A Crisis of Pessimism

Jack M. Hollander

This Article appears as the introductory chapter to JACK M. HOLLANDER, THE REAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS: WHY POVERTY, NOT AFFLUENCE, IS THE ENVIRONMENT'S NUMBER ONE ENEMY (University of California Press 2003), available at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9208.html (last visited Sept. 11, 2003). Jack M. Hollander is a professor emeritus of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley. Author or coauthor of over 100 research publications and editor of 20 books, Dr. Hollander has undertaken basic research in nuclear structure physics, energy and environment research, academic administration, and science and technology development. A 1951 Berkeley Ph.D. in chemistry, he was one of Berkeley's early researchers in the environmental sciences in the 1960s and first director of both the Berkeley Laboratory's Energy and Environment Division and the systemwide University of California Energy Institute. In the mid-1970s, he served as director of the first (and only) national energy study carried out by the National Academy of Sciences, and for 17 years was editor of the independent book series Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. Dr. Hollander served for 12 years as chairperson of the Swedish Academy's International Institute of Energy and Human Ecology, based in Stockholm. He was also cofounder of the independent American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). During the 1980s, Dr. Hollander served as vice president for research and graduate studies at Ohio State University. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships, in 1958 and 1966.

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Can you remember a day when you opened your morning newspaper without finding a dramatic and disturbing story about some environmental crisis that's either here already or lurks just around the corner? That would be a rare day. On one day the story may be about global warming, on the next it may be about overpopulation, or air pollution, or resource depletion, or species extinction, or sea-level rise, or nuclear waste, or toxic substances in our food and water. Especially jarring is the implication in most of these stories that you and I are the enemy—that our affluent life styles are chiefly responsible for upsetting nature's balance, polluting our cities, skies, and oceans, and squandering the natural resources that sustain us. Unless we change our thoughtless and wasteful ways, we are reminded, the earth will become a very inhospitable place for ourselves and our progeny.

Such media reportage reflects the pervasive pessimism about the future that has become the hallmark of today's environmental orthodoxy. Its central theme is that the affluent society, by its very nature, is the polluting society—the richer we become, the more we consume the earth's scarce resources, the more we overcrowd the planet, the more we pollute the earth's precious land, air, and water. The clear implication of this viewpoint is that the earth was a better place before humans were around to despoil it.

Some people, even some environmental scientists, genuinely subscribe to this gloomy picture of the earth's future. I do not hold that they are necessarily uninformed, or naive, or unprofessional, or captive to special interests. But they are indeed pessimistic. I am more optimistic about the earth's environmental future, and I believe there is plenty of evidence to support an optimistic, though not cornucopian, view of the environmental future. This Article presents such an optimistic perspective.

In my judgment, people are not the enemy of the environment. Nor is affluence the enemy. Affluence does not inevitably foster environmental degradation. Rather, affluence fosters environmentalism. As people become more affluent, most become increasingly sensitive to the health and beauty of their environment. And gaining affluence helps provide the economic means to protect and enhance the environment. Of course, affluence alone does not guarantee a better environment. A sense of social responsibility is also required. Political will is also required. But affluence is a key ingredient for ensuring a livable and sustainable environment for the future.¹

The real enemy of the environment is poverty—the tragedy of billions of the world's inhabitants who face hunger, disease, and ignorance each day of their lives. Poverty is the environmental villain, poor people are its victims. Impoverished people often do plunder their resources, pollute their environment, and overcrowd their habitats. They do these things not out of willful neglect but only out of the need to survive. They are well aware of the environmental amenities that affluent people enjoy, but they also know that for them the journey to a better environment will be long and that their immediate goal must be to escape from the clutches of poverty. They cannot navigate this long journey without assistance—assistance from generous institutions, nations, and individuals, and from sincere and effective policies of their own governments.

For the affluent nations to assist people in the developing world is socially responsible and morally right. But from an environmental perspective, the issue is more than ethical. It is pragmatic as well, since the environmental self-interests of the affluent would be well served by the eradication of poverty. This idea disturbs those who fear that people emerging from poverty will inevitably become "wasteful" consumers like ourselves and will only exacerbate the globe's environmental damage as they pursue the trappings of the good life. The fear is understandable, but the [33 ELR 10858] conclusion is wrong. Without doubt, people tasting affluence will embrace consumerism and become proud owners of property, vehicles, computers, cell phones, and the like. But they will also pursue education, good health, and leisure for themselves and their families. And they will become environmentalists.

