A founder of Greenpeace International, Patrick Moore, said in an interview in the New Scientist (December 1999), “The environmental movement abandoned science and logic somewhere in the mid-1980s . . . [P]olitical activists were using environmental rhetoric to cover up agendas that had more to do with class warfare and anti-corporatism than with the actual science. . . .” Obviously there are many good groups, which care about the environment and don’t fall into the unfortunate excesses of the modern environmental movement. But exaggeration and untruths are still employed, often to gain political support for government plans or treaties or assistance to stop so-called looming catastrophes.
The truth is that, economic development resulting in increased wealth has caused emissions to fall, because development enables citizens to invest more resources into environmental protection. When people take care of basic needs, they naturally move to improving the quality of their environment. Moreover, free economies do a better job than less free economies. The worst polluters in the world were communist controlled, centrally planned states. Environmental decisions demand choices between oft-competing values; they demand reason and compromise and deliberative democracy at its best. Caution and prudence are in order, not Chicken Little tactics.
EPA – what jurisdiction should the federal Environmental Protection Agency have over Texas environmental management issues?
Federal real property in Texas amounts to less than two percent, and we are fortunate in that respect compared to the many “Western” states where the Federal Government owns much larger percentages of total land area. Since Texas owns almost all of its land and what lies beneath that land in terms of energy and mineral wealth, the EPA has very little legal jurisdiction over Texas environmental management issues. Certainly none of it can be considered as “sole” jurisdiction. The preponderance of environmental management issues in the State of Texas belong to the property owners, private sector and regulatory agencies of the State of Texas, albeit in routine communication and coordination with respective federal agencies where the jurisdiction overlaps.