please join me in welcoming stephen f hayward back to aei. >> happy earth day, everybody. it used to be a big deal. there was a riley on the mall and festivals and american cities and college campuses. now it happens kind of quietly and i think therein lies the tail -- tale with a very large asterisk. my point is we now have arrived at a moment for environmental optimism broadly speaking not just in the united states and wealthy industrial countries but increasingly around the world i think. if you cast your mind back to you know 35, 40 years ago, you may remember every january the world watch institute would put out their state of the world report. and it always got a lot of press . lester brown was the chief instigator of this and he was one of the prominent figures of environmentalism in the 70s and 80's and into the 1990's. it got a lot of press and it was all, the world is doomed, everything is terrible. this was reflected in public opinion. a group used to do an annual poll every other year on the environment and found that you know large majorities of americans thou