Blog

Many people today believe that environmental conditions are worsening. In The Improving State of the World, Indur Goklany thoroughly refutes this idea. Nonetheless, environmentalists continue to perpetuate the view that increased wealth and prosperity mean a poorer environment, but as this excerpt from Goklany’s work shows, this is not the case.

The Improving State of the World was published in 2007

Clearly, technological change is one key to continued improvement in environmental and human well-being. At least two ingredients are necessary to bring about technological change. First, better technology must be brought into existence. With greater wealth, expenditures on research and development increase. Therefore, the likelihood of developing new or improved technology should rise with wealth, which helps maintain and enhance human capital. This, in turn, not only further enhances the possibility of devising better technologies but it also propagates knowledge about the existence and operation of existing and new technologies, which is a key element for the diffusion of technology.

But there is more to technological change than creating technology or being aware of its existence. Although poor countries (and their farmers) are cognizant of technologies that would improve agricultural productivity, they are unable to capitalize on that information, despite that many such technologies, for example, fertilizer and crop protection measures, are quite mundane. Thus, their agricultural yields are substantially lower as are their food supplies. As a result, hunger and malnourishment are higher, and pressures for deforestation are greater. Similarly, notwithstanding that nowadays authorities in even the poorest countries know how to extend access to safe water and sanitation to 100 percent of the population, they lack the wherewithal to do so. Consequently, 1.1 billion people worldwide still lack access to safe water and 2.4 billion to adequate sanitation, virtually all in the poorer countries.

The missing ingredient, of course, is wealth, without which not only it harder to invent, develop, perfect, and use new technologies, but even old technologies are often unaffordable. Greater wealth increases the likelihood of acquiring, operating, and maintaining new as well as existing technologies. That is, wealth not only helps create technology and conditions favorable for its diffusion but wealth also ensures that technology is, in fact, used to make technological change a reality. It is hardly surprising that in previous chapters, we saw repeatedly that virtually every indicator of human well-being or environmental impact sooner or later improves with wealth. Hence, wealth increases cereal yields, which helps reduce rates of deforestation. It boosts the ability to install air pollution controls and to substitute cleaner fuels for dirty ones. Wealth also increases access to safe water and sanitation, which then reduce mortality due to water-related diseases.

[click to continue…]

During his 2008 campaign, President Obama made his support of climate-change interventions clear, stating that his presidency would slow the rise of the oceans and begin to heal the planet. He promised that a cap-and-trade system would curb global warming.

He was elected, but the electorate hasn’t liked many of his policies. Cap and trade never passed Congress. To this day, President Obama has remained comparatively popular, but people believe he is taking the country in the wrong direction—toward a European system. Even his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, believes our gasoline prices should be higher, like Europe’s.

Two weeks ago, my column addressed China’s act (ring #1) in the climate-change circus. Last week, I looked at Europe’s staunch support for climate-change intervention when the majority of the industrialized countries have rejected or resisted a Kyoto-style deal (ring #2). Using Italy as an example, I suggested that the country’s lack of natural resources made expensive renewable energy a viable option for them—though an economic tightrope destined to failure.

[click to continue…]

The Economist Magazine has historically been a supporter of climate-change interventions such as cap and trade and carbon-emission reductions. Yet, they reported on the UN climate change talks in Durban as being more about “saving the circus” than “saving the planet.” But, just what is the “circus;” who are the performers; and how did they get into the ring? And, was it ever about “saving the planet?”

My previous column postulated on China’s role in the climate change “circus.” I suggested that their apparent change of heart on the issue was really just a change of strategy.

Like The Economist, another leading European publication, The Financial Times (FT) has also been a believer in man-made climate change. FT carried extensive coverage of the 2011 UN climate change talks—even producing a twelve-page supplement: Climate Change Review, Durban 2011. Here in the US, the climate change talks in Durban were barely mentioned.

Within FT’s reporting they state that the European Union (EU) “is pushing hardest among developed countries for a new global deal” and is “the greenest voice among wealthy countries at the talks.” Is the EU uniquely insightful, or like China, is their role in the ring also more about economic strategy?

When it is widely known that any Kyoto-style deal will be costly to the countries’ involved and make energy more expensive for the countries’ citizens, why would the EU stand out as the staunchest supporter? Canada has dropped out of the Kyoto accord “in order to save billions of dollars in potential non-compliance fees.” The US never signed on. Developing industrial countries, such as China and India, have repeatedly refused to participate because “rapid development is lifting millions out of poverty.”

Perhaps, herein, lies “the circus”—with the EU as the star performer.

[click to continue…]

In The True State of the Planet, Ronald Bailey and colleagues lay out a new environmentalism, one to replace the failed, top-down, government-centric environmentalism of the past. Through innovative and creative thinking, people can solve environmental problems, even ones we don’t know of yet, if they are free to do so.

The True State of the Planet was a project by CEI released in 1995

In 1970, the first Earth Day brought together more than 20 million Americans to launch the first wave of the modern environmental movement. Since then, public concern about the state of the planet has steadily grown. The membership rolls and budgets of leading environmental activist organizations have swollen by millions. The federal government has adopted thousands of pages of environmental regulations. Cities and industries are spending billions every year to clean up pollution…

The first wave has scored some major successes in its twenty-five-year history: in the Western developed world, air and water are much cleaner; automobiles are far cleaner to operate; belching smokestacks are far fewer and generally more efficient than ever before. Clearly developed societies can come together to clean up much of the pollution produced by industries and cities.

But the first wave has also turned out to be spectacularly wrong about certain things. The good news is that many of the looming threats predicted in the early days of the environmental movement turned out to be exaggerated. For example, the global famines expected to occur in the 1970s never happened. Fears that the United States and Europe would cut down all of their forests have been belied by increases in forest area. Global warming, despite so many continuing reports, does not appear to be a major problem. And it turns out that the damages to human health and the natural world by pesticides is far less than Rachel Carson feared it would be when she wrote the Silent Spring in 1962.

It is inevitable, perhaps, that the first wave would begin to run its course and give way to a new strategy… The greatest problem with the first wave has been its solutions, which involve top-down imposition of laws and regulations, some of which, in turn, impair the capacity of people to change their behavior on their own…. Malthus assumed that past behavior would continue into the future. And if behavior does not change on its own, it can be changed only by force—by direct orders from above, as, for example, with gasoline rationing. Americans were ordered to use less oil in the 1970s, and with disastrous results. People hoarded gas; they formed longer gas lines out of fear, and the energy “crisis” was thereby made worse.

[click to continue…]

Iain Murray and I have an op-ed in The Washington Times this morning that argues that TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline exists not to create a few jobs from some people, but to create wealth for all Americans:

Spending on construction and infrastructure jobs is a perennial favorite of government stimulus boosters. “There’s no reason for Republicans inCongress to stand in the way of more construction projects,” PresidentObama told an Ohio crowd in September. “There’s no reason to stand in the way of more jobs.” However, the president now wants to block a massive private-sector construction project that would create the thousands of jobs he demands – the Keystone XL pipeline.

[click to continue…]