Parts Per Billion: Possibly the First in An Erratic Series
From the desk of George Adair on Mon, 2005-10-24 15:23
In researching information on how Kyoto has become the Holy Grail of environmentalists, much data has been uncovered. From time to time knowledge will be dropped into this forum. Nothing earth-shattering, just information used back in the day by our betters in the creation of the modern-day Frankenviro movement.
As a result of the UNESCO Conference on the Biosphere in 1968, environmentalism went international. Official Europe took up the UNESCO mandate at the Conservation Conference held in Strasbourg (1970). Two elements emerged from the Conference, elements undoubtedly used by governments to make decisions as it relates to taxation, economics, and regulation.
Element 1:
Europe will double in population in next 15 yrs, creating major environmental problems and impairing quality of life. 'Great parts of countryside' will be deprived of scenic beauty and ecological diversity. National governments are urged to take over environmental planning.
As predicted by government, did the population of Europe double between 1970 and 1985? 1970 and 2004? Per Eurostat:
The red-line denotes 1985. Europe’s population did not double between 1970 and 1985. It has not even doubled between 1970 and 2004. (The sudden jump in the blue line is due to the fact that the population of the former German “Democratic” Republic was added to that of [West] Germany.)
Oh, EU-25’s population in 1970, 407m. 1985, 432m. 2004, 457m. No doubling there either.
Not content with incorrect predictions regarding Europe only,
Element 2:
The conference held rising air pollution in NYC will sooner or later force the city to ban private traffic.
The point in all this, any chance that governments may be wrong in any of their modern-day dire predictions of enviro doom-and-gloom?
And they wonder why we question Kyoto...
Submitted by Foobarista (not verified) on Tue, 2005-10-25 02:48.
Environmentalism works best when going after tangible goals, and at times some _local_ Cassandra-ism helps: getting catalytic converters in cars has massively cleaned up air in places like New York and LA - although it's debatable whether generally better engines would have done the same by themselves in time. Disaster bigthink is where enviros go completely off the rails, particularly when things like Kyoto turn into "mom&apple pie" issues that can't be debated, since the mere act of questioning makes you a Bad Person Who Hates the Earth at best, and a Tool of Evil Anglo-Saxon Capitalism at worst.