Landfills today are much safer than those of twenty a nd even ten years ago and pose no known human health threat. Mandatory recycling is unnecessary, costly, and sometimes produces more air and water pollution and more energy consumption than would burial or incineration with energy recovery. Researchers at NASA and the University of New Hampshire now estimate that less than a tenth of one percent of the world's rainfore sts were destroyed each year during the 1980s. Even this pace has slowed during the 1990s thanks to the Brazilian government's decision to reduce agricultural subsidies. Deforestation affects such a small portion of the rainforests that natural regenerati on is replacing the lost forests, even though poor soils and hot climates make regeneration in the tropics a slow process.
Prosperity is compatible with a cleaner environment.
Many environmentalists believe an industrial civilization is incompatible with a clean and safe environment. Countries that are poor or have stagnant economies tend to be the worse polluters. Fear that prosperity will lead to the depletion of natural resources is unfounded, first because available reserves of fossil fuels and other resources are huge compared to consumption rates, and second because ideas and human imaginatio n are of far greater importance in determining the human condition than is the supply of physical resources. How to think about the environment. We can never avoid risk completely.