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Global Warning - Jul 6, 2004 - Printable Version
- Crying Wolf
by Robin Buckallew
Last week, I was reading Molly Ivins. You know Molly? A progressive from Austin, TX. Yes, you heard me right, Texas. There actually are some progressives there - they haven't yet managed to herd them all up and get rid of them, in spite of the best efforts of Tom DeLay. Anyway, Molly was expounding on a favorite theme of the media (both liberal and conservative, in case you're interested) - the amount of times the environmentalists have been wrong. This is known to all and sundry as "crying wolf". The environmentalists are "crying wolf" when they warn us about the consequences of our own actions. They are "crying wolf" when they point out that species are going extinct, that the climate is changing, that the population is exploding, that we're throwing away too much styrofoam, and that chemicals are bad for our health. It is pointed out ad nauseum how many times these scientists have made mistakes. Why are the progressives mad about this? For the same reason the conservatives are - it costs people money to change the way we do things. The progressives are mad because it costs the taxpayers money; the conservatives are mad because it causes the corporations money. Of course, they are right - scientists have made some mistakes. Ecology is not an exact science. It is predicated on models. It is not possible for conditions to be simulated in a laboratory which include all the variables faced in nature, and to run experimental and control groups. We have to deal with what is handed to us in the wild, and make extrapolations from short term data to long term trends. There are bound to be mistakes. But now, let's take a little dose of reality. I know, it hurts. But it has to be done. And believe me, this hurts me more than it does you (I know, I never believed that one when I was a kid, either). Reality is a funny thing. It has a way of changing just when you least expect it. And when you're not looking, it is liable to come right up behind you and kick you in the, well, you know all the euphemisms, so I won't use one here. And these days, reality is changing more rapidly than anyone can predict. And we hide our heads in the sand and refuse to believe that anything has changed.
One of the favorite kicking posts for the folks who say we are "crying wolf" is Paul Ehrlich. If you haven't read Paul Ehrlich, I can tell you that his earlier works read like a science fiction novel if ever there was one. Total gloom and doom, world starvation, shortages of water, all leading to extreme political unrest. This was supposed to happen by the turn of the century. But it didn't. Ehrlich looks like a fool. But guess what? A new report on global climate change has been released, predicting total gloom and doom, world starvation, shortages of water, all leading to political unrest. This is predicted to happen by...2010 to 2015. And the authors of this report? The Pentagon. That's right, the Pentagon. Not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking. But often the purveyors of some really state of the art science. Perhaps Ehrlich was right, just a little early in his predictions. Only time will tell...and we don't have very long to wait. The evidence for environmentalists crying wolf is usually based on the fact that there is inadequate evidence to establish that they were right. When a practice or a chemical is banned, it usually happens because there is enough evidence to sow the seeds of doubt. The very banning usually causes the testing process to come to an end, long before a significant body of work is produced to support or disprove the hypothesis of harm. Also, almost all testing is centered around cancer causing properties, so many effects go totally undetected by people who fail to understand that a chemical that doesn't cause cancer might still generate significant harm in many other ways (for instance, nitrates don't cause cancer, but they do cause "blue baby" syndrome). Many cases in which the environmentalists are accused of crying wolf are cases where the jury is, in essence, still out.
On the other side of the reality coin, you find economics. The economists are the main ones pointing out all the times the environmentalists have been wrong. Everyone listens, because the economists talk in a language we all understand - money. They say that this is costing us money. They say this is costing us jobs. We'd better listen, or we'll all be unemployed, hungry, and having to live in the trees the environmentalists won't let us cut down to build houses. Economists, of course, have never cried wolf. They have never predicted something that hasn't come to pass. Because theirs is an exact science, a mathematical science, predicated on models. Again, I beg of you, bear with me for a little reality. Where environmental issues are concerned, the economists have cried wolf on numerous occasions. While their initial proclamations get huge, banner headlines, the final outcome is buried in the back of the paper, if it is reported at all. Details, you say? I don't remember any of this, you say. OK, I will give you details of incidents in which the economists have cried wolf.
You don't have to be too very old to remember leaded gasoline. And perhaps you remember all the furor that surrounded leaded gas when it was discovered that lead can cause brain damage in children. Lead based paint, lead based gas, lead pipes in our water supplies - we were condemning our children to a long life of mental retardation. The risks of lead were not in doubt. No one argued that the environmentalists were crying wolf - they clearly weren't. But the economists argued against doing anything about it. Why? Because to switch to unleaded gasoline would destroy our economy. We would go into a total collapse, and would never recover. Gas prices would go way up. Ah, you say, but what has happened? Once again, reality. Our economy did not collapse, it limped right along. Gas prices, contrary to popular perception, did not go up. Adjusted for inflation, in real dollars, they actually went down. People kept driving to and from work, kept paying their taxes, kept raising their children. And incidences of lead-based brain damage have gone down.
