“We should celebrate our energy bounty, but instead we cower.”
Rich Trzupek writes in the Washington Times,
Government regulators, environmental groups and the news media tell us that the air we breathe is polluted, the water we drink is tainted, our orange juice contains a fungicide, and evil corporations are hoping to make a profit at Mother Earth’s expense. They also remind us that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies are protecting us by fighting the greedy capitalists who seek our destruction.
Don’t believe it.
The United States is among the cleanest nations on the planet. U.S. environmental programs have set the standard for the world. Many other nations copy our regulations wholesale. We have set tough goals and achieved them.
Lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide levels have declined precipitously. Likewise, levels of benzene, arsenic, mercury and many other pollutants have decreased. Perhaps most important, the life expectancy of the average American has risen from 71 to about 77 years.
But don’t expect the government or environmentalists to talk about this success. Admitting it endangers their purpose in life and their livelihoods. Instead, they tend to seize upon fears or a single bit of information from a pile of data and exaggerate it, no matter how unrepresentative it is of the truth…