Monday, May 4, 2009

I know it can be an 'inconvenience' to read the 'truth', but........

***Love the Planet? Grow the Economy*** By Bill Leonard
Earth Day occurred some time last month. I missed the exact date, but the lockstep coordination from television news, magazines, the kids' channels my granddaughter watches -- and everything in between -- it was impossible to escape the message. I happen to like the idea of teaching kids to pick up litter and to recycle, mostly because it makes our communities nicer places to live and teaches kids good habits. Through Instapundit I came upon another message for Earth Day not officially sanctioned by the priestly class of environmentalists in charge of official Earth Day festivities. At Scrivener.net http://www.scrivener.net/2009/04/save-earth.html they compiled some research showing that even though Gross Domestic Product per person is up 125% since 1965, worldwide mineral consumption
is down 40%. They cite the famous axiom, "The more advanced an economy grows, and the richer its population becomes, the less in physical resources it consumes." I know this is counterintuitive to a lot of folks, but consider these facts:

The amount of trash produced by the population of New York City peaked at over 2,000 pounds per person in the 1940s, and has since fallen to around 900 pounds -- more than 50% less than in 1940.

As for the economy in general, Alan Greenspan once testified, "The rate of increase of the gross domestic product in the United States, adjusted for price change -- our measure of gains in the real value of output -- has averaged around three percent per year. Only a small fraction of that represents growth in the tonnage of physical materials -- oil, coal, ores, wood, raw chemicals, for example. The remainder represents new insights into how to rearrange those physical materials to better serve human needs... The share of the nation's output that is conceptual appears to have accelerated..."By far the largest contributor to growth of our price adjusted GDP, or value added, has been ideas -- insights that leveraged physical reality." This helps explain why each individual's consumption of physical assets has declined over history as the economy has grown.

After selecting 32 minerals with the highest consumption by Americans, per capita consumption fell by 41% between 1965 and 2005 -- even as per capita income more than doubled. Thus, less had to be dug out of the ground to satisfy U.S. consumers in 2005 than 1965 -- even with GDP more than tripling and U.S. population increasing more than 50%.

In short, as people get richer, they consume less of the world's resources and become better stewards of the environment. That is my Earth Day message to you.
Z: Looks like Gore, if he REALLY had any intellectual curiosity, honesty, or cared for this planet more than the money he's making on being so "pro earth", might want to get a hold of obama and help him to a little truth as he's working so hard at removing the rich from America, huh?

thanks to Deborah for the information!

13 comments:

cube said...

Gore only cares about Gore's wellbeing, not the world's. I mean can anyone really be that stupid?

Thomas Lawrence said...

I love reports like this that nuke liberal dogmas.

Z said...

Cube....they SURE can. Every single day, we've been treated to an example of that...sadly.

Larry, me, too. it's refreshing, but only QUITE so refreshing because the truth's so rare these days.

Z said...

By the way, do you notice how many ads are GREEN these days? about 1/3 of them are about something GREEN.
See, a lot of companies have vested interested$$$ in GREENING and I'm wondering at greediness which is scaring our children and misrepresenting the facts to the point that we could even finally sign Kyoto or worse$$$, AND did you hear there's discussion of a bill saying anyone even MAYBE hurt by environmental pollutants, etc., can SUE this country? IS it a concerted effort to break us, or WHAT?

Left Coast Rebel said...

But you can't argue against the greens with facts, what you say may be 'true' but in the face of total propagandization, even to the point of saturday morning cartoons, facts hardly make a dent. Or do they?

Anonymous said...

This whole "green" boondoggle is simply a vehicle to lower our standard of living. What a scam.

The far left, who hate our success and prosperity as a country, are suffering from some kind of masochistic psychosis. Is there a psychiatrist in the house? If so, could you please enlighten us?

It seems to me there is a certain glee they feel at punishing Americans for building a great and powerful country.

Z, speaking of the color green, I believe it was the San Diego Padres who wore green baseball caps in honor of earth day, during the baseball game against the Dodgers. I kid you not!

I mean really, how infantile do we have to get?

I figure it won't be long before there's a human sacrifice to the sun God.

The inmates are running the asylum. There's no doubt about it.

Pris

Z said...

Pris, it's everywhere...now ball games? WOW.
You watch TV for an hour, there'll be at least 2 ads that are GREEEEEN!!

Boy, what I wouldn't do for that old adage to apply "It ain't easy being green!" HA!! Today, it's SO easy. So convincing, SO stupid.

DOn't forget, that's the side which completely ignores the excellent science which points to the fact that it's NOT HUMANS causing whatever climate change we're having AND that it's cyclical.

And, that's NOT TO SAY that I don't believe we should try hard to protect our environment; but the extremism of the left is stupid and laughable.

Always On Watch said...

LOL!

Facts are such inconvenient things.

Ducky's here said...

I assume this takes into account the advent of low weight plastic packaging and other "improvements" which have made our garbage lighter.

Okay, the weight of trash has declined. Does seem you are jumping to an enormous conclusion from that.

Ducky's here said...

After selecting 32 minerals with the highest consumption by Americans, per capita consumption fell by 41% between 1965 and 2005

-----------------------------

I'm going to guess this guy is too stupid to take into account the development of plastics.

Z said...

Ducky, really, no offense, but are you too stupid, as you accuse the author of this piece, to see anything of merit to the thinking in this piece?

Ducky's here said...

I am saying that the piece neglects some very critical points and your conclusion isn't even wrong.

Z said...

Ducky, thanks...I know, the piece only dwells on that one point of lowering taxes, really...it's more an admonition against raising taxes than anything...almost a spooof, really. I didn't write it but I liked the bent of it.