Environmentalists are made, not born. In the industrial countries, environmentalism arose as a reaction to the negative impacts of early industrialization and economic growth. On the way from subsistence to affluence, people developed a greater sense of social responsibility and had more time and energy to reflect about environmental quality. They had experienced environmental deterioration first hand and they demanded improvement. One of the great success stories of the recent half century is, in fact, the remarkable progress the industrial societies have made, during a period of robust economic growth, in reversing the negative environmental impacts of industrialization. In the United States the air is cleaner and the drinking water purer than at any time in 5 decades; the food supply is more abundant and safer than ever before; the forested area is the highest in 300 years; most rivers and lakes are clean again; and, largely because of technological innovation and the information revolution, industry, buildings, and transportation systems are more energy-and resource-efficient than at any time in the past. This is not to say that the resource/environment situation in the United States is near perfect or even totally satisfactory—of course it is not. Much more needs to be done. But, undeniably, the improvements have been remarkable. They have come about in a variety of ways—through government regulation, through taxation, through financial incentives, through community actions. Most important, these environmental improvements cannot be credited solely to government, environmental organizations, or lobbyists, though each has played an important role. Rather, they have come about because the majority of citizens in this and every other democratic, affluent society demands a clean and livable environment. Does this imply that the affluent have achieved an improved environment in their own lands by exporting their pollution to the lands of the poor? That has rarely been the case.

As the industrial societies continue to make steady progress in reclaiming their environment, they are now laying the foundation for a post-industrial future that is globally sustainable. Some elements of this foundation already exist everywhere—people's technological ingenuity, creativity in finding solutions to emerging problems, political will to get the job done. Other elements of this foundation do not yet exist or are weak. The central argument of my book, The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy, is that the essential prerequisites for a sustainable environmental future are a global transition from poverty to affluence, coupled with a transition to freedom and democracy. Although evidence in support of this argument could be organized in a variety of ways, I have chosen to do so in the context of specific resource and environmental issues of major importance. It hardly needs saying that any argument about the future is cloaked in uncertainty, and my arguments in my book are no exception. Yet they will have served a useful purpose if they add to public understanding of the poverty-environment connection, as well as contributing to the lively and purposeful debate among environmentalists about the issues covered in my book.

My optimism about the environmental future is at odds with the environmental orthodoxy as practiced by most environmental organizations and the media, and especially reflected in the increasing stridency of their doomsday predictions of the environmental future. There is a double irony here. First, so bleak an outlook has arisen during the very period in which the affluent societies have been making their greatest environmental and economic gains; and second, the citizenry in the affluent countries overwhelmingly support a clean environment and are becoming increasingly alienated by the hyperbolic excesses committed in the name of environmentalism. Although the root causes of today's environmental pessimism are complex and intertwined with other social issues, some of the major contributing factors, as well as the paradoxes, are illuminated by a glimpse at the environmental history of the United States.

The Birth of Environmentalism

In its early years, the United States retained the continent's historically agrarian character, with a largely pastoral and wooded landscape from "sea to shining sea." By the mid-19th century, industrialization was sweeping the country, and a growing population (mostly recent immigrants) was enjoying unprecedented economic opportunities provided by the new manufacturing culture. But along with the gains from industrialization, people living and working in the 19th-century urban areas of Great Britain and the United States were also experiencing signs of environmental deterioration. Cities were becoming overcrowded, skies and rivers were becoming polluted, and urban dwellers were becoming increasingly faced with the twin killers of respiratory and intestinal diseases from air and water pollution.

Yet it was rural, not urban, pollution that stimulated the awakening of an American environmental movement. The first American "environmentalists" were an elite group of amateur naturalists who were disturbed by the changes to the pristine rural environment accompanying the country's industrial development—leveling of forests, overrunning of open spaces, invading of wilderness areas. Among the most idealistic of these naturalists was John Muir, who worked tirelessly for the total preservation of wilderness areas and old forests, mostly in the mountainous areas of the far West, with the hope that future generations would be able to experience the grandeur of these precious natural resources just as he experienced them. The first head of the Sierra Club (1892), Muir has rightly been called "the father of the national park system." Equally dedicated but often at logger-heads with Muir was America's first professional forester, Gifford Pinchot, who believed not in hands-off preservation but in the sustainable use of natural resources through wise management. Becoming the leader of the utilitarian wing of the conservation movement, Pinchot was appointed the first head of the U.S. Forest Service (1905) by President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a strong and consistent ally of the conservationists, though his dedication to preserving the habitats of wild animals was due at least partly to his passion for hunting them. Drawing on the leadership of such individuals, some of the world's foremost environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), were formed, and they played a critical [33 ELR 10859] role during those early decades in winning public support for nature conservation.

