Regis Philbin
Apr 20th, 2006, 08:35 PM
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512890
Requiem for Environmentalism
Published On Thursday, April 20, 2006 2:21 AM
By PIOTR C. BRZEZINSKI
Environmentalism is dead; long live the environment!
This pronouncement might seem a touch premature, especially to the 500 million people who will celebrate the 37th Earth Day this weekend—a collective “not dead yet” wheeze. However, these numbers mask the growing irrelevance of the environmentalist movement. Having lost its credibility with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological ballast, the movement must develop a moderate discourse while challenging its previous assumptions and outdated theories.
The contemporary environmentalist movement faces a stark choice: change tactics or fade into irrelevance. Over the past decade, environmentalists have achieved few political victories and utterly failed to influence the general public. As indicated by a recent MIT study, the public knows little about environmental problems, and cares less. Out of 21 national and international issues, Americans ranked environmental problems 13th, well below terrorism, taxes, crime, and drugs.
Alarmism—the environmental movement’s basic strategy—has led to this dead end. Since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the movement has been dominated by doomsday scenarios. Even on the first Earth Day in 1970, biologist George Wald predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken” while the New York Times warned that “man must stop pollution and conserve his resources…to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Fortunately, such apocalyptic forecasts have repeatedly proven to be wrong.
Take biologist Paul Ehrlich’s popular Malthusian broadside, “The Population Bomb.” Farsighted Ehrlich predicted that a “population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” causing world-wide famine and the death of “hundreds of millions of people” annually from starvation. Oops—in the subsequent 35 years, increased agricultural productivity exceeded population growth and the total amount of cultivated land barely increased.
Ehrlich is hardly alone; the environmental movement has spawned a remarkable number of would-be Cassandras. Between 1970 and 2006, global cooling predictions mysteriously morphed into global warming fears. Concerns about rampant Dodo-ism proved baseless: the rate of animal extinction in the U.S. has been declining since the 1930s, and only seven species have gone extinct since 1973. And rather than running out of resources, the world has experienced a commodity glut, with the prices of most metals and minerals dropping by 30 to 50 percent. The litany of failed apocalypses goes on.
Requiem for Environmentalism
Published On Thursday, April 20, 2006 2:21 AM
By PIOTR C. BRZEZINSKI
Environmentalism is dead; long live the environment!
This pronouncement might seem a touch premature, especially to the 500 million people who will celebrate the 37th Earth Day this weekend—a collective “not dead yet” wheeze. However, these numbers mask the growing irrelevance of the environmentalist movement. Having lost its credibility with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological ballast, the movement must develop a moderate discourse while challenging its previous assumptions and outdated theories.
The contemporary environmentalist movement faces a stark choice: change tactics or fade into irrelevance. Over the past decade, environmentalists have achieved few political victories and utterly failed to influence the general public. As indicated by a recent MIT study, the public knows little about environmental problems, and cares less. Out of 21 national and international issues, Americans ranked environmental problems 13th, well below terrorism, taxes, crime, and drugs.
Alarmism—the environmental movement’s basic strategy—has led to this dead end. Since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the movement has been dominated by doomsday scenarios. Even on the first Earth Day in 1970, biologist George Wald predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken” while the New York Times warned that “man must stop pollution and conserve his resources…to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Fortunately, such apocalyptic forecasts have repeatedly proven to be wrong.
Take biologist Paul Ehrlich’s popular Malthusian broadside, “The Population Bomb.” Farsighted Ehrlich predicted that a “population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” causing world-wide famine and the death of “hundreds of millions of people” annually from starvation. Oops—in the subsequent 35 years, increased agricultural productivity exceeded population growth and the total amount of cultivated land barely increased.
Ehrlich is hardly alone; the environmental movement has spawned a remarkable number of would-be Cassandras. Between 1970 and 2006, global cooling predictions mysteriously morphed into global warming fears. Concerns about rampant Dodo-ism proved baseless: the rate of animal extinction in the U.S. has been declining since the 1930s, and only seven species have gone extinct since 1973. And rather than running out of resources, the world has experienced a commodity glut, with the prices of most metals and minerals dropping by 30 to 50 percent. The litany of failed apocalypses goes on.