Greenpeace co-founder says the environmental movement "has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity."

When I helped organize the first Earth Day on my college campus in 1970, I never dreamed we'd be celebrating #35 this year, or that we'd come so far in cleaning up our environment. But the improvements are remarkable.

Since 1976, airborne sulfur dioxide has been reduced 72 percent ... carbon monoxide 76 percent ... lead 98 percent - according to the Pacific Research Institute's annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. Automobile tailpipe emissions are down 95 percent from 1975 levels.
About 80 percent of U.S. community water systems had no violations of health-based EPA standards in 1993. Last year, 95 percent had no violations.

For the past five years, our wetlands have increased by 26,000 acres a year - reversing years of decline. We've gone from 500 nesting pairs of bald eagles in 1965 to 7,500 today, including a half dozen on the river where I grew up, less than a half mile from a big paper mill whose effluents once contaminated the area.

Progress since the "good old days" is even more dramatic. In 1905, average U.S. life expectancy was 47 years; today it's 78. Few homes had electricity; instead, coal and wood fires created clouds of pollution, and the average home generated 5,000 pounds of wood or coal ash a year.

Over 3 million horses worked in American cities - producing 11 million tons of manure and 9 million gallons of urine annually. Most got left on streets or dumped into rivers; during summers, manure dust was a primary cause of tuberculosis. In New York City alone, crews had to remove 15,000 horse carcasses from streets every year.

The arrival of automobiles changed all that. It also meant we no longer needed vast forage and pasture land for horses, modern farming began increasing production per acre, and we've been able to add a million acres of new U.S. forestland annually since 1910.
All is not rosy, of course. For instance, Alaskan stellar sea lion populations continue to decline, though exact causes are unclear. But overall - in sharp contrast to gloomy reports from some activist groups and news media - environmental progress has been steady, not only in the U.S., but throughout the developed world.

Most importantly, remember that our remaining problems are relatively minor.

Today's truly serious health and environmental problems are in the poorest countries. That's where we should focus our attention. That's why we should have an annual People Day, when we can resolve to address real, immediate, life-or-death problems that threaten poor nations - rather than fixate on minor, distant, fashionable, theoretical problems.

The reality is, impoverished countries have little to celebrate. Two billion of their people still don't have electricity. Four in ten Indian families - 150 million households - do not. In sub-Saharan Africa, it's nine of ten families.

The consequences are far worse than merely doing without modern homes, hospitals, schools, offices and factories. These families are forced to burn wood, animal dung and agricultural waste in unventilated homes - and live with constant toxic pollution that causes up to three million children to die every year from respiratory diseases.

And still radical greens conjure up specters of catastrophic global warming to justify their demands that the Third World not build coal or gas-fired power plants. Others use Earth Day to justify their campaigns against hydroelectric projects and nuclear power. The inevitable result, of course is perpetual deprivation, dung fires, poverty, disease and premature death.