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GREGG EASTERBROOK: HAS ENVIRONMENTALISM BLOWN IT? Has environmentalism blown it? GREEN CASSANDRAS By Gregg Easterbrook T he distinction between a bicycle accident and the end of ci ilizarion has seldom been so blurred as at the Earth Summit. recently con- cluded in Rio de Janeiro. There. discussion of palpable threats to nature mixed in equal proportion • with improbable claims of instant doom. Emironmen- talists, who wnuld seem to have an interest in separating . ........ . ......... . ........................ _ ..................................... _ ..................................... GREGG E.ISTERBROOR is a contributing editor for .\'ewsweek and The d!(¢ntic. the types of alarms, instead encouraged the confusion - on doctrinal grounds. namely that all environmental news should be negative. This ccorldview mav be appro- priate for fund-raising and facultv sherrv hours, but it can backfire in the realm of public policc. Consider the interplav between global warming hype and the Earth Summit. Most C.S. pollution controls exceed those of other nations. including Japan and Western Europe. Carbon emissions are the one impor- tant environmental category where :lmerica is the worst JULV fi. t992 THE NEw REPUBLIC 23

i tte,[renaths of liberalism: it's eerie tu hcar liher:d [•mi- ~piracv theorv. the nutiun makes tor snazzv direct mail. i mrnentalists a,.ertin:~ that views tltev disagree anlt tinppusedh~ Reilh recenth~ was bested bv lQuavles ~,.ught nu[ to he he:ud. \tore impurtant. the desire u1 he , i<wncil in the icriting nlii Clean Air Act regttlation h e .ttgrutnents ayatnnt uue > rsentpt trom c.onlrunung t tositiun traditiunalle is seen when a ntovement te;trs u i, abuut to be discredited. v not detttse environmeu- [al rhetoric beture tn implosion: In exemplarc r{uublespeak. some enviros put tilrth I Svru lirrk Trrnes did, that Quavle's action granted cumpa- that dissenting cielcs should be suppressed in the name I nies the treedom to "increase air pollution i%ithout uf balance. Gure, tur exampla asserts that reporters I prior notice." Stricdc speaking that is true, hut onh in . ,hould attach little lceteht to scientists tcho quesnon I the sense that the Tirnes is~firee to publish libel without reenhouse rmer.encv claims, because perhaps 2 per- cent ut cresfentialed researchers feel that wa¢ This sim- plv isn't true. l~reenpeace recentlv surveved climatolo- ~*ists, doubtless ho in for evidence of lobal warmin panic: instead it tound that t e IarQest,group ot respon- dents. 47 percent. believe a runawav greenhouse ettect is nearlv impossible. The two source authorities of t e greenhouse business. reports bv the National Academv of Sciences and the c.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on C:limate Change, contain hundreds of pages of credentialed misgivings. Recently I.utended the cli- ntate change ,rssions of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There was clear agreement that recent temperatures are up, that thev might or might not continue to go up, and that the skv is blue. • ne factor in environmental overstatement is the belief that onlv end-of-the-world locution can hold public attention. This assumption is wrong. Voters care about many issues that pose no threat to life. and they would continue to support environmentalism even if the rhetoric were more vera- cious, because the plain-spoken case for the environ- ment is strong enough. At any rate, endof-the-world environmental issues have been in short supply recently. Toxic wastes once seemed like a threat to general well- being, but experience has shown their impact locallv confined and nowhere near as severe as assumed. Ozone depletion someday may imperil life, but with cFCs being banned there's little left to advocate, unless you know of a means to plug volcanos. Global warming holds out the appeal of a sweeping calamitv, a bad sci- ence fiction moe e come true. Enviros now seem almost to be rooting for temperature increases. Well, enviro fund-raisers are, at least. As the move- ment has advanced from a low-budget operation to a branch office of the status quo, the need to acquire ever larger sums has driven many green groups to relv on direct mail. The direct-mail business is based on scare tactics. conspiracv theories, bogeymen, and preposter- ous levels of exaggeration. Some enviros now eagerly promote (to credulous acceptance in the big-deal press corps) the notion that Ee,4 administrator William Reillv is a mere pawn before shadowy forces on Dan Quavle's Competitiveness Council. In fact, the council is a pip- squeak organization, and Reillv just persuaded Bush to go to Rio over the combined objections of numerous leading administration figures. But turning on a con- re<gardin[; toxic elnissions. Front-page stories devoted ntanv paragraphs to interpretation of the event as a sign , 1t impending emironmental doom. while skipping glis- ,ando over what esactlv happened. except to sae. as Tlre prior notice: legal penalties make it unlikeh• this will happen. The regulatorv [Lttestion was whether cumpa- nies with valid air permits must go through a tormal public hearing sequence [o obtain a new permit each time thev want to install new factorv process equip- ment. Reillv thought they should, Quavle thought thev shouldn't. Unaltered by the dispute. and tmmentioned in the stories, was that if Factore process changes do increase pollution. companies must disclose that tact and pav fines. - 0 nce vou know that, the incident is a mere tech- nical skirmish about how best to minimize reg- ulatorv transaction costs. But what if enviro attacks on Reilly succeed in convincing Wash- ington that he has lost power. and a self-fulfilling prophecy results% Thinking in terms of what may sell to the bulk-rate donor list engages the risk that, like politi- cians believing their own press releases, environmental- ists will believe their own direct mail. This in turn raises the worst aspect in which ecological hype may back- fire-the New Right parallel. at one time the New Right consisted of underfunded tnices crving in the wilderness. Then Ronald Reagan came to power and made some of the changes his back- ers favored. Rather than celebrating, many on the New Right became vet more strident, if only to differentiate themselves from a mainstream that had shifted some- what in their direction. A dvnamic took hold in which numerous conservative factions were more concerned about crazy claims for fund-raising purposes than about the actual condition of the real world. The public ceased believing conservative alarms: unstoppable as the New Right seemed ittthe early 1980s, it now bor- ders on insignificance. Enviros todav risk the same progression of events. Once thev were disfranchised outsiders, invariably right where industrv was invariablv wrong. Now the move- ment is a monied faction of the establishment, t~t- many satisfying right/wrong distinctions blurred by the verv reforms environmentalists set in motion. Like the New Right. enviros are evolving an internal dynamic of sel[ sadsfaction based on mutual displays of stridencv, with the state of the real world a subsidiary concern. That certainly seemed to be the name of the game at Rio. If emironmentalists keep proclaiming that nature is ending when daily the sun continues to rise, they may find the public's "oh, shut up" point can be reached on _environmentalism, too. JULY6, 1292 THE NEW REPUBLIC 25