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How Clean Can You Get?

    The rich world's arguments about the environment follow a pattern. Environmentalists say pollution is dire and getting worse. Businessmen retort that a real cleanup would cost too much. Joe Citizen believes both: the environment is indeed going down the plug-hole, but so might this job if anyone tries to stop that. All of them, it turns out, are wrong.

    Drawing on a wealth of statistics, many official reports show that, in rich countries at least, many of the worst pollution problems are far smaller than they used to be—and that the costs of this success have so far been small.

    Start with air pollution. The dreaded greenhouse gases are still flowing into the atmosphere. But output of gases that attack the ozone layer, another potentially serious problem, is well under control. Production of CFCS—chlorofluorocarbons, used in aerosols and refrigerators—has fallen by two-thirds since the mid-1980s.

    Worries about urban air pollution now centre on problems like ground-level ozone and microscopic particles. The output of nitrogen oxides, or NOX, which help produce ground-level ozone, has remained stubbornly high. But many equally serious and more visible pollutants have been beaten back. The flow of oxides of sulphur (or SOX) , which contribute to evils such as acid rain and the pea-soup fogs that were apt to shroud London until the 1950s', has fallen by around a third in rich countries since 1980. Emissions of lead, soot and carbon monoxide—each hazardous to human health—have tumbled. In America, legislation has brought lead pollution down by 98% since 1970.

    Water quality has improved in many ways. There is still worry about chemicals, such as fertilizers and heavy metals, draining off the land. But many of the organisms that once infested rich-world waterways—and which still kill millions in poor countries—are retreating steadily. Such "organic" pollution is often caused by the dumping of raw sewage. Progress is largely due to the spread of waste-water treatment.

    Even land in rich countries is better protected that it was. Though many rich countries are generating more rubbish (the all-OECD volume of municipal waste has risen by more than 40% since 1980 ), restraints on the disposal of potentially dangerous substances have become much stricter. Current worries often centre on old industrial sites built when rules were lax. Recycling has spread fast; around half of all glass used in OECD countries is now recycled, twice as much as ten years ago.

    Land conservation is far from perfect, but at least the rules are spreading. About 10% of land in OECE countries is subject to tough restraints on development—in parks and nature reserves, for instance—up from 4% in 1980. Even the amount of forest cover has increased a little since 1980, though not enough to make up for the rich countries' depredation of forests in poor ones.

    Has this cost jobs? OECD officials have found no evidence for that. Spending on pollution control amounts to 1-2% of GDP in most rich countries, but that has not cut jobs overall. True, certain industries such as mining have lost jobs, and some companies have moved to less strict third-world countries. But greenery, like any new market, has also created jobs: the market worldwide (which in practice means largely in OECD countries) was worth some $200 billion in 1990.

    Much of this progress was due to market forces, not regulation. It took rules to keep lead out of petrol and pea-soup fog away from London. But much of the fall in SOX and soot emissions, for example, springs from the decline of coal-burning industries. Except for waste-water treatment, most improvements have come fairly cheap. Either inexpensive alternatives already existed, as with CFCS, or cheap gadgets could be added to existing machinery, such as catalytic converters for cars.

    Some regulation has gained support because it protects vested interests. German recycling laws, obliging brewers to use refillable bottles, helps small brewers, with local distribution networks already in place, against incoming foreigners. The rich countries' ban on CFCS is backed by big chemicals firms eager to create a market for their substitutes. Britain's National Trust, which conserves a growing proportion of its countryside, also helps to conserve its less-rich-than-they-were land-owning aristocrats in the homes to which they have become accustomed.

    The remaining problems will be harder and more expensive. Alternatives to fossil fuels, which give off greenhouse gases, are mostly expensive. Enforcement will be trickier. The pollution from large, identifiable outlets such as municipal sewage works is easy to spot and stop; the run-off of nitrates from some small holder's use of fertilizers is neither.

    Moreover, solving current pollution problems will often mean attacking powerful interests. Fossil fuel is a $1 trillion-a-year industry. The best way to improve urban air may be to curb the use of cars, even though modern cars are far cleaner than earlier ones. But most voters use cars. The OECD environment ministers may be feeling pleased with themselves. But from here on the going will get tougher.

— From The Economist February 17th 1996.