Celebrating Earth Day

AL GORE CELEBRATED Earth Day, April 22nd, with an fearmongering screed in Vanity Fair. Watch out for the 10,000 ft chunk of ice perched on the top of Greenland, he advised. If it fell off and plunged into the ocean it could raise sea levels by 20 feet!

On the other hand, we could talk, as OpinionJournal.com does, about the amazing improvements in environmental quality since the first Earth Day in 1970.

Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%.

Meanwhile the number of cars of the road has doubled and the number of miles driven has tripled in the United States.

Fifteen years ago at an environmental conference in Davos, Switzerland, a German told me a story about the problem of the improving environment. Every time a chemical plant has a spill in the River Rhine, he observed, there�s a fish kill and the attendant media attention. The dirty little secret is that thirty years earlier there were no fish kills. There were no fish kills because there were no fish living in the rivers. German rivers were too toxic for the fish.

Last year in the British press they wrote about the herons that you could now see along the River Thames. Herons? But that must mean there are fish in the river for herons to eat, and food in the river for the fish to eat.

Still, as Al Gore points out, there is always the chance that Greenland will slide into the sea.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.