CHAPTER 16 WHY DOES THE PUBLIC NOT HEAR ENVIRONMENTAL SOUND THINKERS? Can the amount of false bad news be reduced? Can erroneous beliefs in present and future crises be countered? In fact, the situation has improved in the past two decades, because there are now at least some voices and organizations that work to refute false bad news about the environment and social issues. The core of the problem is this: The public does not hear the true facts about environment, population, and various social issues, but the public does hear the doomsaying messages. Many reasons for this have been identified in previous chapters. This chapter focuses on another: The people who know the truth too seldom speak out. And as some sage (Edmund Burke?) has said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"<1>. As to what should be done: The latter part of the chapter discusses the need for a permanent umbrella-group of organizations that speak the truth on these subjects. And that umbrella group must educate each person and organization with special knowledge about each other's knowledge, which we will find out is amazingly like our own. There is an operational difficulty that hinders effective action against false bad news - the practice of fighting fires of untruth only when the fires flame up. For example, when the Rio Earth Summit meeting came along in 1992, a variety of organizations in and out of Washington began scurrying to cobble together responses. The Cato Institute prepared a list of scientists who would present the evidence rebutting false scares, and whose names it gave 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 were other initiatives. But these efforts were too little, too late, and most especially too fragmented to even slow the juggernaut of the environmental movement on that occasion or in general. There is also an individual aspect of the fragmentation and lack of integration of effort - and of knowledge. For example, as climatologist Richard Lindzen became a vigorous opponent of scary greenhouse scenarios, he also had an unusual insight. Lindzen first noted that with respect to global warming (his own specialty), the popular media - in cahoots with some environmental organizations and some zealous but irresponsible scientists - publicize scary global-warming scenarios wholly at variance with the current state of scientific knowledge. Then he noticed that the very same thing 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 (1992). That is, the same false scare mentality appears across the board. Another example is Edward Krug, who was a key figure in the acid-rain fiasco: Early on in my studies, I observed 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. Then he found out 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 (1992).. Consider also the case of Haroun Tazieff, an eminent volcanologist who served as French secretary of state for the prevention of natural and industrial disasters. Dioxin was the first issue he inquired into when appointed to that post, 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 impera- tively 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 any- one. ... 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 organizing and editing. Hart then observed that everybody in the room was optimistic about his own subject, but pessimistic about everybody else's subject. 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 phenomenon is apparent everywhere. Physicians know about the extraordinary progress in medicine that they fully expect to continue, but they can't believe in the same sort of progress in natural resources. Geologists know about the progress in natural resources that pushes down their prices, but they worry about food. Even worse, some of those who are most optimistic about their own areas point with alarm to others. Sometimes this can be explained by self-interest. 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 in his hydroponics factory on one acre of land (yes, you read correctly - enough to feed 500 or 1000 people - a process that 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 statement may be made 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... Physicist Gerald O'Neill promotes space exploration by arguing that it will avoid the need for a large number of nuclear reactors. "Operating so many reactors would, despite our best efforts, invite many more disasters like Chernobyl!" ("Development Replaces Dogma, Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Summer, 1992, pp. 17-19, citation p. 18)... The nuclear power industry pushes its own cause by raising a scare over imported oil rather than touting the safety of cheapness of nuclear power. Everybody promotes fears in other areas to promote development of his/her own. I have a special interest in all this, because population economics is the toughest nut of all. Even those who otherwise are optimists worry about it. 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. The Heidelberg Declaration and organization was a big step in the direction we must go - but even there one finds that they worry about overpopulation. In contrast, the anti-growth environmental movement speaks almost with a single voice. Many organizations have banded together in the Global Tomorrow Coalition. And when their foremost spokespersons - for example, noted biologists Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Paul Ehrlich of Stanford - give speeches, they address the entire litany of worries, crying that each and every issue is a threat and part of a general crisis. And they cite surprised scientific consensus. 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 full-page advertisement in The Washington Post and probably elsewhere was headed: "SABOTAGE! of America's Health, Food Safety and Environmental Laws". It turned out to be about the GATT trade rules, and the sponsoring organizations included 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 environmental organization crowd. Clearly this was 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 careful-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 - in many ways, an understandable and admirable personal policy. 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. The world needs an organization to be a Truth Lobby, whose mission it is to combat all false information when it is disseminated - for example, 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. Issues like supposed global warming would be tough for a Truth Lobby because in such a case the facts are not easy to come by in a short period of time after the public hears a new alarm. But inability to respond to every issue that some would like to respond to should be a strength rather than a weakness. Each of the existing organizations that 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. A few trade organizations such as the Western Coal Association have been willing to confront the anti-growthers broadly. 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 (although through 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 motto for them should be: Ally or die. 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 brings the true light of science to many issues. Greg Rehmke runs a program to provide support for high-school debate programs, and the subjects frequently are environmental and population matters. 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 environmentalist. 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 wherever 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 defenders of the truth 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 come together with 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 a matter of coincidence 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 become educated about broader aspects of the situation than their own topics, and are brought on board the good vessel Progress, the separate 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. Of course, a responsible organization will accommodate itself fully to the desire of 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 without prior approval. And it means that statements should be limited to matters of fact and not of policy, as a general rule. One of the most important functions an umbrella organization can perform 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. For example, following an interview by a BBC crew with Robert Whelan that was omitted from a broadcast on population growth, the Chairman of BBC defended the action as follows: "The editor of "Nature" tells me it is difficult to find academic organizations supporting yuour arguments." (Marmaduke Hussey to Whelan, Dec 10, 1990). Absent an organizational presence, 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. **ENDNOTES** <1>: Thanks to Kathy Rochelle for providing the exact quote while correcting the typescript. In my work life she has been one of the people who has been most satisfying to work with. page 1 /mediabk organ16m/July 19, 1995