The Reality The Climate Cult Ignores: Earth Is Cleaner Than They Say Despite Their Efforts

With the 50th Earth Day celebration coming and going (though definitely dampened by the current situation as a result of the Chinese coronavirus), a noted writer from Junk Science took notice of what efforts have been taken in the last half century to clean up our planet and put them together in a recent article titled: “Eco-Reality Strikes Back: Earth Day at 50.”
 
Steve Milloy’s article began with a summary of the article he would further write. In his summary, he wrote: “Americans began cleaning up their industrialized environment in the late 1940s, well before the first Earth Day in 1970. Since then, many decades of efforts have produced a U.S. environment that is as clean as any industrialized society in the world, especially considering a population of 330 million with a historically unparalleled high standard of living. In fact, this high standard of living is what made environmental clean-up desirable and possible.”
 
So right off the bat, Milloy notes that efforts to have a cleaner environment have been taken since well before the first Earth Day, which as I have noted in a previous article, was stupid and at points, counterproductive, for the most part. If what people did for the first Earth Day in 1970 was sing, dance, drag dead fish on the streets (NYC), stage die-ins at an international airport (Boston) and sign an oversized “Declaration of Interdependence” (Philadelphia), then this hippy crap was useless at best and counterintuitive at worst.
 
Useless and counterintuitive is what the Left is best known for anyway, so it was entirely on-brand.
 
In any case, Milloy then went on to cite the quality of our air. “U.S. air is as clean as it has ever been. From 1980 to 2018, except where noted:
 

• Carbon monoxide, down 83%
• Lead, down 99%
• Nitrous oxides, down 61%
• Ozone, down 31%
• Particulate matter (10 micrograms & below), down 26%
• Particulate matter (2.5 micrograms & below), down 39% (2000-2018)
• Sulfur dioxide, down 91%.”

 
This is noteworthy because the Left, as you well and truly know, has been saying for decades now that we are slowly but surely killing our planet with our cars and our planes and other things that we use that “pollute” our planet, kill the ozone layer and result in the dirtying of our air and destruction of our planet. But according to the EPA’s figures, that is far from the case. Over a roughly 40-year period, carbon monoxide has dropped significantly, as well as lead, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide.
 
If you ask a climate cultist, you would get the sense that we are pumping all these toxins into the atmosphere like one would pump air into a tire. But reality, as often is the case, is far different from what these people claim it is.
 
When it comes to drinking water, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) says: “Generally, water systems in the United States provide reliable and high-quality drinking water. Violations tend to be infrequent.”
 
Regarding surface waters, Milloy says that “U.S. surface waters are as clean as any in the world and progress continues to be made. Since 2005, 832 bodies of water have been restored from run-off/non-point-source pollution. Under President Trump’s leadership, this includes 131 bodies of water.”
 
And when it comes to waste sites: “Superfund waste site clean ups have accelerated under the Trump administration.”
 
Over the last two years of Obama’s presidency and his EPA, 9 waste sites were cleaned up. Over the first two years of Trump’s presidency and his EPA, 28 sites were cleaned up.
 
The president that the Left loves and considers to be an environmental champion can’t hold a candle to the president that the Left hates and considers to be almost singlehandedly killing the planet. Not that this ought to come as any surprise at any rate.
 
What’s more, even with CO2 emissions in the atmosphere (or actually, precisely because of it), the Earth is greener now than ever before, according to NASA.
 
That is the great irony of environmentalism. The climate cult salivates over a greener planet with more vegetation and trees to produce oxygen, but this comes through carbon dioxide warming the planet a bit more (and before anyone tries to call me a hypocrite for noting that CO2 warms the planet and saying that man can’t do anything to the climate, let me point out that the vast majority of CO2 released onto the atmosphere does not come from cars or planes, but from activity in the sea floor and volcanic activity, so it’s natural, not anthropogenic).
 
When it comes to the planet, Milloy writes: “Since the pre-industrial age, there has been approximately 1.1°C of warming and almost 50% more CO2 in the atmosphere. Since that time, more people are living longer lives at a higher standard of living.”
 
“Life expectancy is up from approx. 40 years (1850) to approx. 79 (2019). US per capita GDP is up from approx. $2,825 in 1850 to approx. $53,000 in 2016 (2011 dollars).”
 
In other words, the nations that tend to be the wealthiest, with the highest standards of living, also tend to be the cleanest and healthiest. This should come as no surprise to people either.
 
Milloy then goes on to ask the question of how exactly it was that we came about to cleaning our environment. He credits this environmental progress to:

• Awareness. “Informed societal concern has grown since the late 1940s.”
• Wealth. “Financial resources have allowed the nation to afford a clean environment.”
• Appropriate laws and regulations. “Successful regulation has been fact-driven, not ideology-driven. Economy killing overregulation has opposed and avoided [sic.]”.
• And improved technology. “Technology has provided an improved ability to assess and remedy environmental problems.”

 
Milloy also notes that, in order to continue cleaning our planet and keeping it clean and safe, we need to continue with efforts in amassing more wealth, as more capital means more ability to clean up our environment, put in place strong property rights, innovate with new technologies, implement better education and become less hysterical about the nature of our planet.
 
Constant news cycles about the mere existence of people on this planet resulting in its death achieve nothing of value to anyone (except the climate cult and the organizations running such news cycles, I suppose).
 
Milloy’s final verdict on environmental activism and Earth Day are summarized as follows: “While green groups and Earth Day organizers will grasp for all environmental improvement and protection credit since 1970, the actual story is far more complex. Since the 1960s, green groups have often taken extreme positions to advocate for overregulation that has impeded environmental protection and wasted time/money. Radicals often attack capitalism with the line, ‘You didn’t build that.’ On Earth Day, that should be retorted with: ‘You didn’t clean that up.’ Environmental protection has been a group effort enabled by our wealth and system of government.”
 
One thing I would like to talk about with that last quotation is the idea that the climate cultists would take credit for the cleaning up of our planet since 1970. The thing about that is that they don’t even do that.
 
You would think that with each doomsday warning that doesn’t come true, the Left would try and take some credit for that and say that “we have staved off the apocalypse because of our efforts, but we must continue with them, and implement stronger measures, to stave off any possible future apocalyptic climate events,” but they don’t even do that. They just ignore the previous climate warning (Al Gore didn’t face any major criticism for his 10-year doomsday clock expiring in 2016 and AOC won’t receive any either in 11 years) and issue another one as though what they are saying is gospel and totally infallible.
 
They don’t even really acknowledge that they are cleaning up the planet (they aren’t, but they could lie to people about it). They just keep telling people that it’s getting worse and worse, telling people that our current way of life is unsustainable and things must change in order to “save the planet.” Acknowledging that things have been improving is counterproductive to their fearmongering strategies and desires.
 
The point isn’t to actually clean up the planet or protect it. It’s to scare people into giving up their rights and liberties “for the common good of the planet”. Acknowledging that our efforts have helped clean the planet would only tell people that our capitalist system has been beneficial to the planet. The Left can’t have that, so they ignore the environmental progress in favor of a lie that they can, unfortunately, pass off to people really well and get them to believe it.
 
But the good news is that reality does come back to face these lies and wipe them out. We have done great things for our environment and the only ones standing in the way of progress have been the climate cultists and the Left (but I repeat myself).
 
Proverbs 15:14
“The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly.”