The Skeptical Environmentalist

Exaggerated claims and scaremongering of such "crises" as global warming, toxic wastes and endangered animals may mean a loss of credibility for environmentalists.

Human life is a succession of priorities. Food, clothing, security and employment need to be available before much effort can be devoted to the improvement of one's surroundings. It has been repeatedly shown that people prefer a dirty, dangerous, ill-paid job to no job at all.

Environmental devastation is not just a consequence of economic prosperity — it is commonly caused by the desire for conquest or the demand for freedom. Although the environment may be a low priority in the minds of many, it is usually not neglected, even by the poorest communities. Many primitive peoples found that their long-term survival depended on striking a balance with food supplies, and so with the environment.

During this century, the quest for security has tended to dominate politics. The two world wars and many local conflicts have placed the fear of sudden death above all others, particularly since the development of nuclear weapons.

With the receding of the nuclear threat, the reduction in the likelihood of famine, and the general improvement in living standards, it has become possible to devote more attention to improving our surroundings. Thus has emerged the "environmental revolution," leading to the formation of political groups primarily concerned with environmental matters.

Yet this is less a revolution than a change of emphasis. There are still people without enough to eat, and there are still people getting killed in wars. In Western cities, unemployment and homelessness are increasing. Green policies are unlikely to help solve these problems. Indeed, they may exacerbate them.

Environmental Crisis

The low priority given to environmental concerns by people with more important problems has led environmentalists to adopt a characteristic scaremongering language to attract more attention. Every problem is a "crisis."

We are repeatedly told that immediate drastic action is needed to stave off disaster. We have a "plundered planet" or "depleted resources." All chemicals are "toxic." The world is full of "endangered species." Population increase is an "explosion." We are facing an "ecological holocaust." Every change in our water or air indicates a "pollutant."

Nothing we do is right, for we cannot avoid impinging on the environment, and when we do, we always change it for the worse. One is made to feel guilty at taking in water, sugar or salt, let alone alcohol.

According to its originator, Ernst Haeckel, ecology is the science of the interaction of living organisms with one another and with the non-living world. The new ecology regards the human animal as an interloper who interferes with the "natural" environment. Everywhere we have ecosystems, promoted as associations of organisms that are threatened by human activity.

Television wildlife programmes continually emphasise the evil influence of humans, even in the context of a park or nature reserve, set up by human intervention. Some environmentalists give the impression that the world would be a better place without people. A whole continent and vast tracts of forest, wilderness, swamp and steppe are all candidates for the complete removal of people.

Population Control

As the world's population increases, it is inevitable that the position of humans in the ecological balance should increase, and that of other species should decline. This fact seems to be ignored by most environmentalists who seem to think that we can have our cake and eat it, that we can maintain the existing "natural" environment, including all the endangered species, while increasing the number of humans.

The ideas of Thomas Malthus still apply in that the world, or any individual country, can only support the population that it can feed and supply with the necessities of life. An increase of population above this leads to famine and emigration.

The "green revolution" has greatly increased the productivity and efficiency of farming over the past 50 years. There has been a world glut of food for several decades, accompanied by low farm prices and a withdrawal of marginal farmland from cultivation, Many more people could be supported by existing agricultural technology so that there is no "crisis." Wars, droughts, floods and political incompetence still cause local shortages, but the problem is usually distribution.

All the same, there is a case for world population control policy, and its absence is the greatest failing of the environmental movement. What is the point of shooting at the easy targets when the results are nullified by the problem which is not tackled — unplanned population growth?

It is not easy to control sexual behaviour, community life or family custom, but China has shown that it can be done. Most Chinese are convinced that their future economic growth, with their limited arable land, depends on the one-child policy. Free availability of contraceptives, family planning advice and abortion have all assisted in producing a significant reduction in population growth.

The Chinese are lucky in that they are not afflicted by the religious prejudices of other countries where contraception and abortion are concerned. The Catholic church is the chief culprit, but the main reason why there is so little effort on population control in Africa is the US attitude to abortion. The AIDS epidemic has at least exposed the taboo on condoms, and it is probable that future developments of cheap male contraceptives and morning after pills will bypass the entrenched opposition.

