Leftists blame capitalists for pollution, which they link to an alleged climate crisis, while ignoring that capitalists make life easier through the production of goods and services.
The profit motive has steadily driven companies to become more efficient, producing less pollution per unit of output over the past 100 years.
Without government coercion, higher taxes, or restrictions on individual rights, businesses naturally pursue efficiency improvements to increase their bottom line while reducing waste and pollution.
Data from the Environmental Protection Agency illustrates this clearly. Between 1970 and 2023, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants fell by 78 percent.
During the same period, gross domestic product rose 321 percent, vehicle miles traveled increased 194 percent, energy consumption grew 42 percent, and the U.S. population expanded by 63 percent.
The numbers demonstrate that even as production and population soared, efficiency improved, with far less energy required per unit of output.
Automobiles provide one of the clearest examples. Compared to the 1960s, new passenger vehicles are 98 to 99 percent cleaner for most tailpipe pollutants.
Since 1975, average gas mileage has improved from 13.1 miles per gallon to 27.1 miles per gallon in 2023. These gains show how private innovation reduced emissions while improving performance.
The shipping container is one of the most overlooked yet significant examples of how the quest for profit helps the environment. Since their adoption, containers have reduced shipping costs by 85–95 percent.
It takes less than one day to unload a container ship, compared to more than two days for a bulk carrier. Containers also allow trucks to carry more cargo, meaning fewer trucks are needed per volume of freight, which reduces gasoline usage.
Shorter turnaround times in ports enable ships to cut their speed at sea, and a 10 percent reduction in speed results in a 27 percent reduction in emissions.
Best of all, containers are reusable, while the packaging materials and apparatus for bulk shipping were often disposable. All of this innovation was driven by profit, as shipping companies sought to increase their earnings.
Another example that the leftists ignore is the laptops and cell phones they use to post anti-American content. Not only would these technologies not exist without private enterprise, but they have also drastically reduced pollution by consolidating dozens of separate devices into one.
A single smartphone now replaces landline phones, pagers, fax machines, answering machines, calculators, typewriters, desktop computers for many tasks, MP3 players, radios, portable TVs, DVD players, camcorders, GPS units, cameras, alarm clocks, watches, flashlights, timers, and voice recorders.
Where once each of these required its own raw materials, manufacturing process, packaging, distribution, electricity consumption, and eventual disposal, one device now performs them all. The reduction in resource use and manufacturing pollution is enormous.
The cell phones and laptops are clear examples of how myopic the climate crowd is.
Aside from the fact that they would never want to give those devices up, they always focus on the total pollution attributable to cell phones and laptops and the environmental issues associated with disposing of the batteries.
However, they never take the time to calculate and compare the total pollution saved by not producing the 20–30 physical devices that the phones and laptops replaced.
In the long run, the profit motive pushes people to find solutions, and entrepreneurs are reducing pollution without government intervention or higher taxes.
Jim Beach, who has been an entrepreneur for more than a quarter century and authored the book The Real Environmentalists, agrees. He argued that many of the people actually solving today’s environmental problems are entrepreneurial capitalists who launch businesses to tackle issues directly.
He pointed to an innovator named Gator Halper, who developed a way to grow coral faster than nature.
By replanting reefs near resorts, Halper not only created destinations for divers but also restored vital ecosystems that clean the water, shelter marine life, and protect coastlines. “Who’s doing that?” Beach asked. “An entrepreneur. Not a government plan, not some UN plan.”
Beach also described a Canadian entrepreneur who raised battery recycling rates to 97 percent in Ottawa, solving one of the most overlooked environmental hazards. Another example he highlighted was an innovator turning Pacific Ocean microplastics into sneakers, making ocean cleanup profitable.
Beach commented on why liberals are so opposed to market-driven solutions: “They don’t like the idea of someone else solving the problem or taking the problem away from their tool belt of things that they can complain about and use to try to get our rights taken away.”
He concluded that it is these kinds of entrepreneurs who are solving the world’s climate problems, while, in his words, “the climate people sit around and do nothing.”
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