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National NewsConservative News
Good News About the Environment
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: April 25, 2005
Earth Day is April 22nd, but given the predictions of disaster and doom from the environmental extremists, we should probably observe it on Halloween. After over 30 years of steady progress and improvement, the media still chooses to emphasize the negative and largely ignore the positive with their coverage of Earth Day events.
I realize that in the media business bad news sells. As they say in TV news, "If it bleeds, it leads." Consequently, the scarier the environmental propaganda, the better. But bad news, or in most cases bad or biased reporting, about environmental issues results in a misinformed public and that often leads to ineffective and sometimes harmful public policy.
A few years ago at the U.S. Forest Service public hearing on a proposal to close roads in order to limit vehicle access to national forests, I saw first hand just how effective the doomsday propaganda of the radical environmentalists can be. Person after person told of the dangers to the forest if people were allowed to drive their vehicles in the forest. Among those was a young woman, in her mid-thirties, from a Birmingham area suburb who testified that she had lived all her life in Alabama and as a little girl she remembered that the whole state was covered in trees. "Now," she said, "almost all the trees are gone."
The fact of the matter is that almost two thirds of Alabama, over 21 million acres, is covered in forests. Excluding Alaska, Alabama is the second most densely wooded state in America. And, according to the latest data available from the National Resources Inventory, Alabama forests increased by over 302,000 acres between 1982 and 2000.
The fact that this woman thought that Alabama had been virtually deforested in her brief lifetime is just one example of the misleading and often discouraging information that many people believe to be true about the condition of our environment.
Apparently her entire view of the condition and size of Alabama forests have been shaped by misleading and erroneous information that she most likely got from the media and environmentalist groups.
For instance, almost every year we read or hear news about the declining quality of our air. The fact is that our air is substantially cleaner and clearer now than it was 30 years ago. Since 1976 the total emissions of the six principal air pollutants tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have decreased by 51 percent.
One of the biggest concerns of environmental groups is curbing mercury emissions. According to the U.S. House Committee on Resources industrial use of mercury has dropped by 80 percent since 1970 and mercury emissions by power plants dropped 38 percent between 1995 and 1999. Since 1970, mercury levels in fish have remained stable or declined when many experts believed they should have increased.
These improvements have been made even though the nation's gross domestic product, a measure of economic output, rose by over 123 percent, energy consumption rose by 45.5 percent, our population grew by almost 44 percent, and vehicle miles driven rose by 155 percent.
To help ensure that people have accurate and up-to-date information on the condition of the environment, every two years the Alabama Policy Institute, the organization that I work for, in collaboration with the Pacific Research Institute publishes The Leading Index of Environmental Indicators for Alabama and the United States. The 2005 edition, which tracks progress on air quality, water quality, land use and toxic or chemical releases, is available online at www.alabamapolicyinstitute.org. Every science teacher in Alabama has been mailed a summary of the reports findings with information on how to receive the full report.
Because of tremendous advances in science and technology, the U.S. and Alabama have been able to grow their economies while also improving the condition of our environment.
This does not mean that there is not more to do: there is. The key is to base future environmental improvement efforts on sound science instead of scary environmental propaganda while also seeking solutions that are economically sound so that we do not implement rules and regulations that unnecessarily restrict the economy and cost people their livelihoods.
People are entitled to believe whatever they want to believe whether it is true or not, even when the truth is right in front of them. But public policy that is driven by misinformed public opinion or by special interests will inevitably result in laws and regulations that very likely do more harm than good.
We have made great strides since the first Earth Day in 1970. And as we continue to advance in science and technology we will continue to improve the quality of land, water and air. The way to do it is focus on real problems and not propaganda and then work to solve those problems by investing in solutions that are driven by sound science and sound economics, not by politically motivated scare tactics.
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