IT'S TIME TO ORGANIZE ENVIRONMENTAL SOUND THINKERS Julian L. Simon With the rising fever of the Rio Earth Nadir (or Earth Nader), a variety of organizations in and out of Washington have been scurrying to cobble up responses. Cato Institute has been preparing a list of scientists who will present the evidence rebutting false scares, and whose names it can give to the press. The Competitive Enterprise Institute worked up some source materials, in conjunction with the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. And there have been other initiatives. But these efforts are too little, too late, and most especially too fragmented to even slow the juggernaut. The fragmentation and lack of integration is central. As climatologist Richard Lindzen of M.I.T. became a vigorous opponent of scary greenhouse scenarios, he also induced an unusual insight. "Although my lecture will focus on [the politics of] global warming, where I have personally followed the phenomenon, what I will describe is similar to what is happening with respect to many other environmental `crises' including ozone depletion, acid rain, diminishing species diversity and contamination by PCB's, dioxin, asbestos and lead." He then documents that the popular media, in cahoots with some environmental organizations and some zealous but irresponsible scientists, publicize scary scenarios wholly at variance with the current state of scientific knowledge. Another example is Edward Krug: Early on in my studies, I observed that the forest scientists -- their specialty being the above-ground parts of trees -- knew that acid rain was not harming the above- ground parts of the trees. However, they accepted the environmental propaganda that acid rain was harming trees from below the ground, that is, through soils. In my case, I accepted the environmental propaganda that acid raining on the above-ground parts of trees was damaging the trees. But, as a scientist, I could find no evidence that acid rain affects soils, my area of expertise. Consider also the case of Haroun Tazieff, an eminent volcanologist who served as French secretary of state for the preention of natural and industrial disasters. The first issue he inquired into when appointed was dioxin, and he explains why: Here are two examples of articles that prompted my investigation of the subject: "Seveso: The Hiroshima of Chemistry," and "Seveso: 9 Months After: The Lessons Were In Vain." Both appeared in the popular science periodical Que Choisir [What Choice] in April 1977. I was at the time a Citizen Lambda [John Doe], an individual among hundreds of millions targeted by the disinformation campaign launched on a global scale. I had believed in what was thus universally and imperatively affirmed as incontestable truth: that PCBs, and the dioxins they emit when heated to 300o Celsius, were frightful poisons. One or two years of this propaganda had led government officials -- just as incompetent as I was in matters of polychlorobiphenyls -- to make them officially illegal. A half-dozen years later, I found myself responsible for the prevention of disasters, natural and technological, for the French government. The natural ones I knew quite well, since they are related to my profession. As for technological disasters, it was necessary to inform myself. The very first dossier I asked to have delivered to me -- so much had I been convinced of the extreme hazard of PCBs -- was the one on the explosion at the chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, in July 1976. The study of this dossier and the inquest I led at the time revealed to me, first of all, that this so-called catastrophe had had not one single victim. (This gives the "Hiroshima of Chemistry," as it had been baptized by an ostensibly serious monthly science magazine, a tinge of anticlimax.) Second, I learned that dioxins, according to the judgment of all the actual experts consulted (and of the very knowledgeable Academy of Science), are not at all "frightful" and have never, anywhere, killed anyone. Thus, the matter of presenting the industrial accident at the ICMESA factory in Seveso as an apocalyptic catastrophe was a matter of deliberate disinformation -- in less diplomatic language what one calls a lie. Maduro and Schauerhammer, 1992, pp. viii, ix). [ref in rultres] Lindzen and Krug and Tazieff are rare in spotting false scares outside their own special fields. In 1983, geographer John Fraser Hart of the University of Minnesota sat a whole day with a dozen other contributors to the volume The Resourceful Earth that Herman Kahn and I were putting together. Hart then observed that everybody in the room was optimistic about his own subject, but pessimistic about everybody else's. And it was true, all agreed. (But why should that be?) Only Herman and I were across-the-board optimistic, and that was because our work had caused us to touch on the entire range of topics. This is apparent everywhere. Physicians know about the extraordinary progress in medicine that they fully expect to continue, but can't believe in that progress in natural resources. Geologists know about the progress in natural resources that pushes down their prices, but worry about food. Even worse, some of those who are most optimistic about their own areas point with alarm to others. For example, the scientists of the Space Exploration Initiative at Los Alamos are excited and confident about the challenges they themselves address. But they justify their own adventures as intended to "...relieve the stress on Earth's environment from population growth, and provide our world with limitless resources for the future," because "As Earth's assets dwindle, Mars may offer resources mankind will need" (America At The Threshold, GPO, 1989)...Noel Davis, who runs PhytoFarm in DeKalb, Illinois and produces a ton of food every day (sic) in his hydroponics factory on one acre of land - enough to feed 500 or 1000 people, which makes land almost irrelevant as a factor of production for food - justifies his