If you think you've seen this column before you are correct. In the interest of promoting "local diversity," the Bozeman Daily Chronicle no longer runs FREE's columns each Wednesday but rather once every third week. However, each week we place a FREE Insight on our website.

We posted a slightly longer version of this column on Feb. 3 and had several requests to publish it in the BDC when we next had an opportunity. We have done so. Here it is.

Thanks for your interest.

John Baden

It’s encouraging to observe the history of many contentious environmental concerns. They attract national attention, projections are foreboding, and then, years later, they have been solved, ameliorated, or forgotten. Acid rain and fluorocarbons exemplify this path. Regulations may fix or satisfy anticipated problems, but they were often exaggerated for political reasons.

Twenty years ago the National Center for Policy Analysis commissioned Lynn Scarlett of the Reason Foundation to write "A Consumer’s Guide to Environmental Myths and Realities.” It observed that Americans are besieged with admonitions and advice on being good environmentalists. Focus was on what to buy and how to act.

The study demonstrated that much of this counsel was flawed and driven by special interest. Yet this well researched 40-page study is worth reading.

First, it demonstrates substantial progress; nine of the ten concerns that preoccupied Greens two decades ago have eroded if not fully evaporated. When did you last hear “America is running out of landfill space” listed as an environmental problem? Twenty years ago it was myth #1.

Nine of the ten myths focused on the consequences of consumer behavior. They included: Americans are especially wasteful (We weren’t.); packaging, plastics, and disposables are inherently bad (They weren’t.); recycling is unambiguously good (It isn’t.); and biodegradable is best, while solid waste is necessarily dangerous (Not necessarily.).

These simple rules economize on information but they are inappropriate in a complex world. Essentially, over time we’ve learned how to deal more responsibly with the consequences of consumption. Experience led to substantial improvements. Hence, the vexing problems of 1990 have dissipated.

At twenty years removed, the Green naiveté underlying these myths seems really quite remarkable. It may also give rise to optimism; if nine of the ten problems have been discounted to near irrelevance in a mere two decades, might today’s likewise diminish with time?

But perhaps, this time really is different.

What about myth #10 “We are running out of resources.” Well, aren’t we? Non-renewables are just that; we really are using up copper, cadmium, and cobalt. I’ll return to that issue below but first ask the reader to recall one uncontestable fact, the bronze age didn’t end due to a shortage of bronze, nor did the iron age end due to a paucity of iron. When commodities become scarce, ingenuity produces superior substitutes.

Today’s Environmental Problems

If environmental protest is an essential part of one’s zeitgeist, there’s a logical reason why old problems are insignificant; today’s are so much worse. Today’s cancer makes yesterday’s cold a trivial annoyance. The severity of problems depends on context.

Consider the “population explosion.” This surely remains a huge problem in Third World nations burdened by political bandits and dysfunctional cultures. In developed economies, however, the major problem is a dearth of births. Japan and Western Europe are producing children far below the replacement rate, 2.2 children per woman.

This poses huge problems in the next few decades. And for this there is no easy, if any, fix. Demography holds few surprises and evidence is obvious. Yet, people and institutional arrangements will adjust as reality intrudes on political promises.

Endangered species surely exemplify major problems involving culture and political economy. It seems important to me that the snow leopard or white rhinoceros avoid extinction. However, that potential loss has little if any impact on the material state of human wellbeing.

Climate change may indeed be a huge environmental problem—or it may not. It surely presents massive ethical and scientific problems—and fantastic opportunities for politicians and special interests. With climate at issue, researchers’ integrity risks capture, seduction, or corruption, especially as university budgets grow tighter.

In contrast to climate change, a scarcity of material resources has yet to be a problem when property rights are secure and the market process fosters discovery, innovation, substitution, and conservation. Here’s the good news: scarcity has never won a race against creativity when marketable commodities are at issue.