Stossel blasts enviro-critics

Preceding the broadcast last night of his ABC News special on the environment, "Tampering With Nature," veteran ABC News reporter John Stossel took to the airwaves to answer environmentalist critics that caused ABC to censor part of the broadcast.

Representatives of the Environmental Working Group claim the hour-long documentary was misleading, and that Stossel asked leading questions of school children about what they were being taught in school about the environment.

According to Stossel, the environmental activist group, after getting wind of the show which is critical of fear-based teaching about the environment in public schools, contacted the parents of schoolchildren interviewed by Stossel and persuaded their parents to complain to ABC.

"The parents said they were not told of Stossel's involvement with the show when ABC got their written permission to allow their children to be interviewed," said a statement on the EWG site.

"They also said they were misled about the nature of the show, and would never have granted permission for their children to be interviewed had the nature of the program -- or Stossel's involvement -- been known to them," said the EWG statement.

However, Stossel -- during an appearance this week on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," said he personally interviewed the children with their parents present, and was never given indications by any of them that they were either uncomfortable with Stossel's line of questions or with him personally.

He said it was after ABC News secured parental consent for every child and he conducted the actual interviews that many parents -- much later -- changed their minds about Stossel personally and about letting their children appear in the special.

ABC and Stossel contend that the change of heart came after officials from the Environmental Working Group contacted parents and, perhaps, frightened them with inappropriate stories about Stossel's past.

The veteran journalist - who has won 19 Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club -- said parents decided to request that the interviews with their children not be broadcast after "environmental educators talked to them."

"I don't blame them for being scared after what these people probably said about me. … People said, 'He's going to distort. He lies. In the past, he's faked things.' They make up stories about me and the parents get scared," Stossel told host Bill O'Reilly.

He then accused environmentalists of "scaring people," and said many public schools -- using skewed curricula -- were "brainwashing" students with incorrect environmental information.

The Working Group decried Stossel's characterization of public school environmental curricula and said it was a parent that had first voiced concerns about the ABC reporter.

"An anonymous whistleblower warned the Environmental Working Group that Stossel was set to 'use the footage to trash what kids are now being taught about environmental issues,'" the EWG statement said.

Stossel denied that charge, again pointing out that parents were present during every moment of his interviews with their children. He maintains that because they witnessed the interviews, they know with certainty what he did and did not ask and discuss with their children.

ABC News nevertheless decided to cut out the sections of the special report that featured the 10 or so 8- and 10-year-old students Stossel questioned, but overall supported their reporter's work.

"ABC News has reviewed the entirety of John Stossel's interview with the children in California and concludes it was conducted in a professional and responsible manner according to the highest journalistic standards," ABC said in a statement Tuesday.

"Furthermore, the parents originally gave their written consent, several were present while the interview was conducted, and none voiced any concerns to ABC for more two months until the week of our broadcast after they had spoken with activists.

"At the same time, ABC News is sensitive when parents raise objections regarding the appearance of their young children on television and will consider such objections carefully. In the present case, ABC News has decided it will respect the belated decision of a number of parents to withdraw their consent," the statement concluded.

All of the children he interviewed admitted they were "scared" about the future of the environment in the U.S., said Stossel, adding that none expressed positive outlooks for the nation's ecology in the years ahead.

Stossel, a member of WorldNetDaily's Speakers Bureau, and who describes himself politically as "leaning libertarian," told O'Reilly that such concerns by children were unfounded because the environmental outlook is not as bad as some public school curricula and environmental groups say it is.

The numbers speak

The government's own figures largely support Stossel's claims that the environment is improving, not getting worse.

In fact, the most recent data suggest that the overall environmental condition of the United States is better now than it was in 1970, in terms of air, water and soil quality.

"Overall, national air quality levels measured at thousands of monitoring stations across the country have shown improvement over the past 20 years for all six principle pollutants," according to the Environmental Protection Agency's 1999 "Air Quality Trends" report -- the latest year for which statistics are available.

"The Clean Air Act has resulted in many improvements in the quality of the air in the United States," the annual report said.

The quality of drinking water has also improved, according to EPA figures.

The goal of the agency, says the report, "Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics for 2000," is to have 95 percent of the U.S. population "served by community water systems providing drinking water that meets all existing health-based standards" by 2005 - up from 79 percent in 1993. By last year, the agency said, 91 percent of the population was being served by such systems.

Air quality

The six principle pollutants monitored by the EPA are levels of carbon dioxide; lead; nitrogen dioxide; ozone; particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide.

Only one indicator -- nitrogen oxide levels -- has climbed since 1970 (by 17 percent), mostly because of an increase in "heavy-duty diesel vehicles and coal-fired power plants," the report said.

