From Free Life, Issue 28, September 1998
ISSN: 0260 5112

The forerunner to this excellent book, the equally good Down to Earth: A Contrarian View of Environmental Problems, was reviewed by Paul Anderton in Free Life 25. Like its predecessor, it consists of a number of Dr Ridley's articles on environmental matters that appeared in The Sunday Telegraph between 1994 and 1996.

The central messages of the two books are essentially the same. First, that the defeat of ideological socialism has not inevitably meant the triumph of liberal economics, but instead those with a passion for centralised economic and social planning have slithered-off into various special interest groups.

Second, that they are prepared to use what has rightly come to be known as 'junk science' to further their cause. In simple terms this means publishing 'facts & figures' which range from being speculative and/or partial to outright falsehoods.

Dr Ridley has some satisfyingly nasty things to say about the so-called environmental groups themselves, particularly Greenpeace (sic). He notes that Greenpeace is not really an 'environmental' group at all, but a commercial organisation whose prime concern is simply to raise money which it spends on more stunts to obtain publicity to raise more money. Much of the sound and fury surrounding the Brent Spar, about which Greenpeace was wholly wrong, had more to do with reversing a dramatic decline in its membership from 5 million in 1990 to less than 3 million by 1995.

As for the junk science ... In the case of Brent Spar Greenpeace appear to have simply made it up so I suppose that cannot really count. But what about global warming, acid rain, the greenhouse effect et al? Firstly, being hopelessly wrong is a time-honoured tradition amongst many environmental doom-sayers. Remember the 'coming ice-age' fiasco put about by a now-prominent exponent of global warming? Or the predictions of the late 1960's that millions would die in wide-spread famines in the 1980's in the USA? Or that by the 1970's the oil would have run out (proven reserves are larger than ever before)?

Their more recent record is little better. Carefully controlled experiments (you know, like proper, grown-up science) in this country have clearly demonstrated that 'acid rain' never existed as such at all but was rather a result of disease and drought. Indeed, spraying compounds containing sulphur onto groups of trees improved their health! With 'global warming', satellite data, which is more reliable than that from ground stations, has detected no world-wide warming trend; carbon dioxide levels actually fell during the 1990's. Computer models here and in Germany which claimed to be able to show global warming patterns did so by being programmed in the first place on the assumption that global warming was a reality. In fact, as much as we can tell, climate change this century has been no more severe than in most other centuries.

Yet scientists who dare to dispute the new Environmentalist orthodoxy are treated in a manner with which Galileo would have been very familiar.

The Greens never admit that they are wrong, never apologise. The nearest they and their tame 'scientists' ever get is to 'revise' their predictions in an ever more 'conservative' direction. When discussing the melting ice caps and the resultant rise is sea-level, in 1980 it was confidently predicted that this would be all of 5 metres (16'5"). By 1989 this was down to 1 metre (1'3"), by 1990 0.65 metres (2'1"), and by 1993 0.2 metres (8"). Oh yes, and they were not too sure about this either because of other variables involved that could not fully control for.

Mainstream politicians fare little better in Dr Ridley's critique. Environmentalism is now clearly the zeitgeist and politicians have played a leading part in bringing this about. To start off with, such is the regrettable level of moral prestige possessed by groups such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and Compassion in World Farming that politicians are terrified of receiving any adverse comments from them. Then they, along with the media and the Environmentalists themselves, tend to be appallingly ignorant about basic science and the proper use of statistics. The complete hash made by just about everyone of the BSE scare is a recent example. Even if BSE can cross the species barrier is can only do so with very great difficulty between two such different species as cattle and humans and the numbers affected can only ever be tiny. Besides, the panic was too late anyway since the cattle appear to have got the BSE from eating infected sheep which we have continued to munch away at all the while.

Politicians are also not above misusing environmental concerns when it suits them, often for crudely nationalistic and protectionist reasons. Dr Ridley notes the sick joke of German and Dutch politicians latching on to the Brent Spar controversy when more pollutants flow out of the mouth of the Rhine every ten minutes than was ever in the Brent Spar. Dr Ridley also takes aim at the fraudulent sanctimoniousness of the Danes. They turn out to have a dreadful record due to the pollution caused by the run-off of manure into the sea which they simply do not measure in the way that Britain does and which allows them to claim, via this piece of methodological legerdemain, their place as arch-environmentalists.

Another of Dr Ridley's targets is the Rousseauian fantasy of the 'myth of mystical conservation'. Proper anthropological studies have shown that the Amazon Indians, for example, practice decidedly non eco-friendly methods but simply lack the technology to do too much damage. Even so, those much-extolled natural conservationists the 'Native Americans' had nonetheless almost managed to exterminate large game from the Rockies before any Europeans got in on the act. Also, as the case of the Yanomamo indicates, these 'noble savages' are rather more of the latter than the former, often possessing shockingly violent social systems where warfare, feuds and sexual competition are endemic.

Dr Ridley also spends time talking about more nuts-and-bolts issues, which are no less important for all that. The catastrophe that has been the EU's Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies; the confusion between sensible and unsentimental natural conservation and bunny-hugging animal welfare; the whole issue of 'public choice' in the current bureaucratic political settlement; the nationalisation-by-stealth of land carried out under the former Conservative government; the relentless support for interventionist 'solutions' to environmental issues and the equally relentless opposition to market-led ones; and so on.

The inchoate but essentially statist political creed that is Environmentalism, in contrast to a sensible concern for, and the scientific study of, mankind's impact on the environment, stands as a metaphor for modern anti-liberalism and Dr Ridley's two volumes are a majestic sword and shield against its effects. Now, if only we could give a copy of each to every school-child in this country before their 'teachers', the media et al have fully brain-washed them ...

Nigel Meek