Environmentalism Should Not Be a Religion
By
Michael Novak
The single most original and successful social movement of the late twentieth century was environmentalism. It arose seemingly out of nowhere, yet immediately grew into a huge majority. It swept in new legislation that effected stunning gains in air quality, water purity, and the return of forests and wildlife.
During the same period, three rather large mistakes were made by enthusiasts who went too far.
First, environmentalism was cast as a new religion, an exaltation of innocent nature. Some Greens scarcely acknowledged that nature sometimes works against the well-being of humans. Through volcanic eruptions and many other natural activities, for example, nature spews far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than human beings do. Nature's emissions may be a far greater part of "global warming" than environmentalists will admit. By idealizing nature, some Greens lost sight of practical problem-solving.
Second, some enthusiasts brought socialist economic prejudices to their views of environmentalism. Faced with any environmental problem, they immediately applied a socialist analysis and a statist solution. Thus the quip arose, "Environmentalists are like tomatoes: They begin green, but by the end of the season they are red." In short, eco-socialism masqueraded as environmentalism.
Third, some environmentalists have adopted the rhetorical style and outlook of hell-and-brimstone preachers. They warn of the end of the world and demand punishment, sackcloth, and conversion. U.S. Senator and nearly successful Presidential candidate Al Gore, for instance, demanded "bold efforts to change the very foundation of civilization." The language of pessimism, apocalypse, and self-reform colors discussion of the environment. Dissenters are treated as sinners.
The pessimistic, apocalyptic litany of the Green requiem is recited almost daily in the media. One famous formulation of the dirge, by Bjorn Lomborg, runs as follows:
"Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet's species are becoming extinct in vast numbers-we kill off more than 40,000 each year. The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing, and the coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing; we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world's ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent."
The truth is, all these claims have been proven false.
Likewise with the famously mistaken "limits of growth" proclaimed by the Club of Rome in the heyday of environmental activism. It turns out that whatever vital resource the doomsayers wish to choose, its price continues to fall in the medium- to long-term, as new supplies or substitutes are discovered, and demand is reduced by market adjustments to price.
The refusal of some environmental activists to recognize their own great successes-and the extremism of their apocalyptic views-has begun to undercut their credibility. All the harsh environmentalist attacks on automobiles, for example, ignore the stark problems linked to the horses that cars displaced. In the year 1900 there were more than 20 million horses in the United States, with a combined transport capability equaling three quarters of the carrying capacity of all U.S. railroads. The average horse required about 39 pounds of food per day, or five tons per year. Some 25 percent of all U.S. farmland-93 million acres-was tied up just growing that horse feed.
In addition, each horse produced about 12,000 pounds of manure and 400 gallons of urine per year. Millions of horses on city streets were thus toxic for public health and offensive to public cleanliness. You might then understand why the change in technology from horse to gasoline-powered automobile was greeted as a great blessing for healthfulness and cleanliness by average Americans. Never mind the more than 90 million acres of good land put to more productive use.
In the United States alone, the reduction of land under agricultural cultivation (due to a reduction of livestock and sharp increases in agricultural productivity linked to tractor, fertilizer, engineered seed, and agricultural chemical usage) has returned about 500 million acres to woodlands. Much of our primeval forested land is once again blanketed by trees, and wild animals have returned in sometimes unprecedented abundance. Thus, as one commentator put it, Americans "live in closer proximity to more wild animals in the Eastern U.S. today than at any time in history anywhere on the planet."
A New York State wildlife biologist noted recently that, "Most Easterners don't realize it, but they live in a huge forest." Species once thought endangered have been prospering: Beavers have now multiplied to more than 15 million. Fur-bearing animals like raccoons, muskrats, coyote, and fox are approaching or surpassing colonial-era levels. Deer now have increased to 20 million, more than in George Washington's day. Black bears number 150,000, and elk more than 700,000. The current wild duck population in North America is at least 35 million. In a word, natural wildlife is flourishing as seldom before, even in the parts of America usually thought to be the most urban and densely populated.
As London grew from a rambling town into a crowded urban center, its city air grew ever more foul with smoke and unhealthy sulfur dioxide gases from wood-burning and coal-burning stoves. These two forms of pollution peaked around 1900, when new forms of energy and heat (natural gas, electricity, and so on) came into use, and then rapidly declined. With the new push given to driving out pollution after 1970, this steady downward turn accelerated. By the year 2000, London's air was as free of these two pollutants as it had been in the time of Shakespeare. In addition, the River Thames was returned to a degree of cleanliness it had not enjoyed since Shakespeare boated on it.
Over a shorter span of time, similar events played out in the United States. The U.S. Clean Air Act went into effect in 1955 and was amended several times. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, levels of all the air pollutants proscribed and monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency were brought down sharply. Lead pollution was reduced by 97 percent, sulfur dioxides by 65 percent, carbon monoxide by 68 percent, nitrogen dioxide by 38 percent, ozone by almost 30 percent, and particulates by almost 26 percent. Similar progress has been made against toxic chemicals, and other problems.
Neither Green alarmists nor most of the mainstream press report progress of this sort with any vigor. Sometimes, Greens even get angry if outsiders point out these improvements. It is against their self-interest to publicize such changes, since activists raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year in contributions to their organizations by invoking quasi-religious, apocalyptic fears for the health of the Earth. The sharp economic, social, and political transformations, and lifestyle conversions that activists call for make sense only if the public has first been scared with bad news.
Whatever the fundraising needs of hard-line environmentalists, however, this quasi-religious strategy is unnecessary and often counterproductive. It confuses people about the real nature of the problems we face and the best ways available to solve them. Heartened by successes and led by them to imagine fresh new efforts, honestly informed and practical-minded Americans will take additional steps toward a healthier planet.
A generation after the launch of apocalyptic environmentalism, there are now signs of the beginnings of a wiser, less alarmist movement. This new strain has absorbed the critical lesson of the twentieth century: that the best way to solve poverty and ecological problems is not through the socialist state, but through enterprise and personal initiative and freedom. Even in formerly communist nations like China, shrewd observers have discovered (at great cost, through earlier failures) that private property and markets work best to eliminate human and planetary degradation.
The distinctive marks of this new environmentalism are three: Realism. Liberty. And recognition of the link between poverty and environmental problems.
The new environmentalism is marked by a passion for making a true difference in the real world. It holds that free, responsible, and inventive individuals, working in association with others, are the dynamic core of both environmental reform and sustainable development. It faces a crucial fact: Poverty impedes environmental reform. Thus, regimes that reduce growth, income, and property injure the environment. The best way to enhance the ecology of this small blue-green planet, therefore, is to liberate economic systems until they include every woman and man on Earth within the circle of plenty.
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar at AEI. This is adapted from his new book, The Universal Hunger for Liberty.
