As I was driving this weekend there was a commercial on the radio that started out with something along the lines of “We all know our world is becoming more polluted with dangerous toxins every day”. It prompted me to pause a moment and reflect. It wasn’t long before I decided that I disagreed with the statement remembering as a young child swimming in a Chesapeake Bay that was much different than the bay of today. And today while browsing the BBC website I happened to notice an article that salmon have been reintroduced into the River Thames. This brought to mind a recent article on National Geographic’s site of sturgeon recovery in the Hudson River and their removal from the endangered list.

Part of what allows politicians to get away with their wild antics while in office are little “conventional wisdoms” such as the notion that America is growing more polluted. The fact is that we are giving our children a much cleaner country than the one passed to us. The next time you hear one of these conventional wisdoms that “everybody knows”, it might do you well to question it. While it might have been true at some point in the past, check into it and see if it still holds true today and ask yourself should our government operate according to the reality of today or to a reality that might have passed long ago.

It isn’t much different with Global Warming. They first convince you that there is something to fear and then they offer you the path of salvation from certain doom. Just elect them and they will take care of everything for you, the other party will doom your children to a horrible world. I might point out that most US environmental policy, and certainly the most important pieces, were enacted by Republican administrations and that salmon returned to London and sturgeon to New York, two of the worlds largest and most densely populated cities, on Tony Blair and George Bush’s watch.

Links:

Thames ‘clean enough’ for salmon

Once Endangered Sturgeon Rebounding in Hudson River