Want To Save The Environment In 30 Years? Ignore Environmentalists Now

There are basically three kinds of environmentalists: Type 1. The most avid environmentalists I have ever met are not Sierra Club employees or people in the middle of protests, they are sportsmen and sportswomen who appreciate the environment because cultivating a clean environment means they can continue to enjoy it. They basically pick up after themselves and leave things the way they found them. This is the great majority of people who spend time in the outdoors but you don't find them in magazine articles or on TV. Type 2 are the political activists. They seem to care about the environment as a platform for lots of other political issues. The environment is part of a much larger agenda they have. They camp out in trees and prevent responsible logging from occurring which leads to out-of-control wildfires, or they file lawsuits about levee improvements in Louisiana until a hurricane comes through and they get to pretend the fault lies with some politicians in Washington, D.C. Type 3 are the well-meaning but misguided. These are people who genuinely care but are lulled into believing that because a scientific theory is current it must be accurate. People in the throes of fad science will invariably use one of these two arguments: Argument 1. "Doing something is better than nothing." Argument 2. "If we can save even one fish/plant/owl/mollusk/seal/insert_your_favorite critter it is all worth it." Argument 2 is easily dimissed, and evolutionary biologists are first to make the case that dying species don't wreck the planet, they optimize it. This is why you never hear evolutionary biologists talking about global warming. They know mankind survived the last Ice Age with nothing except a few furs and some sticks to rub together for fire. Surely mankind can survive being a little warmer. Argument 1 is the worst reason to make environmental decisions because there are no do-overs with the environment. A methodical, proven approach is the safest course. But people often want to do something to show they care and they often rely on evidence they like to rationalize their decisions. What they forget is that scientists are human and humans are fallible. It may be quaint today to think that leeching was once valid science but it was still practiced 100 years ago. Environmentalists could learn a lot about rushing into bad ideas by reading the history of medicine. The history of science is fraught with current ideas that turned out to be very bad. 30 years ago, an environmental group thought it would be good for the environment to make a coral reef out of discarded tires they buried on the ocean floor. Did they mean well? Of course they did. Television is always filled with earnest environmentalists who mean well. Heck, I live in California where environmentalists once convinced our Governor ( Jerry Brown ) that windmills would pay for themselves in no time at all. $15 Billion later they are a visual blight and a lot of wasted money. And don't even get me started on MTBE. The people of Florida now have a similar issue. The entire state is going to have to spend millions to clean up the damage caused by a small environmental group who meant well and relied on scientists and studies that provided evidence they liked. How do you clean up 2 million tires on the ocean floor? The hard way, my friends. And those tires can't be recycled now. So they will end up in a landfill - exactly what well-meaning environmentalists did not want. Lots of money. Tires in landfills. The environment worse than it was before. This is what happens when hasty decisions are made based on convenient evidence rather than proof. Environmental evidence takes time. Three decades ago a coral reef made of tires was a good idea. Today people who can't even predict the weather more than 10 days from now are trying to tell us we need to spend trillions to prevent a disaster that may not be coming. A science fiction writer* once wrote that if we sent a spaceship to a distant star today whoever still lived to arrive 100 years from now would be greeted by people from Earth who had passed them in transit. Technology moves that quickly. Sometimes the best way to save the environment is to leave it for the future and more advanced technology. Or else we could end up with the future equivalent of a coral reef full of tires. *Huge Contrarian Scientist bonus if you identify that author.