For Immediate Release: April 28, 2000

San Francisco, CA – The 30^th anniversary of Earth Day should be a time to celebrate the success of environmentalism, which has taken its place as one of the pre-eminent social movements in American public life, comparable in its impact to the movements for abolitionism, temperance, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, according to the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2000, published by the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.

"There is cause for celebration this Earth Day, as there have been large and tangible improvements in several categories of environmental concern since the first Earth Day – in many cases, beyond what was hoped for in 1970," said Steve Hayward, author of the Index and Director of PRI’s Center for Environmental and Regulatory Reform.

Some of the most remarkable successes include:

• The decline in ambient lead concentrations by 97 percent between 1977 and 1996;
• The 42-percent decline in toxics releases since 1988;
• The urbanized use of only 5.6 percent of total U.S. land area;
• The consistent decline in soil erosion by about 40 million tons every year; and,
• The continual yearly increase in forestland in the United States and other industrialized nations for more than 40 years.

"There are compelling reasons to believe that the remarkable improvements in our nation’s environmental condition is more due to technological advances and economic growth produced by dynamic markets than to the centralized administration of environmental policy, " said Hayward. "The pessimism that often accompanies environmentalism is ill-suited for both the naturally optimistic American character and the realities of the modern world, where economic growth and progress are the hope, and not the threat, of the future."

Hayward also notes that the sustainability of the planet will come from decentralizing environmental regulation, assigning property rights to environmental goods, considering the idea of sustainable development as a technical problem rather than a global metaphysical and social problem, creating cooperative efforts at the state and local level, producing better systems for monitoring and assessing environmental progress, and – most important – continuing on our current path of economic growth.

"The marked improvements in the state of our environment should lead to a future environmental policy that is less adversarial in character, evolving into the consensus issue it was expected to be at the time of the first Earth Day," Hayward said.

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On April 19 a full copy of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2000 will become available on the Pacific Research Institute’s web site at http://www.pacificresearch.org or by contacting Laura Dykes at ldykes@pacificresearch.org.

The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government. By focusing on public policy issues such as health care, welfare, education, and the environment, the Institute strives to foster a better understanding of the principles of a free society among leaders in government, academia, the media, and the business community.