By Steve Levy
Last month, another Earth Day came and went. A few articles I picked up on that were published that week underscore that the debate on the issue continues to fester.
Two diametrically opposed articles in particular caught my eye.
The first was from a science teacher who wrote an opinion piece to Newsday on how important it is to teach, and even warn, our children of the environmental apocalypse approaching.
The second was a New York Post op-ed from John Stossel, the former network consumer affairs reporter, which chastised the extremists in the green movement who have been unnecessarily scaring the populace with doomsday predictions that never materialize.
Both sides have some legitimate arguments, but it’s Stossel’s that has been proven more accurate over the years.
Stossel echoes Bjorn Lomborg, an international environmentalist, who has criticized the extremists whom he believes take a dangerous anti-prosperity road in seeking to mitigate what are real concerns about global warming.
Lomborg counter-intuitively notes that poverty is the biggest driver of carbon pollution. Less wealthy nations are going to use the cheapest fuels available. Not just coal and oil, but wood, cardboard, and even dung. More economically viable nations, such as the U.S., have actually been reducing carbon output by substituting natural gas for dirtier oil and coal, and by implementing newer, cleaner technologies.
It’s that advancement in technology that has helped reduce river, stream and air pollution in the United States since the first Earth Day in 1970.
Employing draconian economic slowdowns espoused by many of the Luddite environmental extremists will cause one billion people to fall back into poverty, thereby increasing carbon output, and unnecessarily causing more human misery.
Both Stossel and Lomborg point to the numerous dire warnings sent out by the extremists over the last several decades that turned out to be bunk. They include:
- In 2009, Al Gore, while collecting a Nobel Prize, said there was “a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap … during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years!” (Didn’t happen.)
- Polar bears are becoming extinct. (Stossel notes: “In the 1960s, 17,000-19,000 was the highest of three scientific estimates of polar bear population. Today, there are about 26,000 polar bears. Yet the Environmental Defense Fund collected almost a quarter-billion dollars from gullible donors running ads that say: ‘Your support can help Environmental Defense Fund save the polar bears!”’)
- President Barack Obama said, “Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food!” (Food production is at its highest levels.)
- In 2004, The Guardian wrote, “A secret report … warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas … by 2020!” (Didn’t happen.)
- Climate change is leading to more weather-related deaths. (Lomborg notes: “Over the past century, deaths from climate-related disasters — such as storms, floods, droughts and wildfires — have declined by a remarkable 98%. This is not because the environment has remained static, but because human innovation and adaptation have made us more resilient.”)
- NBC News claimed, “Climate change, creating infernos larger than ever!” Bunk. (U.S. Forest Service data shows fires burned much more in the 1930s.)
- According to National Public Radio, “Scientists Say the Great Barrier Reef is Officially Dying.” (“2024 actually saw record coverage for the Great Barrier Reef,” says Heartland Institute fellow Linnea Lueken. Between 2019 and 2024, coral coverage more than doubled.)
- Years ago, extremists suggested climate change would severely impact coffee production. (But since the 90s, coffee production there rose more than 200%.)
- The Glacier National Park in the Northwest had to remove a sign that years earlier warned visitors that climate change would result in the ice caps on its mountains to be melted away by 2020. (Didn’t happen.)
Despite all this, the science teacher felt the need to scare her students to take action to save our planet or we’d be doomed. That’s most unfortunate. And she’s not the only teacher doing so. One of my grandchildren came home one day from school very concerned about how to keep polar bears from being wiped out because the polar ice caps were melting away. Fortunately, his teachers were dead wrong in what they were telling him.
When I was in sixth grade at the time of the first Earth Day, I remember my teacher telling us how we had to worry that we were over-populating the planet and outpacing the ability to produce food. It would shortly lead to mass worldwide starvation, we were told.
Fortunately, that teacher was also wrong. She did not factor in technological advances that dramatically increased food output.
Stossel hit the nail on the head by noting that one of the reasons for the scare tactics is that it raises big bucks for the extremists. Nothing brings in the dough more than showing a cute and cuddly baby polar bear with its sad eyes, trapped and floating away on a small, melting piece of ice.
It’s the same tactic that power-hungry politicians used during the Covid crisis. Terrify the people that they’re going to die, but tell them that you can save them. If only you will give them unbridled authority to control your life, as well as giving them unbelievable wads of cash out of your pocket.
Scare tactics work for those organizations, but they hurt the overall cause and lead us into making poor policy choices.
Lomborg is absolutely correct that the way to deal with the climate change problem is to invest in technological advances that will encourage poor and developing nations around the world to use cleaner, more affordable sources of energy. The answer is not to hamper the world’s economy, nor to scare our children to death.
The air, rivers and lakes in America are cleaner today than they were in 1970 and that’s because of innovation. Perhaps in 55 years down the road, the environmental conditions around the world will be significantly improved, while seeing a dramatic enhancement of quality of life and average income due to advanced technologies.
Let’s stop scaring our kids and start directing our policymakers to focus on innovations and technological advancements rather than overtaxing us and raising our electric rates through the roof to support mostly ineffective remedies.
Steve Levy is Executive Director of the Center for Cost Effective Government, a fiscally conservative think tank. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.”