FOXNews.com - Views - CATO - Three Cheers for Holiday Lights: "Known world oil reserves (search) are more than 20 times greater now than they were when record keeping began in the 1940s; world gas reserves (search) are almost four times greater than they were in the 1960s; world coal reserves (search) have risen fourfold since 1950. Transient developments, often political, can drive supplies down and prices up, but the raw mineral resource base is abundant--and expanding in economic terms thanks to an inexhaustible supply of human ingenuity and exploratory capital.
Record energy consumption has been accompanied by improving air quality. Urban air quality is a third better today than in 1970. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that air emissions of the criteria pollutants declined by 25 percent, as energy usage increased by 150 percent. Further air emission reductions are expected, but they will not be accomplished by forcing higher prices or inconvenience on consumers. Future reductions will be accomplished with market incentives, technological improvement, and regulation based on sound science, not alarmism.
Should good citizens think twice about holiday lighting, given global warming (search) and other suspected climate changes supposedly caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide? Hardly. A moderately warmer, wetter world, whether natural or anthropogenic (search), such as experienced in the 20th century, is a better world. Carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels 'greens' the biosphere through the well-documented carbon fertilization effect (search). But most importantly, the wealth created from affordable, plentiful energy provides the primary means for societies to improve the environment. In the final analysis, wealth produces environmental health, which explains why increasing energy usage and environmental improvement have gone hand in hand in the Western world."
Record energy consumption has been accompanied by improving air quality. Urban air quality is a third better today than in 1970. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that air emissions of the criteria pollutants declined by 25 percent, as energy usage increased by 150 percent. Further air emission reductions are expected, but they will not be accomplished by forcing higher prices or inconvenience on consumers. Future reductions will be accomplished with market incentives, technological improvement, and regulation based on sound science, not alarmism.
Should good citizens think twice about holiday lighting, given global warming (search) and other suspected climate changes supposedly caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide? Hardly. A moderately warmer, wetter world, whether natural or anthropogenic (search), such as experienced in the 20th century, is a better world. Carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels 'greens' the biosphere through the well-documented carbon fertilization effect (search). But most importantly, the wealth created from affordable, plentiful energy provides the primary means for societies to improve the environment. In the final analysis, wealth produces environmental health, which explains why increasing energy usage and environmental improvement have gone hand in hand in the Western world."
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