In contrast to their early sensitivity about the rural environment, Americans generally tolerated urban pollution for another half century. Not only was urban pollution initially perceived as an inevitable byproduct of industrial production, but in the 20th century's first two decades pollution became a symbol—at least among the working classes—of growing prosperity and an abundance of jobs. And during the Great Depression years of the 1930s, when massive un-employment returned and poverty became a fact of life for millions of Americans, chimney smoke and soot from still-operating industries became an even more welcome urban sight. Smoke in the air meant food on the table, at least for those who had jobs.

With the coming of World War II, the economic situation abruptly improved but the environment did not. The wartime economy generated enormous production increases, full employment, and even higher levels of air and water pollution. After the war, the return to peacetime production brought an unprecedented surge of affluence and a seemingly insatiable demand for homes, automobiles, and other consumer products that had been unavailable in wartime. The pollution, unfortunately, only worsened.

But soon another kind of demand was stirring. Along with the new affluence and consumer demand, a heightened level of environmental awareness gradually evolved among the general public. This had no precedent in the earlier conservation movement, which was largely confined to a rural elite. The burgeoning post-war American middle class wanted their cities and neighborhoods to reflect their new affluence, to be attractive and healthy places to live. By the 1950s, high levels of urban pollution that had been tolerated before and during the war became unacceptable to more and more Americans. By then it was no longer a laughing matter when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland burst into flames because its surface was covered with industrial debris and slime. Or when the skies over Los Angeles became so smoggy that one could "see" the air but not the ground. Or when residents of an upstate New York community discovered that their homes had been knowingly built over an old industrial waste dump and were being threatened by leakage of toxic materials. The desire to find environmental quality at an affordable price was in fact one of the main stimuli for the exodus of millions of Americans from decaying core cities to the newly developing, still pristine suburbs.

All over the country, people began demanding cleaner air, water, and land. By the start of the 1970s, both federal and state governments responded to the public's voice by creating new executive agencies dedicated to environmental protection.² A stream of environmental mandates and regulations soon emanated from these agencies and the legislatures, beginning a trend toward ever-tighter environmental controls that continues to this day. Also proliferating during this period were nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that focused on environmental issues, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, which collectively soon constituted a powerful political force. These NGOs were influential in stimulating, often through legal actions, many government policies and regulations that were to play an essential role in reducing pollution. It is important to keep in mind that these environmental responses were not forced on people. Overwhelmingly, Americans have supported both government regulations and private initiatives to improve the environment. And organized environmental activism was by no means confined to the United States. Similar activities and initiatives were occurring in all the industrial countries of the non-communist world, as a result of which thousands of environmental interest groups and NGOs function throughout the world today.

Environmental Science

Besides public awareness, other developments occurred in the 1960s and 1970s that were to have profound effects on the young environmental movement. Important among these was the growing role of science. The new environmental sciences brought about a major change in the way people thought about environmental problems, shifting their focus from large and visible entities to extremely small and invisible entities. Previously, in the movement's early decades, public attention had been drawn mostly to nature's grandest creations—oceans, mountains, forests, and lakes. One did not need scientific training to experience the beauty and grandeur of these natural wonders, and most anyone could also recognize the unsightliness of oil-covered lakes, smog-filled skies, and logging-disfigured forests. Earlier, such unsightliness had been perceived only as assaults on esthetic sensitivities, not as threats to health. That was to change as environmental science soon pointed to potential connections between pollution and risks to health.

Advances in analytical techniques allowed environmental chemists to detect minuscule amounts of foreign substances in air, water, and food—down to the parts-per-million or even parts-per-billion level. Such tiny concentrations usually cannot be seen, tasted, or otherwise perceived directly. Although some trace-level contaminants were introduced by newly developed industrial processes and chemicals, many trace-level substances have always been present in food and the environment as the result of natural processes. Although most environmental chemists were appropriately circumspect in describing their findings, environmental writers and the media increasingly sensation-alized the issue of trace contaminants, labeling them as "toxins" whatever their amount or origin, and drawing alarming connections between trace pollutants and a variety of adverse human health conditions and diseases. In most cases little or no credible evidence has been found linking trace contaminants to adverse health effects at the very low doses typically encountered,³ yet these connections have become an indelible part of the public's environmental consciousness and fears.

During this period, environmental scientists generally enjoyed considerable public confidence, and many became influential in the budding environmental movement. A prime example of this influence was biologist Rachel L. [33 ELR 10860] Carson's enormously popular book Silent Spring, eloquently warning of potential harm to humans and animals from trace residues of the pesticide dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT).⁴ Although published in 1962, Silent Spring remains a leading icon of the contemporary environmental movement.

