There has recently been a great deal of debate on the list about the
United States's environmental record, particularly in contrast to that of
Europe. I thought it might be interesting to point out the superb NY
Times article contrasting the two, at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/weekinreview/17EAST.html
Greg Easterbrook, the author, is a liberal environmentalist who normally
writes for The New Republic.
Some salient points that he makes:
"American ecological standards are gfar more strict than European rules,
and have been for 20 years or more . . . Paris today has worse smog than
Houston; water quality, especially of rivers, is lower in Europe than in
the United States; acid rain reduction has been more rapid in the United
states than in Europe; European Union nations like Greece, Italy and
Portugal still discharge huge volumes of untreated municipal waste water,
a practice all but banned in America. In addition, the European Union did
not act against leaded gasoline till more than a decade after the United
States; the forested percentage of the United States is higher than the
forested percentage of most European countries, while America has fewer
threatened species than Europe . . .."
Given these facts our European list members might perhaps understand why
many Americans, myself and Easterbrook included, feel that European
critiques of the American environmental record have far more to do with
knee-jerk anti-Americanism than any actual empirical basis.
Gautam Mukunda