Every other airborne pollutant, meanwhile, has fallen during the same period, the EPA figures show.

Lead has fallen the most dramatically -- by 88 percent -- since 1970, shortly before the phase-out of leaded gasoline began. Lowered levels of lead were followed by a 77 percent decrease in particulate matter.

Also, volatile organic compound levels, a major element of smog formation, have fallen by 43 percent; sulfur oxide is down by 40 percent, and carbon monoxide by 29 percent.

Even the most talked-about element of alleged environmental damage -- ozone depletion -- shows signs of recovery, despite claims by environmental groups that industrial activity in the United States is causing further damage.

"The most encouraging factor is that we do measure ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere, and it shows they're declining," Elizabeth Weatherhead, a University of Colorado scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Air Resources Laboratory, told CNN in an interview Sept. 28, 2000

"We should expect to be able to detect recovery in most regions of the world within the next 15 to 45 years," Weatherhead said. "That's based on full compliance with the Montreal Protocol and its amendments and no other complicating factors such as major volcanic eruptions or enhanced stratospheric cooling."

Water quality

The goal of the EPA, as regards the nation's drinking water, is to have 95 percent of the U.S. population "served by community water systems providing drinking water that meets all existing health-based standards" by 2005 -- up from 79 percent in 1993, according to the report, "Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics for 2000."

By last year, the agency said, 91 percent of the population was being served by such systems.

Also encouraging, analysts say, is the decrease in the number of MCL --- maximum contaminant level -- violations since 1995.

In 1995, says the EPA report, there were a total of 7,147 violations nationally. But by 2000, that figure had fallen to 4,753.

Also, the number of water systems with MCL violations dropped from 4,652 in 1995 to 3,160 in 2000, and the number of Americans affected by MCL violations also decreased appropriately. Over 23 million were affected by violations six years ago, but the number had fallen to 11,946,983 by last year.

Scientists disagree

Perhaps much of the confusion regarding the status of the environment is due to the fact that not all scientists agree on the findings of various studies.

Some say a particular study constitutes proof that ozone depletion and global warming, for instance, are worsening, while other scientists deny that such results are conclusive of anything.

A case in point is the controversy within an 11-member panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which recently authored an exhaustive report on so-called global warming and the alleged positive effects the Kyodo global warming treaty, negotiated in Kyodo, Japan in 1997, may have if ratified by the requisite number of nations.

Most media quoted sections of the report that seemed to indicate all 11 panel scientists agreed global warming was occurring, that man was the cause of it, and that it had worsened in recent decades.

But one scientist on the panel, Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, wrote in a Wall Street Journal article June 11 that, contrary to many of those press reports and the proclamations of several environmentalist groups, the NAS study did not support "the Kyodo Treaty."

In his article, Lindzen cited a CNN news story that said the report contained "a unanimous [scientific] decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."

However, the MIT meteorologist said, "as one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this simply is untrue …"

Lindzen went on to say that there was never any unanimity among the scientists and that the NAS never requires that anyway. Also, he pointed out that the full report represented a number of scientific views.

"This the full report did, making clear there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them," he wrote.

Lindzen admitted that all 11 scientists who authored the final report did agree that the earth's overall temperature was about a half-degree higher than 100 years ago.

"But -- and I cannot stress this enough -- we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future," he wrote. "That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions."

He also said his committee concluded that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's summary "does not provide suitable guidance for the U.S. government."

"Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens," Lindzen concluded. "This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions."

Who's right?

According to an EPA figure often cited by environmentalists, according to a 1999 agency survey 40 percent of all U.S. waters are not fishable or swimable.

"The United States used to have the safest drinking water in the world. Now, our drinking water infrastructure is crumbling and our water supplies are threatened by toxic chemicals. It's no wonder that more and more people -- including most congressional offices -- are buying bottled water," says an introduction to a "Clean Water Report Card," issued in March 2000 by the Environmental Working Group.

Such generalities, as Stossel has charged, are not only scary to many people -- especially children -- but they are not always accurate either, in terms of what specific figures actually mean to the consuming public.

For instance, while it may be true that "40 percent of all U.S. waters" are not up to specific safety standards, it is equally true that fewer Americans -- as the EPA points out -- are at risk of drinking unsafe water, because the number of people on "community water systems providing drinking water that meets all existing health-based standards" is at an all-time high.

The EPA admits that more work is needed to clean up existing air, water and soil pollution problems. But officials have also said the agency, with the help of state and local officials, has made great strides in cleaning up the environment over the past three decades.

If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.

Related stories:

John Stossel joins WND's experts

'Propagandist' for liberty

Related columns:

A hero of the cultural revolution

The power of knowledge and truth

My interview with Brill's Content