In the years following World War II, prior to Carson's criticism of pesticide use, DDT had been widely used in the industrial countries and to a lesser extent in the developing countries. In 1970, a report by the National Academy of Sciences stated: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT …. In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable."⁵ So great was the influence of Silent Spring, however, that the use of DDT in the United States was banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1972,⁶ and similar bans were invoked in other industrial countries. Since then there have been continuing efforts by environmental groups to extend the ban of DDT to developing countries. Such a ban would expose hundreds of millions of people, especially children, to grave risks of illness and death from malaria. Because of the interventions of many scientists, however, these efforts have thus far not been successful.⁷

Other claims made by Carson have been controversial, as well. For example, her claim that DDT is a human carcinogen has not been substantiated.⁸ Some scientists also disputed her claims that DDT caused thinning in bird egg shells and population declines in brown pelicans, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons.⁹ Observers documented that the great peregrine decline in the eastern United States occurred long before any DDT was present in the environment,¹⁰ and a British study concluded that "there is no close correlation between the decline in population of predatory birds, particularly the peregrine falcon and the sparrow hawk, and the use of DDT."¹¹

The Environmental Legacy of Vietnam

Although the influence of science on the environmental movement remained strong during the 1960s and 1970s, the influence of politics became even stronger. This was the era of the Vietnam War, a time when distrust of government, always endemic in the American psyche, reached new heights.¹² In this period, during which the environmental mantra "small is beautiful" became popular,¹³ people's distrust extended beyond government to almost all large institutions. In particular, major technology corporations were increasingly perceived as remote and unresponsive, essentially enemies of the people. During the so-called energy crisis of the 1970s the distrust was directed especially against the major oil companies, which the media portrayed as largely responsible for the gasoline shortages accompanying the 1973 Arab oil producers' boycott.¹⁴ Another target of distrust was the large electric utilities, which at that time were heavily engaged in constructing power plants, including nuclear power plants, to meet the nation's rapidly growing use of electricity.

A major victim of the public's loss of trust was the institution of science and technology itself. In the years following World War II, Americans had generally viewed science and scientists with awe because of the crucial roles they had played in the Allied victory, e.g., the development of radar, which played a key role in Great Britain's survival in 1940, and the atomic bomb, which brought about an early end to the war in the Pacific in 1945. As a result, U.S. scientists were blessed with unprecedented increases in government support for their research during the 1950s and early 1960s. But awe gave way to distrust during the Vietnam period. A prime target of this enmity was the scientific establishment generally but particularly the nuclear power establishment, which in that day came to symbolize the perceived excesses of science and technology. An example of this distrust was the 1979 hit film The China Syndrome, which portrayed nuclear industry executives as villains responsible for a fictional nuclear reactor accident with mass fatalities. Almost coincident with the release of this film, the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant happened; despite hysterical media reporting, no injuries or fatalities actually resulted.

It is somewhat paradoxical that the public's confidence in environmental science grew rapidly during the 1960s and [33 ELR 10861] 1970s, a period during which environmental scientists were bringing mostly bad news yet during which confidence in the larger scientific establishment eroded rapidly, even though science and technology were continuing to enhance the quality of people's lives. The public's growing antipathy to the Vietnam War and technology's role in that conflict were probably major factors in creating this anomaly.

Transformation to Pessimism

The Vietnam period also saw the beginnings of change in the image of environmentalism, from champion of nature's grandeur and source of optimism and vision to its current sense of doom and gloom about the earth's future. In the new environmental politics, "proenvironment" has become increasingly identified with antitechnology attitudes and, especially, with antinuclear politics. Starting in Europe, opposition to nuclear-generated electricity has long been a principal plank in the platforms of the Green political parties. And the U.S. Green party's 2000 platform called for "early retirement of nuclear power reactors," a national shift away from "corporate industrial farming," which it labeled as "biodevastation," and rejection of agreements encouraging trade liberalization, such as the World Trade Organization, which it portrayed as "run by corporate interests unaccountable to public input or even legal challenge."¹⁵

The media have played a major role in encouraging the growth of environmental pessimism and technophobia by focusing on worst-case, doomsday scenarios in reporting environmental subjects and consistently underplaying the remarkable progress being made by the affluent societies in enhancing the quality of the environment.

The real enemies of environmental progress are poverty and tyranny, not technology or global markets. On the contrary, technological innovation enabled by affluence and freedom has been a major source of the environmental progress already made by the industrial societies, and the global penetration of innovative technologies will most likely be a crucial ingredient for achieving a future sustainable environment throughout the world. Unfortunately, the reality of environmental progress and promise is obscured by the doomsday rhetoric propounded in recent years by many environmental groups and amplified by the media. Here are a few examples:

In a 1998 advertisement, the respected WWF tells us that

forests are being cleared. Oceans overfished. Toxic chemicals are everywhere. Not just individual plants and animals, but entire ecosystems are in danger of disappearing forever. And we will all suffer from these losses.