OK, you say, so they were wrong once. But once does not make a pattern. I agree. So, here we go again. For many reasons (gas crises, emissions standards, consumer demand), the federal government decided that car dealers needed to begin posting estimated MPGs on the windows of new cars for sale. Not a big deal, right? A totally free market mechanism. Let the consumer decide. But again, the economists were up in arms. The economy will collapse, they predicted. No one will buy automobiles that have the MPG posted right on the window (what are they telling us, that we won't buy their product unless they lie to us?). It has been a number of years since dealers began posting MPG ratings. The economy has not collapsed, it has limped right along. And people continue buying cars. If you have any doubt, just go get on the Dallas expressway at rush hour.
Then there were CFCs. Chlorinated flourocarbons. Once believed to be totally benign and totally stable, they have since been implicated in the ozone hole. By international treaty, we agreed to begin phasing out CFC production, and find substitutes. Foul, the economists cried. This will totally destroy the economy - we're not kidding this time! CFC phase out began. Substitutes were found (the bad news? The substitutes aren't much better). The economy did not collapse. People have not quite buying refrigerators and air conditioners. The ozone hole is starting to get smaller. Same story with PCBs. Also, remember DDT? Banning that was also going to destroy the economy. Lots of initials have come and gone, but the GNP keeps going up.
Oh, yes. Alar. This is listed by economists in every list of environmentalists crying wolf. Remember Alar? A chemical applied to apples to make them stay green longer, in order to make harvesting easier for farmers, and also to make the product look more perfect in the store for consumers who won't buy anything with a slight flaw (if apples never get worms, by the way, that is actually a bad sign - avoid them like the plague). Alar, possibly, it was said, could cause cancer in children, who drink lots of apple juice and eat lots of applesauce. Alar was banned. Testing ended immediately. The link was still somewhat weak. This allows economists to point to Alar as an example of environmental extremism - pulling a product that isn't even dangerous (well, might be, but we really don't know). But the other side of the coin is never mentioned. The economists predicted it would destroy the economy to ban Alar. The apple market would totally collapse. The reality? The market for red delicious apples did decline for about a year - however, the market for yellow apples shot up. We simply adjusted our habits to compensate. As a result, many folks discovered even tastier apples, and now the stores I shop in offer me a much wider selection of apple varieties to choose from. We may never know whether Alar was harmful or not. What we do know is that banning it did not destroy the apple market, and in fact, in my opinion, improved it for the consumer.
Last, but by no means least, there is the ultimate economist argument. Environmental regulations cost jobs. This is how they get the progressives on board, and the labor unions, and other groups that aren't known for their sympathy to giant corporations and conservative free-marketers. Loss of jobs hurts not the big guy, but the little guy. The prime examples pointed to in this are: Loggers and car manufacturers. Once again, a little dose of reality.
Question: How many loggers lost their jobs as a result of the spotted owl preventing the forest from being cut? Answer: the same number that would have lost their jobs a month later when the forest was completely cut, and there was nothing left to harvest. Many of these loggers already had pink slips waiting in their files. Unsustainable logging (read: clear-cutting) will never protect logging jobs. In the environmentalists world, a world of sustainable logging, taking only a small part of the trees at a time, the loggers would have their jobs protected in perpetuity. But companies that are utilizing this method fail to show the massive short-term profits of clear cutters, and are easily bought out in a hostile takeover, using junk bonds. The loggers, many of whom have been working for that company for many years, will find themselves out of work once the forests of the region are cut. I simply find it laughable that environmentally friendly policies are supposed to lose jobs, when the simple fact is most of these policies are much more labor intensive than technological, thereby requiring people to perform jobs that in the current market machinery is now doing. May require some retraining, but I can't think of a much better use for my tax dollars.
Then there is the automobile industry. It is so easy to blame failures of Detroit on the environmentalists and their requirement for high mileage small cars. People don't want that, according to the car makers. So they resisted. What happened? Gas prices went up. Japan stepped in with high mileage small cars, took advantage of the growing public demand for sensible vehicles, and took the market away. But, because economists cannot be wrong, the American car makers just started making their cars bigger and bigger, until they turned into SUVs. Then they convinced us that was what we wanted. Saturation advertising, coupled with declines in gas prices, moved the American market away from compact cars and toward gas-guzzling monsters. Prove the economists right. It was the high mileage requirements that caused it all.
In summary, I agree that environmentalists have at times been wrong. But it is all too easy for us to remember their misses and forget their hits. After all, it is more comforting to believe they are wrong than to accept that we are headed for disaster if we don't change our lifestyles and our ways of thinking. The exact opposite phenomenon is seen when dealing with economists - we remember their hits, and forget their misses. We fail to notice that the economy has not collapsed under the weight of environmental regulations. We fail to notice that the corporations, instead of being impoverished by government intervention, are instead getting richer. We are all blinded by the promise of jobs and secure futures, and fail to see the forest for the trees.
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