The world’s chattering classes are beside themselves over
President Bush’s decision to stay in Texas rather than travel to
Johannesburg, South Africa, over the Labor Day weekend to attend
the U.N.’s “World Conference on Sustainable Development.” American
environmentalists wail that the president is thoughtlessly
dismissing the most important issue of our time. The Europeans cry
that the president is ducking his responsibilities as leader of the
most powerful nation on earth. This is akin, however, to the lions
that cry that the lamb has refused their invitation to dinner.
The real reason the Euros are upset is that they had hoped to
beat on the president like a Mexican piñata for his refusal
to go along with the Kyoto Protocol and the rest of their
international environmental agenda. Nothing plays better to the
folks back home than a heapin’ helpin’ of America bashing, and the
stage for such theatrics is far more compelling when the
villain-in-chief is there for the international smack-down. The
Greens, too, would like nothing better than to show American
audiences what an environmental “rogue state” we have become under
Bush’s watch. It’s no mystery, then, why George Jr. is reluctant to
re-create George Sr.’s disastrous appearance at the Rio Summit 10
years ago.
It’s not as if there is any serious business on the table in
Johannesburg either. No treaties, no protocols, no binding
agreements — just a lot of hand-wringing about how poverty in the
Third World is a western conspiracy and a lot of emotional nonsense
about the coming collapse of the environment due to our piggish
insistence on maintaining a standard of living beyond that of, say,
Pakistan.
Isn’t that a bit harsh, you ask? After all, who’s in favor of
“unsustainable development”? Well, no one. But human civilization
has “sustained” itself nicely since the Industrial Revolution
without any help from Greenpeace, the EU, or the U.N. To take the
U.N.’s own definition of the term — meeting the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs — sustainable development is a reality here
and now.
Look at the data. Life expectancy across the globe has shot up
over the course of the last two centuries. People are better fed,
better clothed, and better housed today than ever before.
Inflation-adjusted prices for virtually all resources — renewable
and nonrenewable — are going down, which points to growing
abundance, not growing scarcity. Global forests have, on balance,
expanded over the past 50 years. Air and water pollution in the
most industrialized nations of the world is a mere shadow of what
it was decades ago. Even Third World countries have found that,
once per capita income reaches a certain point, economic growth
coincides with a cleaner environment. And if current trends in
productivity, population growth, and consumption continue, we’ll be
able to return a chunk of land the size of the Amazonian Basin back
to nature by 2070. The human footprint on the environment is indeed
becoming lighter and softer.
Where we do find nagging problems, such as stressed marine
fisheries, tropical rainforest deforestation, fresh water
scarcities, and the loss of biologically important ecosystems and
habitat? In areas that lack property rights and areas lush in
government mismanagement of the commons and poverty — not
industrial society per se.
Poverty’s role in environmental degradation is far greater than
any set of black-hat industries or fat and happy American
consumers. For instance, 2 million people die every year from
pollution caused by burning dung, kerosene, and coal indoors for
residential heating and cooking needs. Electrification would save
far more lives than any agreement that could possibly come out of
Johannesburg. But electrification takes money that poor countries
don’t yet have. And it won’t be any easier to afford if the Green
campaign for renewable energy in the Third World comes to pass.
Such a mandate would make electricity more expensive and thus
lengthen the time it takes to remedy the aforementioned
scourge.
Similarly, three million people die every year in Africa due to
poor water quality, another problem that could be remedied by
investment in water treatment facilities. But those investments
will not come without economic growth, and that growth isn’t going
to happen if the Johannesburg crowd succeeds in making energy,
timber, agricultural products, and a host of other things more
expensive to ostensibly protect the environment.
There are serious environmental problems to solve. But nearly
every global indicator points toward improvement —- not
deterioration - in the environmental landscape. The president is
right to ignore a conference dedicated unwittingly to turning the
planet in the opposite direction.