Fewer than 500 days remain in this century, and the fate of the planet rests on choices we make today.¹⁶

And the venerable Sierra Club claims that

the human race is engaged in the largest and most dangerous experiment in history—an experiment to see what will happen to our health and the health of our planet when we change our atmosphere and our climate …. The rapid buildup of [carbon dioxide and other] greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is the source of the problem. By burning ever-increasing quantities of coal, oil],] and gas, we are choking our planet in a cloud of this pollution. If we don't begin to act now to curb global warming, our children will live in a world where the climate will be far less hospitable than it is today.¹⁷

The Union of Concerned Scientists warns

all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not be irretrievably mutilated…. The environment is suffering critical stress …. Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life—coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change—could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand …. The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits…. No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.¹⁸

Typical of today's environmental pessimism, these doomsday pronouncements contain grains of truth embedded in a sea of exaggeration. Without jumping ahead into details of the scientific subjects they encompass, which is the task of my book, I assert here that such broad-brush statements mislead the public, and, in some instances, are scientifically inaccurate. For example, they usually represent environmental quality as rapidly deteriorating, which is not the case. They usually represent the earth's productive capacity as rapidly diminishing, which is not the case. They usually represent population growth as a global threat, which is not the case. And they usually represent global warming as definitely linked to human activities, which has not been established. Countering such environmental pessimism with a factual basis for environmental optimism is one of the objectives of my book.

Optimism Not Inaction

Please do not misunderstand me. Espousing optimism about the environment does not imply complacency or sweeping environmental problems under the rug. On the contrary, optimism implies a "can-do" attitude that makes success in dealing with such problems more likely. Despair and inaction are more likely to arise from pessimism about the future than from optimism. Nor does environmental optimism equate with denial. Of course, real environmental concerns are still with us. They always have been, and they always will be. As long as humans, imperfect species that we are, live together in this increasingly interdependent global village, there will be problems arising from people's activities and interactions, as well as risks arising from human adventures [33 ELR 10862] and technological innovations. The environment is no exception. Although, obviously, not all environmental problems are caused by human activities, yet humans everywhere bear a collective responsibility to care for this planet as best we can, on the basis of the scientific knowledge we have.

Without question, environmental organizations and the media have played a historically important role in bringing important information about the environment to public attention. They should continue to do so. But performing the role of environmental watchdog does not confer license to exaggerate, mislead, or strike fear in the hearts of a largely supportive public earnestly looking for information and guidance. Scientists, specialist organizations (whether representing environmental or other interests), and the media have a collective responsibility not to cross the line separating truth, however well or poorly known, from self-serving rhetoric. Unfortunately, by exaggerating many environmental problems far out of proportion to the actual or potential threats they may pose to society's future, the purveyors of doomsday rhetoric create a climate of confusion and fear about the environment among a citizenry inadequately equipped with the scientific background needed to calibrate such rhetoric.

How could people not become fearful about global warming, for example, when they are bombarded incessantly with alarming and simplistic predictions of global catastrophe from climate change that is purportedly caused by human activities? In truth, climate change is a dynamic natural phenomenon that has been occurring ever since the earth was formed millions of years ago, and the extent of human culpability for perturbing this natural system is far from established. Climate science is so extraordinarily complex that not even leading climate scientists profess to fully understand climate change. One thing that climate scientists do understand, however, is that current predictions of future climate are based almost entirely on computer simulations. Although simulations are a widely used tool in science research generally and are essential for meteorologists' short-term weather predictions, they do not provide an adequate basis for the catastrophic generalizations about future climate often made by environmental organizations and the media. In any case, it is difficult for most of us to distinguish between solid empirical evidence and speculation based on highly uncertain computer models.

On occasion, environmental rhetoric also emanates from political leaders. For example, in his book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, former Vice President Al Gore states that climate change is "the most serious threat we've ever faced," and that

our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth, remove all of the coal, petroleum, and other fossil fuels we can find, then burn them as quickly as they are found—in the process filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other pollutants—is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into vulnerable parts of the natural world.¹⁹

In contrast to the book's extreme rhetoric, Gore's actual voting record on environmental issues in the U.S. Senate was centrist.²⁰

With environmental matters, as with most others, informed discussion is the key to effective decisionmaking in a democratic society. Extreme rhetoric serves less to catalyze rational discussion of issues than it does to polarize people's views and create fear and confusion about the environment. Some scientists argue (usually in private)²¹ that creating fears about environmental risks is an effective antidote to public apathy and complacency, and that the public's environmental fears can take credit for much of their support for environmental actions. I take issue with that view and prefer to believe that a truthfully informed public is more likely than a fearful public to be supportive of meaningful responses. I would place my bets that the wisest public choices about the environment will come about from disciplined presentations by scientists, and others, of research results and from contending interpretations unembellished by exaggerations and doomsday scenarios.

