EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Time:	10:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

April 2005

Time for the Environment's Annual Checkup

AEI’s annual Earth Day checkup on April 20 celebrated the tenth edition of the PRI/AEI Index of Leading Environmental Indicators and featured analysis of recent trends and developments in the environment by AEI’s entire “green team” of scholars and fellows who work in the field. The Index examines government data on numerous environmental conditions in the United States, most of which show consistent improvement. This year’s edition devotes special attention to the growing interest in corporate environmental reporting and offers comparisons of U.S. environmental trends with trends in European Union nations.
     
Steven F. Hayward
AEI/PRI

Two key deficiencies inspired the first Index ten years ago.  First, few environmental indicators were available.  There were many similar environmental reports, but none were geared comprehensively to the casual reader.  Second, opinion polls showed that a public majority thought environmental quality was not only bad but getting worse.  In the ten years since, public opinion has shifted, and the future of the intellectual Left’s environmentalism is being questioned increasingly.  Environmental books no longer rocket up the bestseller list, save for the exceptions of Jared Diamond and his Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), not to mention Michael Crichton’s environmental novel State of Fear (2004). 

2004 data will show the lowest level of air pollution in the fifty years it has been monitored.  We are gaining wetlands, particularly on private land, although statistics may not reflect this because statistics are mainly based on government property, where there is a net loss in wetlands.  Forest regrowth continues to exceed forest destruction, as it has for decades.  Some negative environmental indicators, such as mercury-related fish advisories, are on the incline.  This is most likely a reflection of increasing bureaucratic effort, as there is still a lack of water quality trend information.

Karlyn H. Bowman
AEI

Environmentalism as we know it is floundering as people turn to a new, broader movement: progressivism.  Much like its environmentalist predecessor, the distinction of the derived progressive movement seems to stem not from the ends, for most people hope for a clean environment, but in the means to achieving such ends.  As far as environmental policy, the public today has all but dismissed environmental matters due to the lack of federal attention and a general view that environmentalists are “cranky and out of touch.”  Americans pay little attention, for example, to the issue of oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and most have no informed opinion on matters of the sort.  Baby boomers are not particularly concerned at present, and while young people are still committed, it is without the conviction and urgency observed in previous years.  Currently, environmentalism and the debate over such issues is seen almost exclusively at the state and local levels of the government. 

Ted Gayer
AEI

In March of 2005, the EPA finalized a new program for regulating mercury emissions on power plants.  Fixed mercury emissions limits are to be set in an economically preferable “cap-and-trade” model allowing firms to decide how to meet the limits.  This option was selected in lieu of an inflexible and more expensive “command-and-control” model.  Although the EPA made the more economically sound decision of the two, both models will fail the cost-benefit test. 

The need to choose between two extraordinarily costly models stems from unfounded fears about mercury.  A 2004 New York Times report shows that of 4 million babies born a year, 630,000 might be exposed to unsafe levels of mercury exposure.  However, in its report the New York Times erroneously more than doubled the original number--312,000--due to a misunderstanding of scientific factors.  More recent data show that the percentage of women with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood is half of the previously determined percentage.  Additionally, as this mercury data was based on studies from the Faroe Islands, Seychelles, and New Zealand, American women are far less likely to meet this unsafe blood mercury level, rendering this worst-case scenario highly unlikely.  Furthermore, eliminating domestic power plant mercury emissions would only reduce mercury deposition by less than 10 percent.

Samuel Thernstrom
AEI

Legislation on climate change activism is in high momentum.  Yet despite the claims of climate change activists, temperatures, along with greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations, are not rising as expected.  It cannot be denied that there are still vast uncertainties about climate change widely acknowledged by scientists, and human influence cannot be isolated as a fault, for the process of climate change is not yet fully understood.  Congress and the electorate will be hesitant to embrace any climate change legislation, for any such legislation will require significant economic costs.   The process will be difficult, as the politics and public policy of the climate change issue is effectively a triathlon of science, technology, and economics.  There are no clear answers.

The Kyoto Protocol did provide a starting base for this talking point.  The Kyoto Protocol is a necessary step; its implementation is our only hope of international accountability in the near future.  The process needs a jumpstart in order to progress, and the quicker the Kyoto Protocol begins to run its course, the quicker its cracks will begin to appear.  As expected, President George W. Bush took the Kyoto Protocol off the table and moved the discussion forward to explore new options and strategies.  This too was necessary and promises to enhance the debate further.  For the United States to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol was in its best interest, yet America could nonetheless offer its voluntary assistance without fully signing on.  Our voluntary assistance would help move the program along and test the Kyoto Protocol countries without incurring disastrous economic effects at home.  Our aid will define the nature of the problems and ensure that the best possible information is available in the pursuit of improved environmental performance.

Roger Bate
AEI

Wealth is indeed important in environmental performance, and without ownership, there is little incentive for environmental responsibility.  Lack of generated wealth brought about by ownership or at least a primitive system of communal titling is clearly a problem in developing, or “aspiring,” nations.  In Zimbabwe, for example, efforts to capitalize on eco-tourism and other available wealth-generating efforts are ruined by the collapse of an unstructured economy.  Further damaging efforts to improve environmental performance, “aspiring” nations around the globe are exploiting their resources.  With water, it is important to create sustainable water pricing, yet water politics is run by people unfamiliar with market systems.  Water will be a limiting factor to growth in coming years.  Other resources such as fisheries apply as well, as productive markets needs to be installed. 

Regardless of Kyoto Protocol efforts and global pressure, some countries will do nothing to improve their emissions over the next twenty years.  China, India, Brazil, and the rest of the developing world will not take action without the persuasion of extreme bribery.  Therefore, despite global encouragement, environmental performance may worsen in developing countries until they adopt property structures with local incentives. 

AEI program assistant Elizabeth White prepared this summary.