Earth Day 2007: Time for a Review
By Michael R. Fox, Ph.D.
 Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the annual events have been an unrelenting criticism of the United States and its supposed abuses of the planet. Each seems presented as if the American environment were getting progressively worse.
Little or no effort is made to review the impact of environmental regulations and their costs and the benefits. Little or no reviews of trends in the environmental progress are being made. No efforts are being made to compare the environment of the US with those of many other nations. What has been the cost of compliance with our environmental regulations, and have we been getting our money's worth? And what about the latest scare story, global warming?
Earth Day celebrants take on the air of self-congratulations because of some vague and intangible group benefits derived from worship of an earthen pagan deity. Driven by this worship, there has been no need to look backwards to see if their past actions have worked, if they have been worthwhile, and if there were any deaths or injuries produced. By definition they are always right, and they have no need to look back.
But some former members of the environmental elite have looked back and what they have seen is often not pretty. In fact, some of their actions have been quite destructive, which is one reason why many of their group are now "former members".
The DDT ban of 1972 is a great example of environmental destruction pushed by the Earth Day crowd. This ban has led to tens of millions of deaths due to mosquito-borne malaria, and the misery of hundreds of millions more who suffer from nonfatal damage of malaria. Nearly all of this human destruction could have been avoided if DDT had not been banned by the EPA mainly because of pressure from the "greens". Even though the World Heath Organization (WHO) has reversed itself on the use of DDT, the EPA ban is still in effect. The US/green/global indifference to such harm is unforgivable. It suggests that these organizations may be driven by forces other than a concern for human health, such as reduced populations. Whatever their motivation, it is certainly antihuman.
Whether it's been the fear of low level radiation, Alar, the potential ban on chlorine, Love Canal, asbestos, dioxin, Agent Orange, nuclear energy, food irradiation, air quality, nuclear medicine, and others, the sponsors of Earth Day have been wrong. This year the scare is global warming.
There have been a few successes but these are downplayed if not misrepresented. In taking a brief look back it is informative to see what has happened. An excellent summary of this environmental progress is found in the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, which can be found here. Suffice to say that the air quality over the United States has improved markedly in all categories since 1970, and down quite measurably since 2000. Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute remarked in his devastating documentary An Inconvenient Fiction, that while the population in the LA basin has doubled and the number of cars has tripled, air pollution is down 75 percent. We wouldn't know this from the greens’ pamphlets and speeches of doom. Much of the gloom and doom predicted in 37 years of Earth Days has fallen quietly into the realm of falsehoods and disrespect.
And talk about unintended consequences. By effectively bringing the US nuclear industry to a halt, and in deference to the powerful green lobby, the nation continued to expand its electricity generation by increasing its dependence on fossil fuels. As a consequence this policy has added billions of tons of CO2 to the environment, a problem over which many now wring their hands.
In addition to the documentary An Inconvenient Fiction mentioned above, several others are now available from the internet and are very informative. Be prepared to hear testimony from actual climate scientists. These are also listed at www.junkscience.com, which you should bookmark:
One doubts that any of these were shown at any of the Earth Day activities. As one can surmise from the documentaries, the global warming issue is well on its way to intellectual bankruptcy and self-destruction, just like what happened to many of the earlier scare stories. If shown, they would call into question what the Earth promoters were saying about global warming.
As one digs into the underlying issues and premises, the exaggerations, and the blatant unscientific skullduggery of its supporters, it simply doesn't pass muster. Huge uncertainties in our understanding of climate change and the multiple causes of the changes are at the root of the global warming problem. A major source of disappointment however, is watching the warmers, some with PhDs, contort the research findings as well as the English language to score political points and media favoritism.
The nominal Messiah of the movement is now former vice-president and Oscar winner Al Gore. His environmental bona fides go years back to his book Earth in the Balance. A crucial point was reached in his tour through environmentalism when in 1993 when as Vice President Gore he fired a top Yale scientist named William Happer who, at the time, had been employed by the Department of Energy.
The big scare story at that time was the "ozone hole" over the Antarctic. Happer found out what happens when scientists ask the wrong questions, search for the wrong answers, or propose the wrong experiments. According to Ron Bailey of Reason magazine, Happer was told by political powers that "science was not going to intrude on policy". In this case "policy" was Al Gore's recent book Earth in the Balance. It told a much more alarmist and imaginative version of the ozone hole.
The scientific issues were the poor understanding of the levels of ultraviolet radiation at the Earth's surface, how they change with latitude, how do they interact with humans, animals, and impacts of atmospheric ozone and UV-B radiation levels. Happer was asking very interesting and valuable questions to help resolve many of these uncertainties. That's how science works. Studies at the Brookhaven National Laboratory also had indicated that the heath risks from ozone depletion had been overstated.
Such totalitarian instincts clearly exist within the environmental movement and are too often incorporated into environmental policy and regulations. They are found in and around the White House, in the federal and state agencies, and in the media. This has cost millions of lives (such as the DDT ban and the resulting malaria deaths), hundreds of millions of injuries (nonfatal effects of malaria), and billions of dollars of waste, such as the over regulation of low level radiation, asbestos, Alar, and others.
So today the Green Messiah has returned with yet another message of doom, calling for repentance, and the message to follow him, or else. A media rapture has ensued as in past years. His camp followers, some with PhDs, are clearing his way on many levels, from US Senators seeking to muzzle the heretics, others calling for Nuremberg Trials, a death threat for a heretic, and an international body of experts passing off as true a fraudulent reconstruction of the last 1000 years of temperature data.
Earth Day would be an excellent time to review the mistakes, the billions of dollars wasted, the millions of lives lost, and the corruption of science as a result of such thoughtless enthusiasms. We need to stop the damage and return to common sense, good science, and revisions of bad regulations. We can only hope.
Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is the science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and the Director of the Center for Science, Climate, & Environment at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. A resident of Kaneohe, he has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the university level. His interest in the communication of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via e-mail at foxm011@hawaii.rr.com.
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