Letters.

Earth Day in the Balance

I was delighted to read Ronald Bailey's "Earth Day: Then and Now" (May). I was teaching high school economics during the original Earth Day. Caught up in the hubris of the 1970 Earth Day, I was relieved of teaching duties for a period of time to develop a senior high school course in environmental economics. I fell hook, line, and sinker for the scenarios of Ehrlich, Commoner, and other doomsters.

I wrote and taught the course for three years until it was quite clear they were very wrong--that as a matter of fact the earth's store of proven resources was increasing rather than being depleted. It was also true that the wealth creation from increased production was contributing to improving the environment. I decided to drop the course and roll a few of its good ideas into my economics course.

Walter J. Nelson

Middlebury, VT

I was puzzled by Ronald Bailey's "Earth Day: Then and Now." He tried to show that the state of the environment is improving yet overlooked some important points, such as the effects of increased population on food production and of increased food production on the environment. He says the rates of extinction, deforestation, and population growth are decreasing. To me, these things mean not good news, merely less of the bad news.

What are these environmental gains, preservation, and enrichment Mr. Bailey speaks of? The only thing the environment seems to need to be "preserved" against is our interference. The environment is not a garden, to be "enriched" by human weeding and pruning, but a living system that humans are part of. And what time period is it in which "the planet's future has never looked better"? The time since the Industrial Revolution? Since the Ice Age? Since humans evolved?

Overall, the article gave me a slightly better understanding of the state of the environment and slightly more hope for the future. But I just can't bring myself yet to don a nice happy smiley face for the occasion.

Rachel Gatwood

Silver Spring, MD

Libertarian articles about the environment always seem to involve logging, ranching, fishing, or perhaps water rights to the Colorado River. For most of us, though, the first environmental worries that come to mind are dirty air and dirty water. I have read libertarian publications for years and have encountered (or can extrapolate) plausible nongovernmental solutions to just about every public policy issue I can think of except for these ultimate "tragedies of the commons."

Ronald Bailey does not really topple his own straw man assertion that "doomsters will daim whatever environmental progress has been made over the past 30 years is only a result of the warnings that they sounded." Surely on at least some issues "they were right all along" in bringing enough attention to bear on environmental problems to quicken the pace of their resolution. Mr. Bailey acknowledges, for example, that "part of the answer [to air quality improvement] lies in emissions targets set by federal, state, and local governments." In the face of continuing opposition from industry, politicians didn't dream those up on their own.

Cost-effectively or not, as rapidly as possible or not, correctly targeted or not, government prodded by zealots has cleaned up our environment--an outcome that most of us, presumably including Mr. Bailey. would agree is worthwhile. My challenge for Mr. Bailey or anyone else: What is the libertarian alternative?

Lloyd Andrew

Arnold, MD

Ronald Bailey's glowing account of the improved state of the environment should make everyone feel better. For some reason it doesn't.

I'd like to invite Mr. Bailey to visit Wyoming, still supposedly a pristine state with a population of less than 500,000 people. We could start with an outing to any one of our plains lakes, but the shoreline may be littered with trash. Or how about going into a nearby mountain range, if we could even find a parking place at the trailhead parking lot. Of course there will be large groups of hikers trekking up the trail. No visit would be complete without a trip to Jackson Hole, with its bumper-to-bumper traffic and an art gallery or souvenir store on every corner. The once-beautiful hills above town are dotted with houses. (I believe single-family dwellings are currently limited to 10,000 square feet.)

We have too many people and not enough land. And solitude, which is difficult to quantify, gets to be a rarer and rarer commodity. All of Ronald Bailey's numbers are nice. But why do I still have a hollow feeling when I see what is happening to the environment?

Lew Vavra

Laramie, WY

Ronald Bailey's article is highly irresponsible journalism in view of the worsening ecological crises abundantly documented by Worldwatch Institute and most other mainstream environmental organizations, world governments, and independent researchers.

If, as Mr. Bailey seems to suggest at one point, Lester Brown and Worldwatch aren't good sources of environmental data, then why do a host of publishers print their annual State of the World in some 30 languages? And why are its books used as texts in more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities? And why have over i million copies been sold?

I refer specifically to some of Mr. Bailey's outrageous claims, such as that "there's a broad consensus that exposure to synthetic chemicals, even pesticides, does not seem to be a problem," "documented animal extinctions peaked in the 1930s," "global warming is not a serious problem," "increased wealth, population, and technological development [automatically?] preserve and enrich the environment," etc.

Does he really believe that nuclear weapons research, the nuclear reactors in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, plutonium, asbestos, PCBs, toxic waste, polluting giant industrial...