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08/19/01: Philm_Phan
Posted by: grundle2600@hotmail.com (grundle)
I never said that people who are concerned about the planet are "doom and gloomers."
What I did say was that people who ignore the fact that Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were wrong in their past predicitons of doom, and continue to make false statements about the state of the plant, and continue to wrongly say that things are getting worse, are doom and gloomers.
I care about the planet. But I'm not a "doom and gloomer." Why? Because I acknowledge that the predicitons made by Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were wrong.
For example, the Club of Rome said that if we didn't freeze economic activity at 1975 levels, then before the year 2000, there would be no oil left. We ignored their advice. In fact, GNP more than doubled, and use of oil went up. But despite this, known oil reserves are bigger now than they were then.
In the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich said that during the 1980s, 65 million people in the U.S. would starve to death, and that before the year 2000, billions of people in the world would starve to death. He was wwrong. Since he made his prediciton, world populaiton has doubled, but food production has tripled. So the amount of food, per person, has gone up.
The doomsayers claim that "overpopulation" causes poverty. They site India as an example. That is wrong. Hong Kong has 20 times India's population density. But Kong Kong's per capita income is 100 times that of India's. Hong Kong is a capitalist country, and in 50 years it went from being a slum to being one of the richest countries in the world. But India is largely a socialist country, which has too many regulations and too mcuh government bureacuracy that strangles buisnesses. In India, businesses need permisssion from the govenrment for even the tiniest activities, and getting this permissions can take years.
I care about the planet. But I'm not a "doom and gloomer," because I acknowledge that Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were very, very wrong.
The ideas that you support are basically the same - that we use too many resources, that we are destroying the planet, etc. This is false. And the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is full of proof to prove that the "doom and gloomers" are wrong.
The "doom and gloomers" claim that in order to protect the environment, we need to reduce and/or limit economic growth. This is false. In the real world, once a country's per capita GNP reaches $4,000, then they can afford to care about protecting the environment. And the more money they have, the more they can afford to protect the environment.
According to computer models, if we don't adopt the Kyoto Treatry, then we get 2.1 degrees Celcius global warming over the next 100 years. But if we do adopt the treaty, then we get 1.9 degrees warming. So the treaty won't stop global warming. But the treaty will reduce economic growth. And having less economic growth will mean that there will be less development of new technology to protect the enviornment, and less money to spend on helping the environment. So the Kyoto Treaty would actually harm the environment.
The "doom and gloomers" support raising the CAFE standards of gasoline mileage. But past expeience shows that when gas mileage goes up, driving becomes cheaper, and people drive more miles, and gas use doesn't go down.
The "doom and gloomers" supoprt ethanol. But in the real world, it takes several gallons of petroleum to manufafture one gallon of ethanol.
25 years ago, the "doom and gloomers" said that drilling for oil at Purdue Bay in Alaska would harm the caribou. But the oil companies went ahead and drilled anyway. Since then, the caribou population has increased by 400%. Despite this, today, the "doom and gloomers" claim that drilling at ANWR would harm the caribou. Furtheremore, the "doom and gloomers" say that drilling at ANWR would destroy it, even though today's drilling technology makes it look like no one was ever even there, and even though the drilling would only take place on 1/10,000 of the land, which is like an area the size of an airport in an area the size of South Carolina. And when the "doom and gloomers" show pictures of ANWR, they show pictures of grass covered hills with birds and flowers. But that's not where the drilling would take place. The drilling would actually take place on flat tundra that is covered in ice.
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