Nobody Is Worrying About Conservative Environmental Policies
There are some guys who, when they get dumped by a girlfriend, need to fall in love with someone else immediately. Otherwise, they get confused, they lose their minds, and they start calling their exes in the middle of the night. Something very similar happens to public opinion and ideas. You can successfully eradicate a bad idea, but if you don’t fill the void with good ones, the old order will return. Or it could be even more catastrophic: a new, even worse idea could win the day.
During the last election campaign, I suggested that Donald Trump should lead and develop a “right-wing conservationism.” The term is clunky and a bit silly, but it serves to distinguish it from the environmentalism that the far left has been forcing on us for years. We should just call it conservationism, plain and simple. I may not be aware of every action the government is taking in this area, but I do know that the environment has been completely absent from conservative discourse since Trump’s return to the White House — except to reiterate criticisms of Joe Biden’s disastrous “green” initiatives.
To paraphrase my mother, all that filth is something the poor little angels will have to sweep up after Judgment Day.
Conservatives, like Christians, have ample reason to defend the environment. These range from the purely aesthetic — which, while perhaps frivolous, is not at all crazy — to the strictly Christian: the belief that God created the world for us to use and care for, not to leave it covered in trash. To paraphrase my mother, all that filth is something the poor little angels will have to sweep up after Judgment Day.
The era of communist utopias disguised as “green” leftism is over. The only viable environmental measure is one that doesn’t bankrupt us and doesn’t attack the root of the system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in history: capitalism. Moreover, the best kind of environmentalism — the one most guaranteed to succeed — is the one where the people involved also make money. (RELATED: Harvard Kennedy School Peddles Ecomysticism)
The left thinks that everything wrong with the world can be fixed in Washington. The right believes that Washington tends to make things even worse. That’s why progressives have tried to fill the world with fines and bureaucracy, grossly invading the private sphere and tarnishing the reputation of legitimate industries in the name of environmentalism. (RELATED: Washington’s Reverse Midas Touch)
As conservatives, we should fearlessly promote an environmentalism that originates in the private sector: it will probably be better than the government’s version; it will probably be cheaper; it will probably be more effective; it will probably be free of under-the-table bribes; and those involved will probably actually turn a profit.
Furthermore, public intervention in environmental matters should be essentially local. Just look at Europe. The implementation of the European Green Deal was like a communist wave that ruined entire sectors of society, persecuted small farmers and ranchers, prevented citizens from freely enjoying the countryside, and yielded exactly “zero” environmental benefits in return. The pact is still in effect, which explains why we Europeans scratch our noses every time we want to take a sip of water; you know, the cap is permanently attached to the bottle because we’re supposedly “saving the planet.” (RELATED: Thank You, Trump, for Reminding Europe’s Leaders How Utterly Stupid They Are)
However, the biggest mistake of the Green Deal was its arrogance — the idea that four idiots in Brussels, who have never even seen the business end of a cow, know more about livestock than people who have spent six generations knee-deep in manure from morning till night.
If you want a successful environmental policy, start by giving the say back to those who know their land, their forests, and their livelihoods. Let those who actually live there have the final word on their land, their forests, and their livelihoods. Their opinions matter far more than those of a political advisor holed up in an office who has read a couple of thick theses on climate change and could barely tell a camel from a snail.
Actions must be preceded by ideas. Roger Scruton is a good starting point. So is Russell Kirk and his defense of the moral obligation to conserve what we have received to bequeath it to future generations. But I find Wendell Berry’s argument increasingly seductive: why on earth aren’t we conservatives defending the local more vigorously? It is there, in the small and the tangible, where good ideas take root best and where tradition is most respected. (RELATED: Wendell Berry, Temple Grandin, and the Idolatry of Abstractions)
I still think Trump is doing a great job clearing the shelves of all that woke environmental garbage. But he needs to fill them with an alternative. And if that requires a major debate first — a major conference as an alternative to those idiotic, anti-capitalist globalist summits — then so be it.
After all, I refuse to accept that the most sophisticated thing we can achieve in 21st-century environmental policy is a disgusting bike lane — a mere placebo for people who suffer from insomnia when they read the environment pages of the New York Times.
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