Burn, Baby, Burn! I Love Your Big Carbon Footprint!

[F]ossil fuels such as coal and oil, have also had far-reaching positive environmental effects that a good steward should wish to consider in drawing up a global balance sheet. The first effect is to make it possible for farmers to replace beasts of burden with machines and, therefore, to cultivate land more efficiently. (Much of the developing world is now beginning to undergo this process of agricultural modernization today.) Second, fossil fuels have been turned into fertilizers that, together with new pesticides, other means of preventing spoilage, and advances in new plant species -- the so-called Green Revolution -- have produced so much more food per acre that large amounts of land have now been spared from cultivation altogether. For example, America's forests, contrary to popular perception, have been growing steadily for the past fifty years and are actually larger than they were 100 years ago. Even in the heavily populated coastal areas, small farms have returned to forest land. The result of all of this is that, despite its vast fossil fuel consumption, NORTH AMERICAN CURRENTLY SHOWS A NET MINUS IN THE AMOUNT OF CARBON DIOXIDE IT PUTS INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. In other words, North America absorbs more carbon dioxide through plants and forests than it emits through industry. No one intentionally set out to produce these consequences but human ingenuity, aimed at doing better with greater cost efficiency and lower amounts of raw materials, seems here to reflect a providential convergence of man and nature. Now that we are conscious of the effects of our activity on nature, we can set out to do even better.

. . . It is a modern scandal, then, that out of a misguided concern for the earth, some philanthropic foundations and environmental groups from developed countries, and some international agencies as well, have discouraged, or even refused to support so-called "unsustainable" agricultural practices. These practices are, in face, necessary for saving and improving the lives of the world's poor and hungry.

--pages 50-51 (emphasis added).