THE REAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

WHY POVERTY, NOT AFFLUENCE, IS THE ENVIRONMENT’S NUMBER ONE ENEMY

JACK M. HOLLANDER

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS                       2003

PART 1

 

Preface

The draft of this book was completed barely a month before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, thrust an entirely new set of problems and priorities onto the world stage. Although little has changed in the issues that motivated me to write this book – the impacts of poverty and affluence on the environment and the public’s misunderstandings about resource and environmental issues – people’s perceptions of these issues shifted dramatically, perhaps irreversibly, on September 11. Suddenly we in the affluent countries felt less insulated from the worldwide tragedy of poverty, and we now understand more clearly that poverty is a root cause, though certainly not the only cause, of the hopelessness and humiliation that begets acts of violence against fellow humans. This book makes the case that poverty is also linked to violence against the environment and that a global transition from poverty to affluence is essential to bringing about an environmentally sustainable world.

• For decades the public has been exposed mostly to the pessimistic view, a view fueled by a constant stream of bad news and doomsday predictions about resources and the environment emanating from individuals, environmental groups, and the media.
• Where there are strong differences in viewpoints among experts – certainly the case in environmental matters – which experts can one believe?
• This book was written for the nonexpert public, to provide an antidote to the ubiquitous environmental exaggeration and to argue that extreme pessimism about the environment is not justified by science, by economics, by demographics, or by history.

 

Introduction: A Crisis of Pessimism

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?

• Especially jarring is the implication in most of these stories that you and I are the enemy – that our affluent lifestyles are chiefly responsible for upsetting nature’s balance.
• 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.
• I am 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 book presents such an optimistic perspective.
• In my judgment, people are not the enemy of the environment. Nor is affluence the enemy. Affluence fosters environmentalism.
• Affluence is a key ingredient for ensuring a livable and sustainable environment for the future.

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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• They will become environmentalists.

One of the great success stories of the recent half-century is 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 five 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 moment in the past.

• 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.
• They have come about because the majority of citizens in this and every other democratic society demands a clean and livable environment.
• 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.
• The central argument of this book 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.
• The bleak outlook of environmental orthodoxy has arisen during the period in which affluent societies have been making their greatest environmental and economic gains.

 

The birth of environmentalism

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 was America’s first professional forester, Gifford Pinchot.
• Drawing on the leadership of such individuals, some of the world’s foremost environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund, were formed, and they played a critical role during those early decades in winning public support for nature conservation.
• In contrast, Americans generally tolerated urban pollution for another half-century. During the Great Depression years of the 1930s, smoke in the air meant food on the table for those who had jobs.
• With the coming of World War II, the economic situation abruptly improved, but the environment did not.
• 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. The pollution, unfortunately only worsened.
• By the 1950s high levels of urban pollution that had been tolerated before and during the war became unacceptable to more and more Americans.
• All over the country, people began demanding cleaner air, water, and land. Also proliferating during this period were NGOs that focused on environmental issues.
• Similar activities and initiatives were occurring in all the industrial countries of the noncommunist world, as a result of which thousands of environmental interest groups and NGOs function throughout the world today.

 

Environmental science

• Advances in analytical techniques allowed environmental chemists to detect miniscule amounts of foreign substances in air, water, and food, down to the parts-per-million or even parts-per-billion level.
• In most cases little or no credible evidence has been found linking trace contaminants (toxins) to adverse health effects at the very low doses typically encountered.
• Biologist Rachel Carson’s enormously popular book Silent Spring eloquently warned of the potential harm to humans and animals from trace residues of the pesticide DDT.

In 1970 a report by the U.S. 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, than otherwise would have been inevitable.” So great was the influence of Silent Spring, however, that the use of DDT in the United States was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972, 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 interventions of many scientists, however, these efforts have thus far not been successful.

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