Earth Day, Then and Now

The planet's future has never looked better. Here's why.

Ronald Bailey from the May 2000 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

With regards to technology, Ehrlich and other activists often claim that economists simply don't understand the simple facts of ecology. But it's the doomsters who need to update their economics--things have changed since the appearance of Thomas Malthus' 200-year-old An Essay on the Principle of Population, the basic text that continues to underwrite much apocalyptic rhetoric. Malthus hypothesized that while population increases geometrically, food and other resources increased arithmetically, leading to a world in which food was always in short supply. Nowadays, we understand that wealth is not created simply by combining land and labor. Rather, technological innovations greatly raise positive outputs in all sorts of ways while minimizing pollution and other negative outputs.

Indeed, if Ehrlich wants to improve his sorry record of predictions and his understanding of how to protect the natural world, he should walk across campus to talk with his Stanford University colleague, economist Paul Romer. "New Growth Theory," devised by Romer and others, shows that wealth springs from new ideas and new recipes. Romer sums it up this way: "Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply." In other words, new ideas and technological recipes grow exponentially at a rate much faster than population does.

"I'm scared," confessed Paul Ehrlich in the 1970 Earth Day issue of Look. "I have a 14 year old daughter whom I love very much. I know a lot of young people, and their world is being destroyed. My world is being destroyed. I'm 37 and I'd kind of like to live to be 67 in a reasonably pleasant world, and not die in some kind of holocaust in the next decade." Ehrlich didn't die in a holocaust, and the world is far more pleasant than he thought it would be. It is probably too much to hope that abashed humility will strike him and he'll desist in bedeviling the world with his dire and consistently wrong predictions. He's like a reverse Cassandra --Cassandra made true prophecies but no one would listen to her. Ehrlich makes false prophecies and everyone listens to him.

There's much to celebrate on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. Indeed, one of the chief things to get happy about is that the doomsters were so wrong. Civilization didn't collapse, hundreds of millions didn't die in famines, pesticides didn't cause epidemics of cancer, and the air and water didn't get dirtier in the industrialized countries.

On the occasions when they admit things have gotten better, doomsters will claim whatever environmental progress has been made over the past 30 years is only a result of the warnings that they sounded. One of the more annoying characteristics of activists such as Ehrlich and Lester Brown is the way in which these prophets of doom get out ahead of a parade that has already started. When things get better, they claim that it's only because people heeded their warnings, not because of longstanding trends and increased efficiencies. As a result, there is always the danger that governments may actually enact their policies, thereby stifling technological progress and economic growth--and making the world worse off. Then the doomsters would be able to say "I told you so." So good or bad, they get to claim that they were right all along.

What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030? Here are my predictions: As the International Food Policy Research Institute projects, we will be able to feed the world's additional numbers and to provide them with a better diet. Because they are ultimately political in nature, poverty and malnutrition will not be eliminated, but economic growth will make many people in the developing world much better off. Technological improvements in agriculture will mean less soil erosion, better management of freshwater supplies, and higher productivity crops. Life expectancy in the developing world will likely increase from 65 years to 73 years, and probably more; in the First World, it will rise to more than 80 years. Metals and mineral prices will be even lower than they are today. The rate of deforestation in the developing world will continue to slow down and forest growth in the developed economies will increase.

Meanwhile, as many developing countries become wealthier, they will start to pass through the environmental-transition thresholds for various pollutants, and their air and water quality will begin to improve. Certainly air and water quality in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other developed countries will be even better than it is today. Enormous progress will be made on the medical front, and diseases like AIDS and malaria may well be finally conquered. As for climate change, concern may be abating because the world's energy production mix is shifting toward natural gas and nuclear power. There is always the possibility that a technological breakthrough--say, cheap, efficient, non-polluting fuel cells--could radically reshape the energy sector. In any case a richer world will be much better able to cope with any environmental problems that might crop up.

One final prediction, of which I'm most absolutely certain: There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future--and the present--never looked so bleak.