The area around Mount Saint Helens began to recover in a remarkably short time. And in cases like the Exxon Valdez spill, even Scientific American has admitted that it might have been better to let nature take care of the fine details once the rough cleanup was done. Overzealous efforts did more harm than good. Gore is more schizophrenic than most environmentalists, putting a lot of faith in nature but purporting to be a technology junkie. We do not, however, see breakdowns all around us.
Airplanes are safer because of their increased sophistication, newer power plants pollute less.
If there is a weakness in Huber's analysis it is that his approach can be, at times, a touch too hard. Softs go too far in fretting over every minor human impact on nature. But Huber leans too hard on big, observable effects, downplaying subtler human influences on nature. This bumps up against his own claim that the more money you have, the less you care what environmental precautions cost. That is why environmentalism is usually an enthusiasm of the rich, not the poor-and those wealthy soft greens, however often mistaken, may occasionally turn up something that we may decide is worth paying for, even if it is only a small improvement.