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Contributors
Bruce S. Thornton - Contributor
Bruce Thornton
is a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno and co-author
of Bonfire
of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished
Age and author of Greek
Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (Encounter
Books). His most recent book is Searching
for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta, and History in California (Encounter
Books). [go to Thornton index]
THE RIGHT
BOOKS:
Equipping the California Conservative
 Poverty
Pollutes
A Right Books Review:The Real Environmental
Crisis by Jack M. Hollander
[Bruce S. Thornton] 11/1/03
Of all the issues affecting California and the country, the
management of the environment is one of the most important, despite
its lack of immediate drama. Indeed, how we Californians balance
the needs of our increasing population and the resources these
people depend on and impact is arguably in the long term our
most important issue. Increased growth, both demographic and
economic, necessarily affects air quality, water availability,
and a whole host of other concerns that require the most reliable
scientific information possible, as well as a clear recognition
of short and long term benefits and risks.
Unfortunately, much of the public discussion of the environment
is clouded by various romantic myths about nature and our relationship
to it. Idealizations of nature as our true home, a superior realm
of peace, harmony, freedom and simplicity destroyed by civilization
and technology, are as old as the Greeks and their myth of the
Golden Age. Yet such myths are a luxury for those whom technology
has liberated from the drudgery of wresting sustenance from an
indifferent natural world, and freed from disease, drought, famine,
predators, malnutrition, and the other natural evils afflicting
our ancestors and those today living in the Third World. This
myth of a benign nature permeates much of the environmental writing
that also offers policy solutions presumably based on science
and fact.
Another source of confusion in discussions of the environment
comes from a hidden Marxist agenda that links the degradation
of the environment to free market capitalism and economic globalization.
Having failed in political and economic terms, Marxism has insinuated
itself into environmentalism as a way of wielding influence and
recruiting adherents from among those dissatisfied with modern
life and itching for revolutionary authenticity. Issues such
as pollution or species extinction are thus explained as the
consequences of an evil capitalist empire that oppresses the
international proletariat and the natural world alike. That's
why at most protests of the International Monetary Fund or the
World Bank the banners of the various European communist parties
can be seen alongside of those of Greenpeace.
Finally, a media addicted to sensationalism and unwilling or
incapable of understanding and presenting complex scientific
arguments and information contributes to a distortion of the
issues involved. Imminent disaster from our abuse of the environment
is simply more glamorous than documenting the incredible improvement
that has been achieved over the last few decades. A predominantly
liberal media, moreover, are typically adverse to business, and
so are eager to believe the worst about corporate greed destroying
the environment or poisoning our resources for short-term gain.
These impediments to rational assessment combine with our modern
expectation that we can eat our cake and have it-- that we can
enjoy the levels of material prosperity and comfort we take for
granted without impacting the natural world-- and the difficulties
of having a rational, sensible discussion of environmental issues
multiply. That is why we need books like The Real Environmental
Crisis. Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number
One Enemy, by Jack M. Hollander (University of California Press).
Hollander, a professor emeritus of energy and resources at UC
Berkeley, brings a long career of research and writing on energy
and the environment to this sane and sensible discussion of our
various environmental issues and problems.
As Hollander's subtitle shows, an important point that needs
to be emphasized is that the best thing for the environment is
political freedom, economic development, and increased affluence
in the Third World, not noble-savage idealizations of less developed
societies presumably more in tune with a nature that callously
watches them starve and die. Those who don't have enough to eat
and are subject to chronic disease first care about survival
and health, whatever the impact on the environment of their efforts
to secure both. Once material comfort is assured, people then
have the capital, both economic and psychic, to spend on improving
their environment.
With increased affluence
and open societies that allow and reward intellectual innovation
and political freedom, developing nations
will follow the pattern of the industrialized nations and begin
to find ways to sustain economic growth and living standards
while minimizing the human impact on the environment. As Hollander
writes, "People who have the means to support investments
in a healthy environment, and the freedom to do so, can be trusted
to make wise environmental choices provided they are honestly
informed about the costs and benefits of available options in
relation to other social choices that they constantly make."
