With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see that many of the major, doom-laden environmental predictions that gained widespread attention from the 1970s onward turned out to be completely wrong. Alarmists gained media acclaim and public attention for warning that we would quickly run out of most resources, and that overpopulation would lead to a global catastrophe, and even that air pollution would escalate to the point that we would need to wear gas masks outside by the year 1985.

Not one of these alarmist predictions materialized, but they nonetheless scared many people, and environmentalists continue to try to scare us today.

Like we were warned that the world was careening toward catastrophe in the 1970s, we are now told that climate change is about to cause planetary destruction. We need to avoid falling again for the scare stories and acknowledge that increased prosperity is a major cause of environmental progress.

Make no mistake, we have come a long way in tackling many grim environmental problems. Back in the 1970s, rivers were catching fire, cities were choked with smog, and air and water pollution were rampant in towns in the industrialized West.

A clear and striking pattern has emerged: industrialization, at first, increases pollution before nations become rich enough to tackle it. Therefore, as countries get wealthier, their environmental problems eventually decrease. Indeed, in many ways, the greatest polluter is poverty.

When people are struggling to survive, environmental concerns take a back seat. As countries get richer, they can invest in cleaner technologies, regulate industries, and focus on improving public health. Prosperity doesn’t just lead to better living standards and nutrition, and people becoming more resilient to environmental challenges — it also actively makes societies improve their environment.

Consider how air pollution has declined dramatically in rich countries. Over the past three decades, the fatality risk from air pollution has declined by over 70 percent, while waterways have become cleaner and nations reforested. Even in the developing world, progress is being made. China, famous for smog and pollution, is now actively cleaning its air and water.

For the 7 billion people who don’t live in the rich world, outdoor air pollution became worse between 1990 and about 2015. As emissions peaked and started declining, deaths from outdoor air pollution in poor countries have slightly declined.

Moreover, if we focus just on smoggy Asian megacities, we miss the incredibly deadly problem of indoor air pollution, which kills more than 3 million people yearly — something that today’s environmental advocates rarely mention.

Indoor air pollution is essentially a problem of poverty: a huge proportion of the world continues to rely on traditional energy sources — wood, cardboard and dung — to cook and keep warm. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.1 billion people live in homes that are many times more polluted than even the worst outside days in Delhi or Beijing, equivalent to each person smoking two packs of cigarettes daily.

While we must do more to solve this killer pollution, it is powerful to consider that indoor air pollution in poor countries has more than halved since 1990. This means that we avoid more than 4 million deaths annually. How? Once again, through prosperity. Higher incomes mean fewer people are forced to rely on dung and cardboard to cook and keep warm. Instead, they can afford much cleaner and better energy sources like natural gas and electricity.

Today’s environmental movement should be calling for policies that help the world’s poorest countries get out of poverty and away from indoor air pollution. There is a connection between a nation’s income and environmental performance. The richer a country becomes, the better it handles its environment, as shown by Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index. A society focused on economic development can not only lift people out of poverty but will also address pollution and invest in sustainable practices.

Yet, today’s environmental movement is fixated on climate change and arguing that everyone, even poorer countries, should focus on cutting their emissions.

Climate change is a real challenge, but it is not an existential threat. In fact, over the past century, deaths from climate-related disasters — such as storms, floods, droughts and wildfires — have declined by a remarkable 98 percent. This is not because the environment has remained static, but because human innovation and adaptation have made us more resilient.

Instead of being scared by sensationalist rhetoric into spending trillions of dollars on poor climate policies like “net zero,” we should focus on practical, smart solutions that can make a difference. More investment is needed in green energy innovation to solve climate change.

More attention is needed on indoor air pollution. We could save 3 million lives yearly through boosting prosperity and expanding access to clean, cheap and reliable energy. We shouldn’t let scare stories make us panic about the environment. We are not on the precipice of doom — even if we’re constantly being told that we are.

Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.