The midterm elections are
approaching fast, and as usual the environment is considered a
Democratic issue.
I had no problem with that when I was
fighting strip mines in Ohio in 1973; environmentalism was
synonymous with leftist politics. In the early ’80s, when a friend
told me someone named Dave Foreman was forming an environmental
group named EarthFirst, I was among the first to become involved.
Now that I’m older, I’ve come to believe that an
automatic identification between the left and the environmental
movement is neither good for the environment nor for
environmentalism. The main reason for this change of mind and heart
is that I’ve become convinced that the private sector is more
effective than government at producing just about anything, healthy
ecosystems included.
In 30 years of activism, the most
impressive environmental successes I’ve encountered were achieved
by individuals operating according to principles that make up the
conservative playbook. In each case, individual initiative,
personal accountability, the free market and rewards for results
were more effective at saving endangered species, healing damaged
ecosystems in the West, and even combating global warming than the
government alternative of regulation.
Take just one
example: In Arizona, in 1946, the Forest Service created the Drake
Exclosure to protect a tract of damaged rangeland from grazing and
human use under the assumption that this would restore it to
ecological health. Sixty years later, 90 percent of the plant
species within the exclosure have disappeared, and the distance
between plants can be measured in yards. But outside the exclosure,
on land that has continued to be grazed under the management of a
responsible rancher, the distance between plants can be measured in
inches. Leftist environmentalists have lobbied to expand the
preserve to include the rest of the ranch. Conservative
environmentalists have commended the rancher for his success and
proposed to leave the preserve so the rest of us can learn what it
teaches. Examples like this got me to thinking that the reason
environmental problems seem so hard to solve may be because the
knee-jerk methods we use to deal with them are so ineffective.
This leads to a significant question: Why have
environmentalists chosen the leftist approach of command and
control, which is a confirmed loser and unnatural to boot, over an
approach based on conservative principles? The answer came when I
took success stories in the West to my environmental peers. I knew
how most environmentalists feel about everything voluntary and not
legally buttoned down, so, when I told them what I had discovered,
I wasn’t surprised that that they were defensive. What did surprise
me was their total lack of interest in how people they normally
think of as adversaries had succeeded in dealing with problems such
as over-grazing that had stymied them for decades.
After
a few years of this, I was the one who finally got the message. I
concluded that many people who call themselves environmentalists
are more interested in installing prescriptions than in achieving
success on the ground. For them, environmental issues are a means
to achieve liberal political ends rather than the other way around.
In fact, that’s how many environmentalists measure success —
in the number of acres brought under government control, in laws
passed, in regulations created, and in the election of politicians
committed to increasing all of the above. That’s why my
environmental listeners weren’t interested in the successes I
described to them.
Liberals deal with problems by
applying policies such as a living wage, affirmative action,
universal health-care. Conservatives are more apt to work to create
a situation in which people can use their creativity and initiative
to produce a product for which there is a demand and, therefore, a
reward.
An environmentalism based on conservative
principles would determine success and dispense rewards for
achieving results. This would change the face of the environmental
debate entirely. Among other things, it would expand the number of
people involved in environmental issues. It would do so by giving
people on the right, many of whom are as concerned about
environmental problems as liberals, an environmental strategy to
support that did not require them to sign on to something they
oppose, which can be summed up as increased regulation and bigger
government. It would also offer an alternative to what currently
passes for a conservative environmentalism — discounting the
seriousness of environmental problems so it can be claimed that
tighter regulation is unnecessary.
Creating an
environmentalism that is truly conservative would give all of us a
means to set goals in terms of environmental criteria, such as
healthier habitat, more functional watersheds and a rebound for
native or endangered species, and it would reward those who were
able to achieve those goals. What we’re doing now produces more
regulations than results.
Dan Dagget is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, and
is the author of The Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering Our
Importance to Nature.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
