Why aren’t you seeing or hearing good news about the environment on your news apps and primetime news?

If you think it’s because there isn’t any, think again. There’s lots.

But environmentalists and the mainstream media (MSM) constantly focus on whatever bad news they can find—even if they have to exaggerate or manufacture it.

Climate change, ozone depletion, overpopulation, ocean pollution, water scarcity, deforestation—the list goes on. I would have been a millionaire if I had earned $100 for every news article that lamented how humans have destroyed the environment.

Yes, people have misused the environment. They haven’t always taken good care of it, especially in countries where the rule of law is not upheld. But that is not the complete story.

There has been an amazing advance in environment care and human ingenuity in utilizing resources to promote life. Surprisingly, there is very little good news about these success stories in our news media.

Why? Because many environmentalists want us to feel guilty for utilizing natural resources.

Radical environmentalism claims that human civilization by nature is a plague on this earth. It even suggests that human beings have to be eliminated for other life forms to flourish.

This anti-human philosophy is an essential doctrine for many “eco-organizations” across the globe. Eventually, students in school and the subscribers of the MSM imbibe the same ideology. Before you know it, they think humans are a cancer on earth.

However, the truth is quite surprisingly, and encouragingly, different. In fact, our progress in environmental stewardship and efficient use of available resources is nothing short of the Marvel storylines, nothing less than what the Avengers achieve in their movies.

The Advent of Physical and Biological Sciences

Our relationship with the environment is a work in progress. We as a society have reached a stage where we understand our natural resources better than ever before.

This means that we now know how various elements within a natural environment are interlinked, the threshold of change which those systems withstand, and the ways through which resources can be utilized from those ecosystems.

It also means that we now know the causes behind the reductions or increases in the populations of various life forms, including plants and even microorganisms.

Any misuse of the environment—such as the illegal hunting of endangered animals for fur or illegal deforestation of critical plant species—is not to be confused with the measurable progress in our ability to comprehend and analyze environmental issues that are of importance to our progress and the wellbeing of the natural habitats.

As a result, we have identified and classified life forms based on their population health and their sensitivity to risk factors. This has in turn allowed us to save species of critical importance and enable pathways for the restoration of ecosystems.

The scientific advancement at the micro-organic level has enabled us to create solutions to various problems that would not have been possible otherwise.

Technological Progress and Resource Utilization

The technological progress of the 19^th and 20^th centuries saw our increased efficiency in the utilization of resources.

Deforestation was a serious problem for the rapidly growing human population until the Industrial Revolution kicked in.

Now, instead of cutting thousands and thousands of trees, we use naturally available fossil fuels for cooking, transportation, and heating. The only cost involved is the extraction of the resources from deep inside the earth—not the devastation of vast stretches of habitat.

Instead of foraging through a large landscape for a single day’s food needs, we now produce food crops, fruits, and vegetables all within the reach of major cities.

Our advancement in transportation technologies has enabled us to make fresh produce available in places that were previously thought to be uninhabitable for lack of agriculture.

The advancement in agricultural technologies also meant that we are now able to produce high quantity food within a small land area, thereby decreasing the need for deforestation and saving water resources.

Derivatives from petroleum products have helped us stop cutting trees for most of the things we use on an everyday basis. Construction technology too, has helped us to avoid trees and use naturally available soil and rocks for our buildings.

The list endless.

It is quite typical for our current environmental torch bearers to blame humanity for its mere existence. But who decides which species should live and which species should not?

Man, in both the theistic framework and in the Darwinian evolutionary framework, is entitled to life and life at its fullest. There is no basis to call humans evil for their rightful use of natural resources, unless they indulge in greed-based destruction such as the killing Bengal tigers merely for sport.

To call the legitimate use of resources evil is an anti-human, radical environmental philosophy that has resorted to lying about the status of our environment.

As more and more developing countries achieve economic progress, the state of the environment will only become better as those countries will be equipped with better ways to deal with resource use and management.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Bangalore, India.