Sustainability

The legacy of Julian Simon roars on. Bjorn Lomborg's work is well known, the World Bank and others are chiming in with relevant international data findings (Sunday's post) and a new book edited by Terry L. Anderson, You Have to Admit It's Getting Better (Hoover Press) delivers recent research that adds still more. The authors suggest that the data show that sustainability is here. We are on the path.

One of the chapters (by Robert E. McCormick) even shows that net carbon emissions are subject to an Environmental Kuznets Curve. Economic growth eventually gives us a "race to the top."

Just when the NY Times Book Review had retained Al Gore as book reviewer for a book that stuck to the dim view.

Interestingly, my colleague Martin Krieger, in his "What's Wrong With Plastic Trees" was remarkably prescient about the sustainability mantra in 1973.

Yet, Martin could not have known, no one could have predicted what I discovered when I accompanied my friend Matt Ramsey to his school's Winter Sing, just a couple of years ago. Most of the the schmaltzy Christmas stuff had been replaced by songs about recycling!

I can only imagine what gets taught to these (and many other) kids throughout the year.

I did send Michael Sanera and Jane Shaw's Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment to Matt. The good news is that I can follow up with Krieger, Simon, Lomborg and many others.