When will the environmental movement be prepared to take on the opponents of a sensible population control policy. Without it, the rest of their efforts are wasted.

Future Imperfect

"The end of the world is nigh." That's a familiar slogan and there have always been believers. Forecasters have recently become more "scientific" by engaging in the techniques of extrapolation and exponentialism.

I recall attending a population conference at Victoria University some years ago where the head of the Electricity Department showed that the demands for electricity in New Zealand followed an exponential curve, eventually reaching infinity. Reality demonstrates otherwise.

The Ministry of Energy maintained for some years a team of forecasters whose job it was to anticipate future changes in the price of oil. Their forecasts appeared regularly in the Annual Reports, and they were all ludicrously wrong, usually forecasting a rise when a fall took place. The team has been dispersed.

One group of scientists who are continually called upon to forecast the future are meteorologists. Until recently, weather forecasting was little more than a branch of necromancy. Rather than using meteorologists, one study showed that better results could be obtained by consistently forecasting tomorrow's weather as the same as that of today.

Even now, with all the satellites and computers, the weather forecasts ar full of qualitative or equivocal terms like "showers," "changeable" weather, "moderate" temperatures and "freshening" winds.

Yet meteorologists have recently launched into the widespread prediction of weather conditions not only tomorrow or next week, but for the next 50 to a hundred years.

They have been encouraged by the development of computer climate models. Such models have had only limited success for short-term forecasting, but this has not discouraged enthusiasm for long-term forecasting.

The climate modellers had a grand public relations success in 1982 when they predicted that a nuclear war might produce a "nuclear winter," a period of reduced sunlight which could starve us all. The environmentalists changed the "might" to "would," and convinced most of us.

This was one forecast which, we hope, could never be verified, but all the same they have recently confessed that it was exaggerated, and recent model refinements show no evidence of a possible nuclear winter.

Greenhouse Effect

Now we have the greenhouse effect, taken up recently despite being predicted by Svante Arrhenius in 1903. Computer models of the Earth's climate forecast large mean global temperature increases from the predicted increase of greenhouse gases. The current "best" estimate is an increase of 0.3°C per decade for the next 80 years. Yet the mean increase per decade for the past 130 years had been less than 0.05°C.

Since 1940, the period when greenhouse gases have increased, the mean decadal increase was 0.06°C, and for the period 1979-1990, three different methods of measuring (surface, radiosonde and satellite) show that the increase per decade was 0.03-0.17°C (mean 0.11°C). The most accurate method, satellite measurement, gives a lower figure still, at 0.03°C.

All this is beyond mere extrapolationism. Forecasts are 3-10 times what is actually happening. People and governments all over the world have been persuaded to believe these figure, and to adopt economically damaging policies which, even the meteorologists admit, are unlikely to affect the situation.

The New Zealand Government has committed itself to a target of a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000, a policy which will deepen the present depression, create more unemployment, and inhibit the growth of exports. Fortunately, in parallel with other election promises, they show no signs of' actually carrying out this policy.

There is really no hard evidence that the greenhouse effect is causing global warming. The modest warming that is taking place is most probably due to natural climate variability, such as a variation in the Sun's radiation. If there is a greenhouse effect, it cannot possibly be a great as the predictions, and there is no call to go beyond the extrapolation of exiting trends as a basis for policy. The modest amount of warming that is happening at present is in night-time temperatures, and is almost wholly beneficial.

The exaggerated claims, the scaremongering language and the lack of attention to human welfare when it conflicts with environmental dogma, have led to a loss of credibility for the environmental movement and for environmental scientists. This is a shame. We do need a more pleasant and more comfortable world, and we should fit our activities into our surroundings harmoniously.

The environmental movement has raised the awareness of many people of these issues, but it would be more effective if it were more careful with facts and claims.

Dr Vincent Gray is an energy consultant in Wellington.