One of the direst failings of those who see politics as a theology of salvation (see Groupies) is disdain for progress - only revolution will bring salvation.

. . . all too much of the effort from business, government and NGOs has focused on mitigating the problem, making things less bad, slowing the rate of decline of the regenerative capacity of the living systems that sustain human culture and economy. Bill McDonough offers the simple and compelling metaphor of merely slowing down a car that's going in the wrong direction, instead of turning it around.

Apart from the false premise that we are going in the wrong direction there is complete dismissal of progress, as if this was wasted effort. Once you shrug off the theology this makes no sense at all. When we have a big picture, long time frame perspective - the only useful one for issues as large as environmental preservation and remediation while living on the planet in question - it becomes clear that there are multiple, competing imperatives and that revolution in one aspect hugely harms progress in others for a net loss in the system as a whole.

The kind of messianic talk favored in echo chambers with open bars isn't just useless, it's harmful. It is far better to communicate all available information, presenting both threats and successes, knowing that society will perform best when situations and trends are presented in an even handed manner. Though some performances will have negative consequences others will be unexpectedly positive and society as a whole will do better. It isn't that the theologists should be stopped - they are just one of the negative consequences of information flow - as that it is useful to point and laugh a bit at the clumsy fellows who make bad decisions. News of failure as well as success is more information for society, more data points that can be factored into decision making.

Another post lamented the lack of good data for determining if terrorism was rising or falling after so much blood and treasure had already been spilled trying to reduce it. It isn't just of political interest - something to titillate the armies of pundits on fart watch duty - it informs policy. Where are the trouble spots? What are the trends? Have our past efforts been effective?

Data about the environment is useful in the same ways.

In last year's index, for example, Hayward and his colleagues cheerfully noted that levels of ambient air pollution in the U.S. had dropped dramatically, beginning in 1976. By 2002, ozone was down 31 percent, sulfur dioxide 70 percent and carbon monoxide 75 percent. Lead, once one of the deadliest, scariest and most ubiquitous pollutants, had dropped 98 percent.

U.S. water quality, though much more difficult to measure consistently over so large an area, has also shown steep improvement.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the percentage of the U.S. population served by community water systems with no reported violations of health-based standards has grown from just under 80 percent a decade ago to nearly 95 percent today.

This year, when Hayward releases his new index, the EPA data will be even sunnier: U.S. air quality, measured in levels of particulates, is better than it has been since such measurements were first made.

Environmentalists downplay the happy news for understandable reasons, not all of them cynical. It is true that professional activists of every ideological coloration thrive on trauma and trouble, according to the general principle that a frightened citizenry is a generous citizenry -- at least when it comes to offering money to professional activists.

At the same time, a true-believing environmentalist might sincerely worry that over-attention to successes in the fight for a clean environment will lead to a risky complacency and false optimism.

Yet, not all optimism is false. Hayward's optimism is grounded in reason and experience -- particularly in his belief that technology, know-how and the entrepreneurial spirit, prompted by the market and urged on by government, will overcome our environmental difficulties. His index suggests he has history on his side.

That's good progress, at least in the US. The picture is less rosy when we look at the whole world but we don't have good information about how much less rosy. Looking at the whole problem, the whole world, helps see the competing imperatives and illuminates how tunnel vision about the comparatively small issues of US environments misses the mark. The "car" is moving so fast that attempting to turn around rather than slow down will result in a crash. Besides, the premise that we are moving in the wrong direction is not proven. Efforts to increase development with all due haste are arguably sensible and will be the fastest and best way to achieve even the goal of environmental preservation and remediation. The choice isn't between things getting worse and things getting better, the choice is between things getting worse and things getting very much worse. It's a simple fact that things will get worse, on balance, before they get better. We have to get over the hump of development first.

This isn't an argument for sloppiness, for failing to make progress opportunistically where it is possible and constructive. It's an argument for enlarging the scope of investigation and the time frame of consideration to reveal the false objective of local hill climbing. Expending great effort to reach local optima does not advance the true goal. It is a side show that detracts from the larger effort.

It's hard to tell a local mole hill from the more distant mountain range when you are close to it and wearing blinkers. The information isn't always available to make useful distinctions. Proven methods for traversing the search space include sharing information among multiple independent teams. This is exactly the opposite of the efforts of salvation theologists which seek to conceal information to trick more teams into focusing their efforts on local mole hills.

Activism is the greatest long term environmental threat. It's not a political contest. Politics as a theology of salvation is precisely wrong. Rather than gathering ever larger groups of like-minded apostles to pursue narrow objectives, we need diversity both within and among groups of problem solvers and free flow of information.