Investors Business Daily, April 22, 2005

Earth Day 2005: On this, the 35th anniversary of a day set aside to promote environmental awareness, our nation continues to enjoy improved ecological health. Who's responsible for this progress?

Today the country will be inundated with scary global-warming scenarios and warnings of planetary doom due to our polluting ways.

Should anyone bring up the fact that the world is a cleaner place than it was in 1970, the green alarmists will, of course, take full credit for the progress before moving briskly back to their reflexive attack on modernity and freedom.

Nothing unexpected about that. If environmentalists declare victory, it's political suicide for the movement and those who set up nice lives for themselves by braying at corporate America and the conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels.

Nonetheless, victory is to be celebrated. The world is a cleaner place than it was at that first Earth Day.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, core air quality indicators such as ozone (down 31%), nitrogen dioxide (down 42%), sulfur dioxides (down 72%), carbon monoxide (down 76%), particulate matter (down 31%) and lead (down 98%), are all well below their mid-1970s levels.

In fact, the 2005 edition of the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators" reveals that U.S. air pollution levels have fallen to the lowest on record.

It's more than air quality, though. Authors of the Index, published by the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, have compiled a long list of indicators that show the environment as a whole has improved and will continue to do so.

Threatened resources from whales and bald eagles to forests and wetlands are all on the increase.

Meanwhile, fewer toxins are being released into the environment. Oil spills, in both number and volume, have declined precipitously. Mercury emissions fell by almost half during the 1990s.

And cars, one of the primary contributors to air pollution, are spewing less than they were in the 1970s. Within 25 years, pollution from automobiles will be down by an additional 80% or more.

The index also addresses global warming, the most prominent complaint among environmentalists, by pointing out that the "hockey-stick" graph that purportedly shows the planet warming has been shown to be flawed.

Despite the improvements, eco-activists will be all over the media today heralding an environmental cataclysm if we don't change our wicked ways. It's simply not enough that conditions are much better and the outlook is improving.

Lost in all the finger-pointing will be the contribution that capitalism has made to cleaning up the nation and world. Environmentalism is a luxury that flourishes only in nations with advanced economies. And advanced economies are products of capitalist systems.

Developing nations cannot support an environmental movement; they're simply too busy meeting life's basic needs.

Paul Taylor has written that the U.S. spends as much on environmental protection — roughly 5% of GDP — as on national defense and homeland security. That can't happen in nations where people are poor. Environmentalism is as much of an extravagance in those countries as a new Bentley.

That's why it's so exasperating to watch the green lobby continue to fight the very thing that's brought them the benefits they enjoy.

Only in developed Western nations can environmentalists burn massive amounts of jet fuel to appear on TV talk shows, show up at rallies in gas-guzzling SUVs, and command the attention and dollars of millions who suffer guilt over their relative wealth and want to feel good about themselves.

Yes, the green movement has made a big difference in our world. But sadly, it's been taken over by anti-capitalists. Which is why everything it now promotes must be met with healthy skepticism.