operation on the grounds that we are running out of farm land. "Each year the United States is losing an area of farmland greater in size than the state of Rhode Island", he writes (Field, 1989, p. 51). Of course this may be said as justification for his new technology, but even so it reflects some belief in the conventional wisdom - which his own work belies...An inventor with a remarkable system for making waste into products of value while reducing pollution from the system almost to zero - Leonard (and Frank) Keller of Methacoal - feels the need to make worrying counterfactual statements about running out of landfill space...Gerald O'Neill promotes space exploration by arguing that it will avoid the need for a large number of nuclear reactors. "Operating so many reactros would, depsite our best efforts, invite many more disasters like Chrnobyl!" ("Development Replaces Dogma, Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Summer, 1992, pp. 17-19, citation p. 18) I have a special interest in all this, because population economics is the toughest nut of all. For example, H. W. Lewis's thoughtful, informed book Technological Risk discusses a variety of environmental worries, providing data and careful analysis at every juncture. But about population growth he offers nothing more than a flat assertion that it is a grave danger, without facts or analysis or reference to any scientific literature: He first says that "The prevention of nuclear war [is] second only to overpopulation as a real and immediate threat to the human race" (p. 284), and then ends his introduction thus: "[T]he time scale for solving the population problem is one or two generations. It cannot go on this way, and the die is already cast" (p. xiii). Yet his entire book is an effort to subject such loose thinking to close analysis. In contrast, the anti-growth environmental movement speaks with a single voice. Organizations have banded together in the Global Tomorrow Coalition. And when their foremost spokesmen -- for example, noted biologists Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Paul Ehrlich of Stanford -- give speeches, they address the entire litany, crying that each and every issue is a threat and part of a general crisis. They bludgeon us with "700 Members of the National Academy," "26 Nobelists," and the like. The power of the environmental and related organizations to muster a strike force on any issue is awesome. A recent full- page advertisemetn in the Washington Post and probably elsewhere is headed: "SABOTAGE! of America's Health, Food Safety and Environomental Laws". It turns out to be about the GATT trade rules, and the sponsoring organizations include the Citizens Trade Watch Campaign and its parent Public Citizen, along with Sierra Club, American SPCA, Friends of the Earth, and many others from the environmenal organization crowd. Clearly this is not a true environmental issue, despite the headline and the photo of dolphins, but the scratch-my-back philosophy is operative to an extraordinary degree. In contrast, the anti-scare right-thinking scientists invariably restrict themselves to their own subjects, for two reasons: First, as careful researchers they limit their statements to what they know expertly. Second, about subjects they have not studied, they know only what all the rest of the public knows -- that which is derived from the newspapers and television, and expresses the doom scenario. So they are pessimistic about these other issues, as Fraser Hart noted. Furthermore, any organization should accomodate itself one hundred per cent to the desire of these scientists not to be associated with any statement that they cannot feel completely comfortable with, and no compromises. This means that no one's name should appear with prior approval. And it means that statements should be limited to matters of fact and not of policy, as a general rule. Indeed, perhaps this organization should be a Truth Lobby, whose mission it is simply to combat false information when it is disseminated - phony Alar scares, false assertions about acid rains, false statements that immigration is at a historical peak, false statements that DDT causes more harm than good. Such issues as supposed global warming would be tough for a Truth Lobby because in such as case the facts are not easy to come by in a short period of time after the public hears a new alarm. But the inability to respond to every issue that some would like to respond to should be a strength rather than a weakness. Each of the organizations which work for growth and freedom, and against the doom scares, is organized for special limited purposes. Several think tanks have gotten interested in particular aspects of the environment and resources issue. The Reason Foundation in Los Angeles has targeted false beliefs about waste. Jerry Taylor of Cato writes about recycling. Fred Smith at C E I...PERC...Council for a Sound Environment...etc. [***Please add your name and organization to the list]. The members of the NCPA-PERC Environmental Task Force make a handy list to begin with. The authors of articles in Jay Lehr's new Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, and in my forthcoming The State of Humanity, are another source. A few trade organizations such as the Western Coal Association have been willing to confront the anti-growthers directly. But most, such as the nuclear industry's USCEA and the Chemical Manufacturers Association, tend strictly to their own knitting - and then wonder why nobody comes to their assistance (altho thru its aid to Elizabeth Whelan's American Council on Science and Health, the CMA does strike a wider range of blows). It is imperative that these trade associations come to see that their private welfares are best served by joining forces by others who are working for truth in related domains. The country is also dotted with isolated workers for the truth about environment and resources, some of whom have nothing in common with each other except this complex of issues. Bill Stonebarger's Hawkhill Associates in Madison, Wisconsin sells audio-visual materials by mail to school science programs, and goes beyond the cliches to present the true facts about such matters as the safety of nuclear power, and running out of energy. I. W. Tucker's tiny National Council for Environmental Balance runs a small mail-order bookstore publishing and retailing little-known truth-telling books such as those of Dixey Lee Ray. Andrea Rich's Laissez Faire Books sells libertarian tomes as its main mission - including some books that will be anathema to some conservatives and liberals - but this mission includes selling lots of books that show how free markets can lead to enhanced environments. S. Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project...The Heidelburg Statement, spearheaded in this country by Alan Moghisi...Greg Rehmke, formerly of Reason Foundation (which is four-square in our camp) runs a program to provide support for the high-school debate program, and the subjects frequently are environmental and population matters. Peter Samuel started and runs a newsletter on environmental topics. Elizabeth Sobo is a one-woman investigative newsroom devoted to truth about population, and can come under this umbrella though her general economic view will flip out any libertarian. Max More's Extrophy magazine focuses on apocalyptic environmentlist. Drivers for Highway Safety in California knows that, in fighting unfounded claims of energy crisis that underlie the campaign against one-occupant auto driving, it needs to make common cause with related organizations. The same with American Wetlands Research Foundation in its struggle to keep the swamp lovers from shutting down development whereve there has ever been a puddle. But all these missions, and the many people who protest against environmental falsity by writing letters to their local newspapers, have no organizational means of connection. If we are to move beyond scattered and ineffective responses to the doom establishment -- which now add up to little more than lying down in front of advancing tanks -- these separate activities and ideas must get together into an organized message. The first step should be for the think tanks to inform themselves, and the scientists who individually have anti-doom messages, about the entire spectrum of issues. They must enable themselves to recognize that there is a general tendency for all things involving human welfare to be getting better. Indeed, the message about human betterment and economic progress is more general than any individual statements about raw materials, air, water, life expectancy, education, and the like. There is solid theoretical basis for the idea that all aspects of human welfare should get better, not just as an accident but as part of a broad causal mechanism. Humanity has necessarily evolved so that we have more of the nature of creators than of destroyers - or else the species would have died out long ago. People seek to improve their conditions, and therefore on balance people build more than they tear down, and produce more than they consume. Hence each generation leaves the world a bit better in most respects than it begins with. Of course there are exceptions to progress, such as whether the health of old people now is systematically getting better decade after decade or not. But certainly the broad generalization holds, and not just for resource and physical environment issues, but for all other issues pertaining to the standard of living. After individual scientists are educated about broader aspects of the situation than their own topics, and are brought on board of the good vessel Progress, the organizations can then create an umbrella organization, though without diluting their own special interests. And then they can sing in chorus when it is necessary, rather than singing individual solos one after another. One of the most important functions such an umbrella organization can play is to put a card into journalists' rolodexes. Reporters assume that if there is a point of view on a subject, there must be an organization to represent that point of view. Absent an organization, they assume that no body of information or opinion exists. There is a lacuna here that desperately needs to be filled. The same is true at the grass-roots level. When my wife and I went out for a bird walk recently, we found ourselves at an Audubon Fair. Represented at the fair were solar electricity sellers, a clean water organization, Zero Population Growth, and many more such. But there was not one sign of the free-market environmentalists, or the anti-scare groups. The same is true of every Earth Day demonstration. It is not surprising that children grow up believing the environmental activists they hear on television, and read about in their textbooks, because they never even find out that there is any other side to the issues. Who will take the lead in pulling together the threads that must be knitted into the tent that will house these activities? Julian L. Simon page 1/article2 organize/May 30, 1994 Lindzen, Richard S., "Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus", xerox, March 11, 1992 Krug From Liberty, Volume 5, Number 4, March 1992, essay by Edward C. Krug, "The Corrosion of Science." Lewis, H. W., Technological Risk (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990). *Lehr, Jay, Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns (New York: Van Nostrand, 1992). page 2/article2 organize/May 30, 1994 Mr. Robert M. Snyder, President American Wetlands Research Foundation, Inc. 95 Lighthouse Drive Jupiter, Florida Phone: 407-746-7290 Mr. Wayne King, Director Drivers For Highway Safety 2639 North Grand Avenue, #128 Santa Ana, CA 92701 Phone: 714-633-5935 (Apparently home address: 12592 Loretta Drive, Orange, CA 92669) National Council for Environmental Balance, Inc. 4169 Westport Road P.O. Box 7732 Louisville, Kentucky 40207 Phone: 502-896-8731 Mr. Jay H. Lehr page 3/article2 organize/May 30, 1994