Atlas Misled: UN Book Exposes Flaws of Environmentalist Argument

When I fly, I always insist on taking the window seat. Maybe it's the 12-year-old boy in me—I like seeing the world as Matchbox cars and ants-as-people scurrying about. Even as an adult and a resident of a large metropolis, I'm always curious as to exactly what this modern expanse of planned communities and shopping meccas really looks like from above.

I recently took a flight from New Orleans, across the entire center of the country, into Chicago. Upon the flight's descent, about 50 miles outside of Chicago, I had a revelation. Or, more apt, a bit of confusion. I had flown 800-plus miles, most of it unobstructed by clouds, and all along I was asking myself- where exactly is this supposedly overwhelming urban sprawl? Certainly there were splotches or urbanity here and there. Certainly there were rare specks of civilization within a virtual universe of green and brown. But sprawl? Relative to the entirety of the journey, I just didn't see it.

All of this was little more than an interesting observation until the following day, when I read of the United Nations releasing an atlas entitled One Planet Many People—a book comparing both modern and decades-old satellite photos of certain areas, supposedly showing the global devastation of man. Interesting. The intention of the UN project certainly contradicted my observations, but I assumed they had a lot more resources for statistical analysis than I did during the few cross-country trips I've taken—so I dug into the book.

What I found, however, wasn't actually a shocking exposé on how man is destroying his planet. A valiant marketing effort, maybe. Ignoring the pithy comments throughout the volume, and the media's guesswork reviews of it, the book—when examined beyond the surface—is actually an excellent exposé on the flaws of the fundamental environmentalist argument.

- MISSING THE "OF" -

While environmentalist causes are almost always born anecdotally, they're certainly not always absent of statistics—and the pages of this UN atlas are chock full of them. Just enough, as they say, to be dangerous. You see, the facts and figures sprinkled throughout this book—and the bulk of the environmentalist argument in total—are not necessarily invalid, but they always seem to be missing one concept. That concept is "of."

As an example, environmental devastation is often established through a fact to the effect of "X number of acres of rain forest have been cut down." Ok, but of how many total? Two very important things are missing from nearly every such argument: a ceiling and an at least halfway-scientific point at which true devastation will occur. Let's arbitrarily say we're destroying thousands of acres of rain forest per day. What if there are billions of acres left? And what if, factoring in technology increases over the next few decades, that number is actually a minuscule blip on the proverbial global devastation radar?

Article Author: Christopher J Falvey

Christopher J Falvey is the author of THE VN/VO at http://www.vnvo.com

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