When individuals and the media in the affluent countries characterize as imminent threats such issues as overpopulation, resource exhaustion, and global warming, they cause more than fear: they cause actual harm by diverting people's attention and, more important, their resources, from critical global problems that cry out for solution, especially the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the world's most formidable and pervasive environmental problem—poverty.

Environment of the Poor

People living in poverty perceive the environment very differently from the affluent. To the world's poor—several billion people—the principal environmental problems are local, not global. They are not the stuff of media headlines or complicated scientific theories. They are mundane, pervasive, and painfully obvious:

Hunger—chronic undernourishment of one billion children and adults caused not only by scarcity of food resources but by poverty, war, and government tyranny and incompetence.

Contaminated Water Supplies—a major cause of chronic disease and mortality in the Third World.

Diseases—rampant in the poorest countries. Most could be readily eradicated by modern medicine, while others, including the acquired immune deficiency [33 ELR 10863] syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in Africa, could be mitigated by effective public health programs and drug treatments available to the affluent.

Scarcity—insufficient local supplies of fuelwood and other resources, owing not to intrinsic scarcity but to generations of overexploitation and underreplenishment as part of the constant struggle for survival.

Lack of Education and Social Inequality, Especially of Women—lack of education resulting in high birth rates and increasing the difficulty for families to escape from the dungeons of poverty.

Although these deplorable environmental conditions can be attributed partly to poverty itself, the governments of many poor countries must share responsibility. Many government development policies have been conceived out of selfishness, incompetence, or maliciousness, and some have either failed to help the poor or even worsened their plight. And the very resources upon which the poor depend have in some cases been plundered through corrupt government policies. Worse yet, the constant scourge of wars between and within the world's poorest nations, as well as between rich and poor nations, has enormously exacerbated the inherent ills of poverty.

The challenges for overcoming global poverty are immense and cannot be overstated. How then can this writer be optimistic about the environmental future, given that poverty and a degraded environment are so inextricably intertwined? My optimism arises from several strongly held convictions.

First, my conviction that there is an absolute human obligation, increasingly recognized by people everywhere that the world must lift its poor out of poverty. In spite of the ubiquitous forces of selfishness, ignorance, and tyranny working to perpetuate poverty and inequality, progress is being made—haltingly and slowly, but real nonetheless. In developing countries, a child born today can expect to live 8 years longer than a child born 30 years ago. Five times more rural families have access to safe water, and average incomes have almost doubled.

Second, my conviction that the vicious and self-perpetuating cycle that connects poverty and environmental degradation can best be broken by attacking and eliminating the source of the problem—poverty.

Third, my conviction, based on history and science, that affluence and freedom are friends to the environment, indeed, that the road to affluence and freedom provides the only practical pathway to achieving a sustainable future environment.

These convictions provide the motivation and intellectual foundation for my book.

With history as our guide, we can be confident that today's poor people, as they begin climbing the economic ladder and enjoying some measures of freedom, will attend first to basic personal and family problems of sustenance and health, just as yesterday's poor did. With the increase of freedom and affluence—both are crucial—people are then likely to become motivated and increasingly able, to apply the necessary political will, economic resources, and technological ingenuity, to address environmental issues more broadly.²²

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, there is no inherent conflict between a healthy economy and environmental quality; actually, they go hand in hand. Is it not persuasive that for decades the robust economic growth of the affluent societies has coincided with their continuing environmental improvement? For the future, a major key to environmental quality, for both the emerging and industrial economies, will be development and use of innovative technologies that are both economically attractive and environmentally friendly. Fortunately, today's developing societies hold a tremendous advantage over yesterday's. They do not need to tread through the entire learning experience in each technology area; instead they can "leapfrog" over the pathways (and mistakes) of the industrial pioneers and jump straightaway to the environmentally kinder and smarter technologies of the 21st century.

There is also little basis for the fear that worldwide economic development will bring about massive environmental deterioration from the newly affluent becoming unrestrained consumers imitating the technology-oriented ways of the rich. In this century, consumerism can increasingly mean replacing old and polluting technologies with new, resource-efficient, and environmentally friendly technologies. Technological innovation and economic efficiency—the major keys to environmental quality—can be expected to take root increasingly in the developing nations as they make the transition to democracy and affluence. Supported by new technologies and management arrangements, agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing in the developing world have the potential to eventually become resource efficient and environmentally sustainable. As our knowledge increases, an increasing awareness of the importance of healthy ecosystems—a critical factor to achieving a sustainable environment—can be expected to develop among people everywhere. Gradually, both the poor and the rich will reduce the unwise use of forests and other natural resources, as all people progress toward affluence and democratic choice.

