Cheap Seats 2023 By Rich Trzupek

Blowhards - 08/23

By Rich Trzupek
  Many of us who have been working in the environmental industry for a long time are greatly disillusioned with environmental groups and much of the mainstream media. Count me in this group. After 38 years practicing as a chemist in the environmental industry, I believe that environmental advocates have grown increasingly deceptive over the decades, even as our nation’s environment has grown ever cleaner.
  Put aside global warming for the moment. If alarmist environmental groups expect the public to find their dire predictions about climate change credible, should not the credibility be based on their record regarding other environmental topics? In many cases that record is embarrassingly shameful. By shouting loud enough, for long enough, they have successfully championed false narratives that persist to this day. Millions of ordinary, well-meaning people continue to try to help “save the planet” by following flawed guidance that has seeped its way into the storehouse of conventional wisdom.
  With that background in mind, here are my Top Five Overblown Environmental Messages to Which People Continue to Respond:
We’re Running out of Landfill Space/We Must Recycle
  At no point in time was America ever running out of landfill space. There was a period about 30 years ago when the number of landfills were dropping. The numbers were dropping quite quickly in fact. That was a result of old, relatively small infills that were located close to municipalities falling out of fashion and closing. They would be replaced by so-called mega fills. These are large modern landfills located far from populated areas and engineered with modern environmental standards in mind. So, though the number of landfills decreased, overall landfill acreage did not. The idea that we must recycle because the landfills are overflowing was and is a ridiculous talking point. America has plenty of landfill space in existing landfills and plenty of room to build more as we need them. Collectively all the landfills in America take up a very small fraction of land. One could place all the active landfills in the United States in a midsized Midwestern county and have room to spare.
Our Forests are Disappearing
  If America is ever in danger of running out of trees it won’t be because we’re cutting too many down or not planting enough. It will be because government’s management of our forests has grown so incredibly incompetent that they will be consumed by an ever increasing number of wildfires. Large scale national forest management started about a century ago and has seen a steady growth in forested lands throughout the nation. The big forestry companies like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific long ago realized that they too are subject to the laws of mathematics and therefore must plant as much or more than they harvest in order to keep their business models going. Is there a rain forest problem in South America? I think so. Are North American forests over-harvested. Not at all.
Burning Fossil Fuel in the US is “Dirty” and Dangerous to Public Health
  Reminder: Climate change is off the table in this discussion. We’re only talking about “conventional” criteria and hazardous pollutants right now. Over the centuries since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution we’ve grown increasingly more efficient at pulling more and more energy out of fossil fuels and at reducing the amount of pollutants generated while doing so. People living in the Third World who burn wood or dung living within tightly packed quarters are exposed to far more hazardous and criteria pollutants than anyone in more modern countries that utilize efficient, state of the art and closely regulated systems to produce the maximum power per capita at the lowest possible price. If one finds carbon dioxide emissions especially troubling, one could conceivably characterize fossil fuel emissions as “dirty.” In every other sense, modern fossil fuel combustion is amazingly clean and incredibly more energy efficient than the “green energy” plans that extreme environmental activists have dreamed up over the years.
Over Population
  Contrary to what you may have heard the planet is not overcrowded. If we gave every person on the planet a couple of square feet to stand in, earth’s population would fit inside the city of Houston. That’s it. And now demographic changes tell us that under-population is going to be the problem very soon for a great number of countries. Yet, the myth persists that the planet is over-crowded. It’s true that we don’t always do a great job of getting resources where they are needed, but that’s about logistics, not supply.
GMO Food is Dangerous
  Speaking as one genetically modified organism to another, there’s no reason to lose a minute of sleep worrying about GMO food. We are always modifying genetics. It’s healthy. Whether that is done through old-time crossbreeding or in a lab, what’s the difference? The obligation to ensure that the final product is safe and nutritious is the same in either case. There’s certainly nothing wrong with eating organic or with eating non-GMO. But it’s foolish to think that one must do so to maintain a healthy diet.
  There are plenty more examples like this. It is baffling to find that the humorless, hysterical messages of the environmental movement continue to be taken seriously by so many. Ignorance may be to blame, or perhaps it’s a simple matter of self preservation. Probably, it’s a mixture of both. Whatever the reason, rarely in the course of human events have so many been so wrong so often.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com