:37 pm: |
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Quote:Slowly but surely human thought is neutralizing the largely incalculable forces of Nature. This is not the first lesson that will be drawn from the disaster of the Titanic. But such a lesson is certainly implicit in the facts as they are known. The largest steamship afloat, traveling at a speed unheard of a half decade ago, displacement so terrific as to tear another vessel not much smaller from its moorings, seems to have hit an iceberg of enormous bulk, head on, and survived the disaster. . . .
Great vessels have gone to sea and never been heard of again. Their injury was necessarily largely below the water line and sinking was only a matter of minutes. The gravity of the damage to the Titanic is apparent; but the important point is that she did not sink. Her water-tight bulkheads were really water tight. . . .
Man is slowly but steadily bringing order and usefulness to the devastating forces of Nature. . . . His inventions destroy him in the beginning but save him in the end. . . . Every experience makes for greater safety, greater comfort, greater rewards.
Man is the weakest and most formidable creature on earth. His physical means of protection and offense are trifling. But his brain has within it the spirit of the divine and he overcomes natural obstacles by thought, which is incomparably the greatest force in the universe. (Wall Street Journal Editorial, 16 April 1912)
Yes, that's right, they said "the important point is that she did not sink." And a couple of days after they wrote how "experience makes for greater safety," they wrote "[T]he loss of the Titanic, with its fearful deathroll, was the dominating feature of the week. It furnished some awful lessons and will probably provoke a good deal of gratuitous legislation and superfluous regulation."
Yeah, like making sure there are enough lifeboats. |
The Notorious S.L.K.
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1318
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 10:07 am: |
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(the sound of the point going over notehead's head yet once again.........and again..............and again......)
-SLK |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 3201
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 11:49 am: |
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Riiight. Oh, do spell it out for me, oh master of subtlety. Why don't you explain what it is about that editorial which makes it a "masterpiece?" |
GOP Man
Citizen
Username: Headsup
Post Number: 328
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 11:57 am: |
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it's clear to anyone with half a brain.
why do we need all you tree-huggers, when the market clearly works to eliminate inefficient, dirty technology? the article makes it clear that American industry has cleaned up its act over the last half century, and will of course continue to do so without your whining and obsessive need for strangling regulation. |
The Notorious S.L.K.
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1323
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 4:55 pm: |
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notey-
Well for on it offers another educated perspective on the environment. The article does give credit to the environmentalists and their achievements. But it also states a truth: over the last 4 decades the environmentalists have been more wrong then right with their predictions. As a result, they have lost credibility.
And why not introduce other measures to help the environment, including free market based ones? The Toyota Prius in your driveway is a perfect example of this notion in action.
-SLK |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 4809
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 5:44 pm: |
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why would you need to introduce free-market measures? I thought the whole point of the free-market philosophy was that this stuff just happened automatically, guided by the Invisible Hand.
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The Notorious S.L.K.
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1328
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - 10:17 pm: |
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Tom-
you would be introducing free market measures to something if you never used such measures before....
Do you think Toyota built the Prius because they are all worried about the environment....?
It is all about demand. Because notey and those like him demand something to be done to the environment is the reason why they can by solar panels for their houses... |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 3211
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - 1:40 pm: |
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But it also states a truth: over the last 4 decades the environmentalists have been more wrong then right with their predictions.
Well, it may seem like that to someone who gets virtually all of his information about environmentalism from WSJ editorials. You're not getting it: we were right about all the things the author listed, with the possible exception of global cooling. There is no credibility problem, unless you just decide that there is arbitrarily. Or, do you think that the rise of AIDS somehow undermines the credibility of those who warned of population problems? Or, that the literally thousands of issues diligently monitored over the years by environmentalists, whose recommendations resulted in improvements in virtually every aspect of life and sector of industry you can name, never existed because certain wingnut editorialists don't list them?
When you use the term "free market" do you actually mean "anarchy" or do you think of something a little more structured? Let me tell you something about the "free market" which is apparently never considered by most of its die-hard advocates... free markets are not supposed to be anarchic. Capitalism has rules, and some of those rules include representing your product accurately, obeying the law, and paying for the costs you have incurred. Some of the largest companies in our ostensibly "free" market are companies that have ignored those rules. The tendency of industry to prioritize earnings over the public good compromises true capitalism, and it is far too well demonstrated to justify the moaning about regulation.
Have fun changing diapers.  |
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