Nor is the fear justified that development will bring with it unsustainable exploitation of energy resources. Although it is clear that economic growth will bring about substantial increases in demand for energy services (such as transportation, heating, lighting, and information processing), the growth in actual energy-resource consumption can be considerably reduced by gains in efficiency of the technologies supplying both energy and energy services. (For example, compact fluorescent light bulbs, still in their infancy in terms of technical development and consumer acceptance, use only one-quarter as much electricity as standard incandescent bulbs.) The amount of fossil fuels consumed will continue to increase for several decades because of technological inertia. However in the longer term, cleaner and more efficient energy technologies will become economically accessible in the developing world, and [33 ELR 10864] these have the potential to greatly reduce the pollution problems traditionally associated with fossil fuel-fired burning. As another example, millions more vehicles will be on the road in the developing countries but they will be tomorrow's high-tech low-polluters rather than yesterday's low-tech high-polluters.

Sustainability With Affluence

The core message of my book is that an environmentally sustainable future is within reach for the entire world provided that affluence and democracy replace poverty and tyranny as the dominant human condition. 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. But in a democracy all sides must be heard. Unfortunately it is difficult today for voices of environmental optimism to be heard over the cacophony of pessimism and fearmongering emanating from some environmental groups and the media. In the name of environmentalism, their pessimistic and divisive exaggerations have become increasingly alienating and may even be counterproductive to the achievement of long-term environmental goals. Many thoughtful citizens in the industrial countries, genuinely supportive of environmental quality but bewildered about the actual state of the environment, have grown suspicious of all environmental politics, whether emanating from the Left or the Right, and now increasingly distrust the disparate pronouncements even of environmental experts. Equally disturbing, policy makers in the international donor community increasingly turn away from important science-based projects, e.g., research in genetically modified agricultural products, for fear of antagonizing powerful environmental lobbying groups.²³

Whereas there had once been grounds for confidence that the self-interests of environmental groups coincided with the public interest, today the exaggerations and doomsaying can be seen as self-serving marketing devices, in the same way that the public-relations exaggerations of private industry are understood as marketing devices. In order for that confidence to be restored, the environmental rhetoric needs to be muted, the political polarization needs to be diminished, and civility needs to be restored to the environmental dialogue. The public, overwhelmingly supportive of environmental goals, has the right to expect the highest standards of integrity from its environmental representatives—whether in government, industry, academia, or interest groups—in defining and explaining the world's environmental challenges.

My book argues that optimism about the environmental future is warranted by what we do know, even though there is much that we do not know. This optimism is based partly on the historical record of environmental improvement and current research, but even more, it recognizes the promise of sustained technological innovation catalyzed by human ingenuity in an increasingly affluent and democratic world.

Today, as part of the natural forces of history, the world is continuing its march toward a global society. Globalization will play a major role in bringing increased affluence and democratic choice to billions of people. The core issues of my book are not about globalization or the global economy, for example questions relating to the comparative incomes and working conditions of workers in the developing countries today. I take it as a given that in this century family incomes in most of the developing world will continue to move upward, as they are now doing,²⁴ even though the rate of improvement in particular times and places will appear slow and erratic.

The core debate is about the effects of affluence on the environment. The debate can be framed around my proposition that affluence promotes true environmentalism, versus the orthodox view that affluence promotes a mindless consumerism that irreparably damages the environment. Obviously, neither proposition can be scientifically "proved" since each refers to the future, but the preponderance of evidence favors the notion of a positive link between affluence and environmental quality. And the evidence also shows that we are not dealing here with a global zero-sum game, where environmental improvement in one place (rich countries) would mean a deterioration in another place (poor countries).

Poverty is the world's most critical environmental problem. Reducing poverty throughout the world should be a top priority for environmentalists. Human development should include not only freedom of economic choices but also freedom of democratic choices. And affluence and the technological innovation it enables are among the most important ingredients for achieving a future sustainable global environment.

1. A widely quoted definition of sustainable development is that given by the United Nations 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development headed by Dr. Gro Harlern Brundtland: "[Sustainable development is growth] that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

2. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came into being on December 2, 1970, the first new line agency formed by the Nixon Administration. The first Administrator was William D. Ruckelshaus.

3. Bruce N. Ames & Lois S. Gold, Paracelsus to Parascience: The Environmental Cancer Distraction, 447 MUTATION RES. 3 (2000); Bruce N. Ames & Lois S. Gold, Environmental Pollution, Pesticides, and the Prevention of Cancer: Misconceptions, 11 FED'N AM. SOCIETIES EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY J. 1041 (1997).

