Two good books “The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind” by Richard E. Leakey
And ESPECIALLY ” Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators” by Will Stolzenberg
The last one is written really well..wonderful to read!

I supposed Gregg needed a column this week but he could have stopped at that single sentence. Next week I suggest he substitute “Government” for “EPA” and that will be another well written column.

That being said, I agree fully that there is fault on both sides in the environmental debates. On the left there is the tendency to play up the “chicken little” aspects of environmental policy that leads to skepticism amongst those who lived through it. Anyone over the age of 40 remembers the fear mongering of overpopulation, ozone depletion, death of the rain forests, starvation, acid rain, new ice age, expanding deserts, DDT, Alar, etc. In all those cases the problems were either resolved (mostly), overblown, or just plain wrong.

For the right, there’s a bad tendency to suggest that there are no environmental problems whatsoever. This is, of course, demonstrably wrong.

The need to streamline EPA regulations is vital, and the agency needs to move from a role of being a police force with a goal of punitive action, to one of cooperation with industry making the environment better. Instead of denying a company the ability to build a plant on a brownfield, let the agency work on helping a company acquire funding and resources to clean the site first.

Of course, as Will Rodgers once said, “the middle of the road is the surest place to get run over.”

He says that US output has increased 124% between 1980 and 2009 which, indeed, may or may not be true. In any case, this percentage is irrelevant to his own very poor arguments because he has made no tangible comparisons.

Between 1952 and 1972 — the average US GDP rate was 3.7%.

Between 1972 and 2010, the average GDP increase was at 3%.

That’s a drop of 23%.

Isn’t this pecentile figure rather more important, truthful and revealing than your own weak assumptions on the “positive” effects on GDP of EPA rules ?

Sick media, sick opinion equals dumbed-down citizens.

I would try searching a little harder for the truth Mr Easterbrook.

Here’s where it starts… “What’s maddening about the politics of the environment is that both sides consistently assert things that aren’t even close to true…. the left claims the environment is dying – data show the reverse.”

But then you add this much later, “All forms of air pollution except greenhouse gases have been in decline for a generation…”

Ipso facto on the last sentence I quoted, greenhouse gases are on the rise. And greenhouse gases and curbing C02 emissions is the left’s big bogeyman. So the “left” ISN’T, in fact, wrong in making their claim that the environment is dying. Thanks for playing Greggggggg.

Both sides of the aisle are environmentally irrational. Unfortunately that leaves us dangling without any environmental policy whatsoever beyond the vagaries of the current administration’s interpretations of existing regulation. And it leaves us voters without an important descriminating factor in choosing between candidates.

Worse yet, the environment is but one area in which the political milieu is so dichotimized.