Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (executive summary)

1. The world is getting cleaner, not dirtier.

The scientific evidence is overwhelming that the environment today is cleaner than it was fifty years ago, and safer for humans than at any previous time in history.

• Air quality: Total air pollution emissions in the U.S. today are lower than they were in 1940, and far below their levels of the 1960s and early 1970s. Lead emissions, for example, have practically been eliminated.

• Water quality: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, water quality has improved generally since the 1960s, and in some cases dramatically. Water quality in the Great Lakes region is dramatically better, as is shown by the return of the bald eagle and many other kinds of wildlife to the region.

• Forests: There are more acres of forest in the U.S. than at anytime since the 1950s. According to the U.S. Forest Service, annual timber growth in the U.S. now exceeds harvest by 37 percent, and has exceeded harvest every year since 1952.

• Solid waste is managed more safely in the U.S. than at any previous time in history. Today's landfills are light-years ahead of yesterday's dumps and are required to have many safety features, such as liners and sophisticated liquid and gas col lection and treatment systems. Waste-to-energy incinerators are required to have state-of-the-art scrubbers and other devices to make their emissions cleaner than the emissions of factories or power plants.

2. There is no "environmental crisis" on the horizon.

Although the popular press gives extensive and uncritical coverage to predictions of impending global "eco-catastrophe," most scientists do not believe the world faces such threats. Popular understandings of issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, and solid waste are far removed from the latest scientific opinions:

• Global warming: A 1992 Gallup poll of climatologists found that 82 percent either believed that no warming had taken place or that insufficient information existed to predict global warming. Global temperatures (according to highly accur ate satellite measurements) have not increased in the past ten years, and historical records show an increase of a mere 0.45 degrees Celsius during the past one hundred years.

• Ozone depletion: Global ozone levels have increased since 1986, not declined as is widely believed. The "hole in the ozone layer" over Antarctica is a natural phenomenon that was first observed in 1956, long before man-made chlorofluorocarbons could have been responsible. Ground-level ultraviolet radiation levels, which should be rising if the ozone layer is in fact being depleted, are falling.

• Solid waste: There is no shortage of space to put waste: All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next five hundred years would fit in a single landfill measuring twenty miles to a side. Landfills today are much safer than those of twenty a nd even ten years ago and pose no known human health threat. Mandatory recycling is unnecessary, costly, and sometimes produces more air and water pollution and more energy consumption than would burial or incineration with energy recovery.

• Acid rain: A $500 million, 10-year study of acid rain conducted for the U.S. government found that acid rain "has not been shown to be a significant factor contributing to current forest health problems in North America." The same study found n o evidence of adverse effects on human health or on crops, and that natural sources of acidity are responsible for a great majority of "acid lakes" in the Northeastern U.S.

• Deforestation: Early estimates of the global rate of deforestation grossly exaggerated the extent of the problem. Researchers at NASA and the University of New Hampshire now estimate that less than a tenth of one percent of the world's rainfore sts were destroyed each year during the 1980s. Even this pace has slowed during the 1990s thanks to the Brazilian government's decision to reduce agricultural subsidies. Deforestation affects such a small portion of the rainforests that natural regenerati on is replacing the lost forests, even though poor soils and hot climates make regeneration in the tropics a slow process.

3. Prosperity is compatible with a cleaner environment.

Many environmentalists believe an industrial civilization is incompatible with a clean and safe environment. Yet the historical record on this point reveals just the opposite: Prosperity is a necessary precondition for environmental protection.

• Prosperous societies can afford to invest in environmental protection, and they do: The U.S. has spent over $1 trillion since 1970 on pollution abatement alone. Countries that are poor or have stagnant economies tend to be the worse polluters.

• Increasing economic efficiency - a key component of economic growth - is also the key to reducing pollution, since pollution is usually the result of the inefficient use of natural resources.

• Fear that prosperity will lead to the depletion of natural resources is unfounded, first because available reserves of fossil fuels and other resources are huge compared to consumption rates, and second because ideas and human imaginatio n are of far greater importance in determining the human condition than is the supply of physical resources.

4. How to think about the environment.

The biggest barrier to further improvements in environmental quality is not a lack of money, or that the wrong people are in government: It is the lack of understanding and critical thinking on the part of most environmentalists. Eco-Sanity contains 36 "rules for eco-sanity" that can lead to a more informed and effective environmental movement. These rules include:

• Correlation is not causation.
• We can never avoid risk completely.
• It is impossible to prove that something does not exist.
• Risks can be measured and ranked.
• Science is not immune to politics.
• Pollution problems occur where rights are not defined and enforced.
• Ownership leads to better stewardship.
• Some environmental groups profit from false alarms.
• Don't react out of fear.

5. A Common-Sense Agenda

Eco-Sanity presents forty specific recommendations for policy changes or new initiatives to protect the environment. Every recommendation meets the common-sense test of addressing a real problem in an efficient way. For example:

• Regarding solid waste, the authors advocate an integrated approach that relies on reducing waste production when possible, recycling when it is economical, incineration for energy recovery when this is economical, and landfilling whatever is left. They oppose bans on certain kinds of packaging, mandatory recycling programs, and laws requiring manufacturers to "take back" their packaging.

• Regarding public lands, the authors call for an end to subsidies to loggers, ranchers, and farmers, because these subsidies lead to the destruction of wilderness areas and wildlife habitat; reform of the Endangered Species Act; and where approp riate, the sale of public lands to private non-profit or for-profit groups.

• Regarding air pollution, the authors advocate tracing air pollution to its sources and then holding its producers responsible for the damage they cause. They also advocate using mobile automobile exhaust testing to find and penalize the owners of cars that pollute, and giving factory owners and managers greater flexibility in determining how best to reduce their emissions. They specifically oppose carbon taxes, stricter auto emission standards, and bans or moratoria on incineration.

6. Conclusion: The Eco-Sanity Exit

"We stand now where two roads diverge," wrote Rachel Carson at the start of Silent Spring's final chapter. She could not have known that her book, and similar works by authors soon to follow, would send the environmental movement down the road to chemopho bia, panicky predictions of the end of the world, and one embarrassing false alarm after another. Today, 32 years later, it is time to ask whether we have taken this road far enough. It is time, as Carson also wrote, to "look about and see what other course is open to us."

Eco-Sanity means applying reason, sound science, and a respect for the rights of others to environmental issues. A commitment to eco-sanity necessarily means abandoning scare tactics and relying instead on the good judgment of individual environmentalists and the general public. Eco-Sanity does not mean a more moderate environmentalism. It means a smarter, more responsible environmentalism. Most importantly, eco-sanity means getting the job done.

Excerpted from Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism, by Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue (second edition, 1996). The full text is available online in Adobe Acrobat's PDF format; click here.