Environmental scares more likely to PRODUCE disasters than prevent them

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund says if current trends continue, the Earth will be too small to sustain humanity. "Pressures on the Earth's natural systems are both predictable and dire," says the Living Planet Report 2006. But if current trends continue, such environmentalist predictions will continue to be wrong-and dangerous.

Environmentalists have been making such wrongheaded-anti-growth, anti-technology-predictions since Rachel Carson launched the movement with her 1962 book "Silent Spring." She warned of an impending cancer epidemic unless we stopped using many manmade chemicals- particularly the pesticide DDT. It didn't happen. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich warned in 1969 that American life expectancy could be reduced to only 42 years by the 1980s because of an epidemic of cancer caused by modern chemicals and pesticides. It didn't happen. In the 1970s, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors published the book "Limits to Growth" warning that if policymakers didn't limit growth, the world would run out of resources and suffer economic collapse. They even developed an elaborate computer model to prove their point. But it didn't happen.

In the real world, resources increased and economies expanded, particularly in places that allowed the most economic freedom. There, human ingenuity produced wealth, discovered new resources and developed technologies that improved human well-being. Unfortunately, growth has not been as great as possible because it is limited by at least one thing-foolish anti-growth policies advocated by environmentalists. We could see greater growth if commerce was not limited by government impediments to free trade, bans on vital chemicals and other technologies, regulation on energy sources and campaigns against agricultural biotechnology.

Consider a few examples, starting with the most obvious. Beginning in the 1970s, regulators around the world followed Rachel Carson's suggestion that lawmakers ban the pesticide DDT, once used to control malaria, because they figured bed nets and other measures were enough. After millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of people falling sick every year for a couple decades, World Health Organization regulators and officials finally decided DDT should be used to curb the death toll. Tragically, millions had to die before officials realized the Greens were wrong.

In his book, "The Green Wave," environmental policy expert Bonner Cohen highlights yet another tragedy produced by policymakers following the Greens' advice. This time, they heeded the activists' fearmongering related to genetically modified food rather than listen to scientific experts around the world that have deemed such food safe. In 2002, Zambia and Zimbabwe's governments locked up warehouses full of U.S. genetically modified corn donated by the U.S. government to help feed people during a famine in these two nations. The reason? "We would rather starve than get something toxic," exclaimed Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa at the World Summit on Sustainable Development that same year. But the starving citizens at home didn't agree; they eventually broke into the warehouses and seized the corn. Unfortunately, fear generated about the safety of biotech food promises to hinder its development and undermine efforts to increase food production in nations where many people starve.

Other examples hit closer to home. New York Times science writer Gina Kolata detailed another case in which lawmakers followed dangerous environmentalist advice. U.S. officials banned use of mercury in blood pressure equipment because environmentalists claimed the mercury was dangerous to public health. Activists and regulators assumed substitute technology would work just as well. Yet, it doesn't. There are cases in which faulty equipment led to faulty readings and improper administration of medication. People have needlessly suffered strokes as a result. Yet regulators have not backed away from those policies.

The WWF says the American way of life is unsustainable. In reality, it's the WWF advice and that of many other anti-growth, anti-technology groups that should be considered unsustainable. After all, if any of the WWF dire predictions come true, it's likely to be a result of their foolish anti-growth policies.

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SURPRISE, SURPRISE: EUROPE "OVERPLAYED ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH RISKS"

The European commission has effectively admitted exaggerating environmental impacts on human health in an action plan launched two years ago. In a new paper evaluating the 2004 "Scale" environmental and health action plan it concludes that negative impacts are "relatively limited" in the context of overall health risks.

The decision to use this phrase was politically sensitive, officials have told ENDS. Scale was the brainchild of former environment commissioner Margot Wallstroem, now responsible for communications in the EU executive. Insiders say that the initiative lost much of its political momentum almost as soon as she was replaced by Stavros Dimas. When the action plan was launched, the commission insisted there was a "strong link between poor health and environmental problems" and estimated that one-sixth of all childhood deaths and diseases were due to environmental factors

Two months later, in the run-up to a ministerial conference, the World health organisation estimated that one-third of child deaths in Europe were caused by environmental factors. A commission official told ENDS that this latest analysis shows that environment-health issues are "less alarming than we thought when Scale was first launched". The official admitted that the extent of the problem "may have been exaggerated" under Margot Wallstroem.

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MEETING KYOTO TARGETS WILL COST CANADA $20 BILLION

Meeting Kyoto targets will cost the Canadian economy a third of its output or force Ottawa to spend $20-billion by 2012 to buy international credits, says one of the country's leading business groups. Jayson Myers, chief economist for the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, will lay out this scenario today before the House of Commons environment committee.