Unfortunately, this information is hard to hear above the "cacophony
of pessimism and fear mongering emanating from some environmental
groups and the media." Hollander sets out to correct this
distorted picture by surveying several major sites of environmental
concern. Examining issues such as overpopulation, inadequate
food supplies, global warming, water availability, air pollution,
and the use of fossil fuels, Hollander cuts through the media
hysteria and provides a sober assessment of these various problems,
acknowledging where improvement is still necessary as well
as the great strides that have been made in the last several
decades.
For example, in the United States, emissions of the six major
pollutants have declined 31% since 1970, all the while that population
increased by a third, vehicle miles traveled went up 140%, and
the use of coal tripled. This improvement, rarely noted in the
media, took place because Americans had the political will to
pass the Clean Air Act in 1963 and to spend the billions necessary
to reduce pollution. But the critical point is that our affluence
allowed us to expend this capital because it was not needed for
mere survival. Thus we are breathing cleaner air while residents
of Beijing and Mexico City are exposed to astronomical levels
of pollution and respiratory illnesses.
Hollander's most valuable discussion focuses on global warming,
one of the most misunderstood, politicized, and sensationalized
environmental issues. Despite the media's assumption that recent
warming can be attributed to increased amounts of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere resulting from the burning of fossil fuels,
Holland points out that "empirical science has not established
an unambiguous connection between the carbon dioxide increase
and the observed global warming."
Moreover, global patterns of climate change are incredibly complex
and not yet completely understood. Cycles of warming and cooling
have characterized the planet for hundreds of thousands of years,
suggesting that recent warming could be a consequence of larger
patterns. The air at the earth's surface has been warming since
186o about 0.6 degrees Centigrade, but this increase correlates
imperfectly with increases in the burning of fossil fuels. In
addition, temperatures in the earth's atmosphere do not agree
with temperatures from the surface. In short, the heating and
cooling of the earth, as in the advance and retreat of ice sheets,
happens for reasons not yet fully understood, nor has the role
of carbon dioxide been scientifically demonstrated as causing
recent warming.
Yet based on this "flimsy" evidence
attributing these imperfectly understood fluctuations in temperature
to carbon
dioxide caused by fossil fuels, the Kyoto treaty presented in
1997 would have required the United States to cut back on carbon
dioxide emissions by over 30% to reach the targeted reduction
by 2010, all the while exempting developing countries, some of
the worst polluters because they rely on coal burned in old-fashioned
plants that lack the pollution-reduction technology of plants
in the developed countries.
President Bush was chastised as callously "unilateralist" for
pulling out of the Kyoto agreement, but Hollander points out
the flaws in the treaty that justify Bush's action. In addition
to exempting some of the worst polluters, the treaty ignored
the costs of implementing the treaty, particularly the impact
on the economy. Sound environmental policy should always take
into account the costs and risks that people will have to bear,
and make sure the benefits are worth the costs. In fact, these
potential serious costs of implementing the Kyoto treaty--as
much as $2.3 trillion in one estimate-- would not result in
a significant benefit: according to one estimate, full implementation
of the Kyoto agreement would reduce global warming by only
0.06%.
However, whipped up
by politically slanted "science" and
a media hungry for apocalyptic drama, many people today continue
to obsess over global warming and indict a greedy gluttonous
America for not subjecting its economic well-being to actions
based on uncertain knowledge generated by computer simulations: "In
view of the many shortcomings of current climate models," Hollander
warns, " it would be prudent for policy makers to exercise
considerable caution about using them as quantitative indicators
of future global warming."
Hollander's book is filled with just this sort of common sense
and sober reasoning, both of which provide an antidote to the
media hysteria and politically driven scenarios characterizing
much of the public discourse on the environment. His conclusion
is quite simple: the best thing for nature and humans alike
is a prosperity made possible by free markets and political
freedom. What we don't need are Disneyesque mythic idealizations
of the natural world that may gratify our fantasies and emotions,
but do nothing to help us calculate and identify the risks
and benefits of our policies and actions.
copyright
2003 Bruce S. Thornton
Searching for Joaquin
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Greek Ways
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Bonfire of the Humanities
by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, Bruce S. Thornton |
Plagues of the Mind
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek
Sexuality
by Bruce S. Thornton |
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