Conservatives And The Environment And The Middle Class–UPDATED

November 24, 2008 / 8:03 pm • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

At Pajama’s today, I wrote an article about the conflict between the economy and the environment and that when the two crises compete, the economy wins. It is not an either/or problem, of course. It is possible and important, I believe, for conservatives to have a cohesive message and coherent policy regarding the environment. Currently, we have neither.

The Left has both won and lost the environmental argument. (More by Patrick Ruffini on Leftist ideas that are old.) They’ve won in that most people now are convinced there’s a problem. They’ve lost in that the solutions are more stringent than a Pentecostal’s sin list. So, people pay lip service to the environmental problem, do what little they can and tune out. This is a an opportunity for conservatives.

The fact is, there are many conservatives deeply concerned about how to care for and protect the environment while addressing the economic and human concerns. Tied into this issue is a general lack of restraint and a corpulent life-style now in America symbolized by our big waist-lines and mind-numbing debt top to bottom. Conservatives are for personal responsibility and grown-up thinking and discipline. Caring for the environment in concrete ways conforms to that thinking.

Part of the problem with this issue is that it’s not simple in the same way that stem cell research isn’t simple. Complex theories don’t make for simple policy solutions. That doesn’t mean the Left has a complex solution. They have simple logos and simple solutions: “Hurting the environment is bad” is simple. Do conservatives have a simple response? Can the argument be reframed right now, especially, while the economy struggles and there’s a tension between expensive pie-in-the-sky solutions and reality? Will “waste not, want not” sell right now?

Another problem is that conservatives are against regulation and government interference and nanny-statism. How can government policy encourage responsible behavior without seeming coercive and take away rights or economic freedom? I’m not a smoker, but I bristle at the punitive government behavior on legal activity. To me, that means tax breaks and lots of press for things considered good behavior. What good behavior do conservatives want to encourage? Well, why not tax breaks for efficient everything–hot water heaters, windows, etc. But again, these retrofits take money, money that people don’t have right now.

I’m seeing problems as I write this and think out loud. The “right” solution means identifying the real problem. With the science so shoddy, good luck figuring out what the best solution is for fill-in-the-blank environmental issue. The problem, of course, is that the Left accepts this shoddy science on faith and crafts punitive public policy. The Right must answer, every, single, time. And we must be preemptive.

The Left has co-opted the environmental message and managed to irritate a lot of people in the process. The Right can do better. The key will be to simplify the message and make it relevant to economic realities. And another thing before I’m done babbling. I think the environment will retreat as an issue should the economy continue it’s slide. The Right doesn’t need to end up being a day late and a dollar short on an environmental message only to miss the more important message that has been their traditional strength–the economy and changing the American culture of debt. In fact, part of what undid McCain was his seeming irrelevance. He was holding environmental talks, extolled the fundamentals of the economy and sounded seriously out of touch.

Conservatives need to remember that citizens expect the Left to be fou-fou about the details and expect the Right to be solid on the big picture. We lost the big picture in the last election, played to our weaknesses and forgot our strengths.

James Joyner has more.

UPDATED:

The Left has become somewhat of a caricature:

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  • http://rightklik.blogspot.com Jason

    Liberals use environmental initiatives as a means to accomplish their socialist and Marxist goals. To the extent that environmentalism interferes with their goals, they ignore environmental issues. During the Reagan years, the sky was falling and the hole in the ozone was the biggest problem ever encountered by man. But the usual suspects were surprisingly quiet during the Clinton years. Then Bush comes on the scene and the planet is in peril again. Interesting pattern.

    http://rightklik.blogspot.com

  • grubbsi

    The perception that democrats do things to protect the environment and Republicans do not is one of the biggest lies of present day American politics. A real evaluation of the actions of the last 5 or 6 governors of Texas would show how untrue that is. Policy makers really ought to listen to the technical experts, but they never do. Ever. Having politics and legislation invade the scientific discipline you have worked in for several decades is not a fun thing. The really good scientists quit being open with their work and you get lots of second stringers who are either just in it for the money, or shameless advocates for one side or another. Or both. Most policy makers do not have adequate background to sift thru everything that gets thrown at them and separate the nuggets from the junk. Maybe if more elected officials had hard science backgrounds, or put on staff positions where they had real , sharp science advisors, this might change. Having worked in a field for 3 1/2 decades that was discovered by “environmental activists” in the early 90′s I know only too well how totally messed up this is.