4. RACHEL L. CARSON, SILENT SPRING (1962).

5. NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, COMMITTEE ON RESEARCH IN THE LIFE SCIENCES OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY, THE LIFE SCIENCES: RECENT PROGRESS AND APPLICATION TO HUMAN AFFAIRS (1970).

6. Before the ban was ordered, the judge who had conducted hearings on DDT concluded that:

DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man …. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife …. The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.

7. Environmental organizations including WWF, Greenpeace, and the Physicians for Social Responsibility urged the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to outlaw DDT worldwide. Many international organizations, including the Malaria Foundation, opposed the DDT ban, and an open letter protesting the ban was signed by 350 world experts in malaria, including Nobelist Joshua Lederberg. At the UNEP's December 2000 meeting, 122 nations approved a Persistent Organic Pollutant Treaty that excluded DDT from the ban and provided for continued use of DDT "for public health purposes."

8. A.J. LIEBERMAN & S.C. KWON, FACTS VERSUS FEAR: A REVIEW OF THE GREATEST UNFOUNDED HEALTH SCARES OF RECENT TIMES (3d ed. 1998); N. Krieger et al., Breast Cancer and Serum Organochlorines: A Prospective Study Among White, Black, and Asian Women, 86 J. NAT'L CANCER INST. 589 (1994).

9. M.L. Scott et al., Effects of PCBs, DDT, and Mercury Compounds Upon Egg Production, Hatchability, and Shell Quality in Chickens and Japanese Quail, 54 POULTRY SCI. 350 (1975); W.C. Krantz et al., Organochlorine and Heavy Metal Residues in Bald Eagle Eggs, 4 PESTICIDES MONITORING J. 136 (1970); W. Hazeltine, Disagreements on Why Brown Pelican Eggs Are Thin, 239 NATURE 410 (1972); E.S. Chang & E.L.R. Stokstad, Effect of Chlorinated Hydrocarbons on Shell Gland Carbonic Anhydrose and Egg-Shell Thickness in Japanese Quail, 54 POULTRY SCI. 3 (1975). See also the list of references compiled by J.G. Edwards and S. Milloy, 100 Things You Should Know About DDT, at http://www.junkscience.com (last visited Sept. 12, 2003).

10. F.L. BEEBE, THE MYTH OF THE VANISHING PEREGRINE (1971).

11. UNITED KINGDOM DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE, ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON TOXIC CHEMICALS, REVIEW OF ORGANOCHLORINE PESTICIDES IN BRITAIN (Wilson Report) (1969).

12. GARRY WILLS, A NECESSARY EVIL: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT (1999).

13. This expression was taken from the title of the book by E.F. Schumacher, SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: ECONOMICS AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED (1973).

14. In fact, the primary causes of the widespread gasoline shortages in the winter of 1973 to 1974 were a poorly functioning gasoline distribution system and consumer panic buying and hoarding.

15. Green Party Platform 2000, ratified at the Green Party National Convention, June 2000, at http://www.greeninformation.com/platformpage1.htm (last visited Sept. 5, 2003).

16. WWF, If There Were Only 500 Days to Save the Planet, What Would You Do?, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 21, 1998, at A19.

17. Sierra Club global warming Internet website, at http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/dangerousexperiment (last visited Sept. 8, 2003).

18. Union of Concerned Scientists, World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, at http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/page.cfm?pageID=1009 (last visited Sept. 8, 2003).

19. ALBERT GORE JR., EARTH IN THE BALANCE: ECOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT 234 (1992).

20. Gregg Easterbrook, Green Surprise?, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Sept. 2000, at 17.

21. To their credit, a few scientists have publicly confronted this issue, for example this candid statement by climatologist Stephen H. Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands],] and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have …. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Jonathan Schell, Our Fragile Earth, DISCOVER, Oct. 1989, at 47.

22. This kind of process is sometimes described by economists in terms of an Environmental Kuznets Curve, and several economic studies have attempted to quantify the various stages of economic growth and environmental quality. See, e.g., Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, Economic Growth and the Environment, 110 Q. J. ECON. 353 (1995); T.M. Selden & D.J. Song, Environmental Quality and Development: Is There a Kuznets Curve for Air Pollution?, 27 J. ENVTL. ECON. & MGMT. 147 (1994).

23. N.E. Borlaug, Feeding a World of 10 Billion People: The Miracle Ahead, Lecture given at de Montfort University, Leicester, U.K. (May 31, 1997).

24. WORLD BANK, POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE WORLD BANK: PROGRESS IN FISCAL 1996 AND 1997 (1998).