Is Growth Good?

Resources, Development, and the Future of the Planet

Lomborg's answer to responses written to his "Environmental Alarmism, Then and Now" article in Foreign Affairs.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS DO NOT OPPOSE GROWTH

Frances Beinecke

In 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act into law, launching one of the most successful public health and environmental programs in history. In the first decade that followed, in Los Angeles, the amount of pollution from ozone -- the main component of smog -- exceeded government health standards on 200 days each year. By 2004, that number had dropped to 28 days. In the 1970s, also as a result of polluted air, nearly 90 percent of American children had lead in their blood at levels higher than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed safe, and parents were alarmed by studies showing that lead interfered with cognitive development. Today, only two percent of children have such high levels of lead in their bodies.