Nice work, Science:
Despite gloomy headlines, our planet is getting cleaner and healthier
The media sells bad news, but scientific evidence shows that we are making progress toward a greener planet.
Key Takeaways
- Dreary, despondent headlines about pollution and climate change are the norm. But they are not painting a full or accurate picture.
- While Earth is still no Garden of Eden, many countries are making serious efforts to become clean and green. The results are scientifically notable but underreported by the media.
- Human ingenuity is the ultimate resource. In a world filled with bad news, that's a fact worth celebrating.
There is no shortage of bad news in media headlines. “Climate change is already killing us,” the World Health Organization (WHO)
declared in the run up to the UN’s COP 27 Climate Change Conference. “Low levels of air pollution deadlier than previously thought,”
McGill University lamented. “Brazil’s plans to pave an Amazon road could open path to more deforestation,” yet
another despondent headline from NPR blared.
Most people undoubtedly accept that climate change, air pollution, and deforestation are very real problems we ought to take seriously. What fewer of us seem to realize, however, is that the world
has taken these issues seriously and made significant progress toward solving them as a result. This observation leads us to an important but oft-overlooked conclusion: Economic growth and technological innovation are making our planet a cleaner, safer place to live.
Pollution is plummeting
“Between 1970 and 2020,” according to the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO, and Pb) dropped by 78 percent.” Similar trends have been observed in other developed nations as well. Between 1970 and 2016, the UK reduced its emissions of
all air pollutants except ammonia by 60%. The trend is unmistakable to anyone looking carefully at the evidence. Drs. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser helpfully summed up the situation for Our World in Data
in 2019:
“What becomes clear is that far from being the most polluted in recent history, the air in many rich countries today is cleaner than it has been for decades.”
They rightly cautioned that we have more work to do. Many developing countries have yet to acquire the resources necessary to invest in pollution-reduction measures; they are primarily focused on raising their standard of living by gaining access to abundant food and energy supplies, for example. As their
economies develop, they will have both the means and the desire to tackle air pollution. This pattern has
been observed in countries all over the world.
More food on less land
One of the best ways to bring a nation out of grinding poverty is to boost its agricultural productivity. The introduction of high-yielding crop varieties during the Green Revolution, led by plant pathologist Norman Borlaug, nicely illustrated how this phenomenon works. According to a
July 2021 study, enhanced crops developed between 1965 and 2010 increased food production by more than 40%, saving the world a whopping
$83 trillion. Addressing the environmental impact of agriculture, the authors didn’t mince words:
“Our paper also sheds light on a concern, often expressed in the literature, that agricultural productivity improvements would pull additional land into agriculture at the expense of forests and other environmentally valuable land uses. We find evidence to the contrary… the Green Revolution tended to reduce the amount of land devoted to agriculture.”
The media sells bad news, but scientific evidence shows that we are making progress toward a healthier, cleaner, and greener planet.
bigthink.com
