Overreach

 Nothing Like the Good Old Days

The environmentalist movement has long since overreached itself.  It has fallen back on a primitive nativism as the way forward.  Less is more.  Fewer people, lower standards of living, and more simple primitive lifestyles are the way ahead--if we are to save the planet.  What environmentalists fail to grasp is how they have messed in their own nest.  By over egging the pudding they have created a deep cynicism toward (legitimate) environmental concerns, which is a great pity. 

Two assumptions come together to support the environmentalist philosophy.  The first is that fewer humans means less pollution.  The second is that fewer humans means more wealth to be distributed to each individual.  Both assumptions are simplistic nostrums.  Both assumptions can only find traction on a plain of general ignorance. 

Consider the following realities:

. . . in developed countries today, the air and water are fare clearner than they were fifty to sixty years ago.  Although air quality in large towns and cities is lower than that in rural areas--and always has been--it is still far better today than in the past, precisely because of industrial development.  Before the advent of modern industry, the open streets served as sewers.  All large towns and cities with a heavy concentration of horses suffered from the enormous pollution problem created by dropping of vast quantities of animal manure and urine.

The introduction of sewage systems eliminated this sewage problem, and the development of the automobile industry eliminated the need for horses.  In fact, technological innovation and industrialization have not only provided the knowledge of how to build large-scale plumbing and sewage systems, but also enabled us to produce materials such as iron, steel, copper, and PVC with which to build these systems.  Central heating, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and modern ventilation methods also made significant contributions to improving the quality of air in which people live and work. . . .

Regarding the quality of drinking water, it is well known that the actual safety of drinking water is in direct proportion to a country's degree of economic advancement.  One can safely drink tap water in virtually  every modern developed country, because the safety of water supplies is guaranteed by chemical purification plants, and the water is safely distributed by a network of pipelines and pumping stations providing instant access to safe drinking water, hot or cold, every minute of the day.  However, drinking the water in south and central America, and most of Asia and Africa, would be a dangerous proposition because there are no purification plants, and no secure distribution systems. [Andrew S. Kulikovsky, Creation, Fall, Restoration: A Biblical Theology of Creation (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor/Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2009),  p. 256f.]

As to those simpler, less polluted times consider the following description of London by Tobias Smollett written in 1771:

If I would drink water, I must quaff the mawkish contents of an open aqueduct, exposed to all manner of defilement, or swallow that which comes from the river Thames, impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster. Human excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed of all the drugs, minerals, and poisons used in mechanics and manufactures, enriched with the putrefying carcasses of beasts and men, and mixed with the scourings of all the washtubs, kennels, and common sewers, within the bills of mortality.

 Nothing like the good old days . . .