    Since it is the left that wants to use the science for its own ends. wants to ignore what does not support them and will accept anything that does support their “causes” that leaves conservatism the position of making sure that the science is properly done, checking the facts, exploring the different ideas being put foward. the “right” should insist on rigorous scientific method. most activists do not have any concept about the inherit ambiguities in data, or science in general.

    environmental activists remind me of a 10 year old who is demanding the keys to a lamborghini. They do not have the background to understand the science, cant discriminate what is hard fact, educated guess and outright lie. The only way you can do that is to acquire the proper background knowledge. That requires work, usually years of it.

  • http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com Frank Keegan

    http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/opinion/Species_ending_Its_our_call_story.html

    Species ending? It’s our call
    By Frank Keegan
    11/16/08

    Relax general. Cheer up. Things shall get worse, but they could get better. The choice is ours.
    Hearing a vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff utter the words “species ending” about our near future should be enough to wake us all.

    Gen. James E. Cartwright uttered the phrase recently during the inaugural Johns Hopkins University Leaders + Legends lecture. He spoke on “Leading Organizational Change to Meet New Challenges.”

    What challenges? Financial crises, climate change, weapons of mass destruction widely and readily available to rogue states and lunatic groups. Is that all? No.

    “Competition (for scarce world resources) inevitably will lead to conflict,” Cartwright said. “Are we at a tipping point? Yes. Will we have control? No.”

    Generals are interested because when leaders of state, commerce and church mess up, armed forces have to clean up.

    Cartwright’s love and admiration for the men and women who fight for us if things go wrong is palpable. Figuring out when and where the next conflict breaks out, and how best to combat it, is what generals are supposed to do.

    Now they also try to figure out why, and ways to prevent it. For example, a 2004 Department of Defense study determined global warming is the No. 1 threat to the security of the United States. How can that be if there is no such thing?

    Just because history proves we turn upon ourselves when stressed with a ferocity unequaled by any other species, is there any reason to think this time will be different?

    Nope, according to Cartwright. The stress level is rising, fast. Along with heating things up, we inflict upon ourselves an increasing host of things — from radioactive isotopes to organic chemicals to new and emerging diseases — never before endured by humans.

    Family by family, friend by friend we now begin to see the price we pay for our toxic past. We have not seen the worst of it. Our despoiling of our narrow ecological niche leaves us little room for survival.

    We are learning the real price of living it up instead of eating bread from the sweat of our brow. We arrogantly believe “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” beseeched in our Declaration of Independence somehow do not apply to us.

    Environmentalists weep about saving Earth when actually our planet is not at risk. We are. Other species come and go. Why not us?

    Don’t worry about biodiversity. While exterminating thousands of species, we create opportunities for others. Cockroaches and rats are doing very well. Doing even better are myriad bacteria and viruses. For example, we’ve created perfect environments for growth and spread of staphylococcus and influenza, and the willfully ignorant and criminal negligence of our political and spiritual leaders helped HIV propagate around the globe in less than a decade. Thanks.

    Sure, if we ceased all carbon dioxide emissions now it would take only 100,000 years to return to pre-industrial levels.

    And those new substances — we cannot even count them all — we poison the born and unborn with will continue to kill us for millennia, especially if we use them as weapons.

    But we and we alone hold the power to begin undoing what we have done. The hard fact is environmental responsibility is good business, creating jobs, adding real value and paying long-term dividends.

    Environmental atrocities are bad business, merely deferring costs that accrue and compound — costs we cannot refuse to pay. Our ecological deficit is orders of magnitude larger than our fiscal debts, though both grow from our same inherent flaws.

    We can pay down both at the same time if we have the wisdom and will to take control.

    If we do we can thrive and prosper. If we don’t, Gen. Cartwright is correct. We’re doomed.

    Frank Keegan is editor of The Baltimore Examiner. Reach him at fkeegan@baltimoreexaminer.com.