CORRECTION APPENDED
Environmentalism is dead; long live the environment!
This pronouncement might seem a touch premature, especially to
the 500 million people who will celebrate the 37th Earth Day this
weekend collective ot dead yet †wheeze. However, these numbers mask
the growing irrelevance of the environmentalist movement. Having lost
its credibility with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological
ballast, the movement must develop a moderate discourse while
challenging its previous assumptions and outdated theories.
The contemporary environmentalist movement faces a stark
choice: change tactics or fade into irrelevance. Over the past decade,
environmentalists have achieved few political victories and utterly
failed to influence the general public. As indicated by a recent MIT
study, the public knows little about environmental problems, and cares
less. Out of 21 national and international issues, Americans ranked
environmental problems 13th, well below terrorism, taxes, crime, and
drugs.
Alarmism⁴he environmental movement basic strategyas led
to this dead end. Since Rachel Carson ⁓ilent Spring, †the movement
has been dominated by doomsday scenarios. Even on the first Earth Day
in 1970, biologist George Wald predicted that ivilization will end
within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken. †Fortunately, such apocalyptic forecasts have repeatedly proven to be wrong.
Take biologist Paul Ehrlich popular Malthusian broadside,
⁔he Population Bomb. †Farsighted Ehrlich predicted that a ⁰opulation
will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in
food supplies we make, †causing world-wide famine and the death of
undreds of millions of people †annually from starvation. Oopsn the
subsequent 35 years, increased agricultural productivity exceeded
population growth and the total amount of cultivated land barely
increased.
Ehrlich is hardly alone; the environmental movement has
spawned a remarkable number of would-be Cassandras. Between 1970 and