His appearance comes as the all-party committee studies a Liberal MP's private member's bill aimed at compelling the Conservative government to adhere to Canada's obligations under the Kyoto climate-change accord. "It is a reality check, yes, and it is for all parties," Mr. Myers said in an interview. "If governments continue to develop policy based on targets that cannot be met, the experience shows that leads to counterproductive policies."

Under Kyoto, Canada agreed to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels, which stood at 599 megatonnes, during the 2008-to-2012 period. Canada was 27% above 1990 levels in 2004, and Mr. Myers expects the country to be 30% above 1990 levels once 2005 data are calculated.

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has been criticized for saying Canada cannot meet its Kyoto obligations. The NDP, for instance, has said the government must adhere to the Kyoto targets in exchange for its support for the Conservative environmental legislation. The government's Clean Air Act, which the three opposition parties oppose, is set to go to a special all-party committee. It is expected the opposition will attempt to rewrite the legislation.

Mr. Myers said that since 1990, Canada's carbon output has increased by an average of 1% less than the rate of economic growth. He has calculated that technological progress in reducing emission intensity would have to accelerate by eight times, or 700%, during the next five years to meet Kyoto targets. "You would have to have widespread replacement of energy sources, widespread improvement in vehicles currently on the road, and widespread replacement of existing industrial machinery. It's not going to happen in five years," Mr. Myers said. As a result, only two options remain for legislators: Reduce economic output by 30%, or roughly $300-billion, by shutting down factories and taking vehicles off the road; or purchase the equivalent of about $5-billion a year, between 2008 to 2012, of emission credits as allowed under Kyoto, for a total of $20-billion. The $20-billion figure is based on buying enough credits for each year between 2008 and 2012 to make up Canada's expected shortfall, of 215.7 megatonnes, at an estimated cost of $20 per tonne.

Under the former Liberal government's environment plan, up to $5-billion was set aside to purchase credits for the 2008 to 2012 period. Mr. Myers warned the $20 per tonne figure -- used by the Auditor General's environment watchdog in her recent report -- may be low. "Canada is not on alone in being unable to meet the Kyoto targets," he said. "So if everybody is serious about this, everybody will be buying emission credits. So the demand for these credits is going to be much higher than supply and prices will go up."

Mr. Myers and others have backed Ms. Ambrose's claim that Canada cannot meet Kyoto. Federal documents prepared this year indicated Canada could not meet the targets and it was up to the government to determine "whether or when to acknowledge" this fact. He said he expects to be attacked by pro-Kyoto MPs. "But I hope the MPs realize that if we are not going to jeopardize economic growth, the only way we are going to realize emissions reductions is by the accelerating technological process -- either through better energy efficiency or by developing alternative sources of energy.

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AWKWARD NEWS: CO2 EMISSIONS STILL RISING

Despite the fact that global temperature has been stable since 1998. Correlation does not prove causation but lack of correlation does DISprove causation

Global efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have had little impact with the rate of emissions more than doubling since the 1990s. CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research scientist, Mike Raupach, said that from 2000 to 2005, the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions was more than 2.5 per cent per year. "In the 1990s it was less than one per cent per year." In 2005, 7.9 billion tonnes of carbon were emitted into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This was near the high end of the fossil fuel use scenarios considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said Dr Raupach, who is also co-chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international scientific collaboration to study the carbon cycle. "On our current path, it will be difficult to reign in carbon emissions enough to stabilise the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at 450 ppm," he said.

While China had the highest current growth rate in emissions, its emissions per person were still below the global average and its accumulated contribution since the start of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago was only five per cent of the global total. By comparison, the US and Europe have each contributed more than 25 per cent of accumulated global emissions.

Paul Fraser, also from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, said the findings were supported by measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the air, which grew by two parts per million in 2005. This was the fourth year in a row of above-average growth, Dr Fraser said. "To have four years in a row of above-average carbon dioxide growth is unprecedented." The two scientists presented their latest findings at a meeting at Tasmania's Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, which is run by CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Dr Fraser said the 30-year record of air collected at Cape Grim, showed growth rates of carbon dioxide were slightly more than one part per million in the early 1980s, but in recent years carbon dioxide levels has increased at almost twice this rate. "The trend over recent years suggests the growth rate is accelerating, signifying that fossil fuels are having an impact on greenhouse gas concentrations in a way we haven't seen in the past."

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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