GREENIES LACK CREDIBILITY

From Kristoff in the NYT

""The Death of Environmentalism" resonated with me. I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement's broad aims, but I'm now skeptical of the movement's "I Have a Nightmare" speeches.

In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.

When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: "Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend ... but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."

This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

Likewise, environmentalists were right to warn about population pressures, but they overestimated wildly. Paul Ehrlich warned in "The Population Bomb" that "the battle to feed humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." On my bookshelf is an even earlier book, "Too Many Asians," with a photo of a mass of Indians on the cover. The book warns that the threat from relentlessly multiplying Asians is "even more grave than that of nuclear warfare."

Jared Diamond, author of the fascinating new book "Collapse," which shows how some civilizations in effect committed suicide by plundering their environments, says false alarms aren't a bad thing. Professor Diamond argues that if we accept false alarms for fires, then why not for the health of our planet? But environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise.

At one level, we're all environmentalists now. The Pew Research Center found that more than three-quarters of Americans agree that "this country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment." Yet support for the environment is coupled with a suspicion of environmental groups. "The Death of Environmentalism" notes that a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be "extremists." There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field.

The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed.

Given the uncertainties and trade-offs, priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration's plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That's an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren.

So it's critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I'm afraid we don't have one.





ANWR'S OIL AND MICHAEL JACKSON'S NEVERLAND

ANWR is 16 MILLION acres. That's big.

The footprint for the STATE OF THE ART, WORLD-CLASS proposed oil drilling facility in ANWR is 2,000 acres. That's sounds big, but it isn't as big as it sounds. That's 1/8000ths of ANWR'S total area!

PUT IT INTO PERSPECTIVE: The NEVERLAND RANCH - Michael Jackson's ranch in California is 2744 acres - that's about 40% BIGGER than the proposed oil facility. (And what allegedly goes on in Neverland is more disgusting than what goes on in any an oil facility anywhere!)

By the way: Canada - our #1 foreign source for oil - currently extracts oil from an area in Canada right near ANWR, and just like ANWR - with the approval of the Native Americans who live there. If they can do it safely, so can Americans! ALSO: if Norwegians and Brits can safely extract oil from the dangerous North Sea, then we Americans can certainly extract oil safely from good old terra-firma!

And to those who claim that the ONE MILLION BARRELS P/D that ANWR might produce is a paltrey amount which not worth the risk I say: When Iraq's oil production went UP to one-million barrels it was an important and positive milestone for Iraq and the global oil markets. Now, Iraq produces 2 million barrels a day. If ANWR produces 50% of what Iraq produces, then I'd say we were doing ALL RIGHT! The U.S. Geological Survey, updated May 2000, estimated that the area might contain up to 16 billion barrels of oil — five years of U.S. imports. That's nothing to sneeze at!

THEREFORE: Opposition to drilling in ANWR is irrational. Which is probably why it fits right in with Leftist policies.

More HERE (facts from the DOI), and HERE (why Canadian Native Americans favor drilling for oil in Canada, but oppose it in the USA).

(Post lifted from Astute Blogger)

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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