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Key takeaways on Americans’ growing partisan divide over political values

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Key takeaways on Americans’ growing partisan divide over political values

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For more than two decades, partisan polarization has been a powerful force in American politics. Today, the divide between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental values relating to the role of government, the environment, race, immigration and other issues dwarfs demographic, religious and education differences, according to surveys conducted by Pew Research Center in June and July.

What is striking is how little common ground there is among partisans today. Even on issues on which Republicans and Democrats have moved in the same direction - for example, growing numbers in both parties say homosexuality should be accepted rather than discouraged - the partisan differences are wider today than in the past.

Here are eight takeaways from the surveys:

1Across 10 political values Pew Research Center has tracked since 1994, there is now an average 36-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and Democrats and Democratic leaners. In 1994, it was only 15 points. The partisan gap is much larger than the differences between the opinions of blacks and whites, men and women and other groups in society.

2 Democrats have moved left on several issues. Over the past few years, some of the biggest changes in opinions among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have been on race and the role of government. There has been far less change in the views of Republicans and Republican leaners. As a result, the public's views as a whole have moved in a more liberal direction.

In the new study (conducted before violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, and recent protests by NFL players), 41% of Americans say racial discrimination is the main reason blacks can't get ahead - up from 18% in 2009 and the highest level dating back to 1994. Virtually all of the change has come among Democrats, with a record 64% saying racial discrimination is the main barrier to blacks getting ahead. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, there has been less change since 2009 (9% then, 14% today).

3 The partisan gap also is widening over how much the government should do to help the needy. Half of Americans now say the government should do more to help the needy even if it means going deeper into debt, while 43% say the government can't afford it. This shift toward more support for the needy is being driven by the 71% of Democrats who now hold this view, a dramatic increase since 2011. Only about a quarter (24%) of Republicans agree, a share little changed over the past several years.

4 Democrats are more likely than Republicans to favor an active global role for the U.S. As recently as three years ago, Republicans and Democrats were equally skeptical about the U.S. taking an active role in world affairs. But today, a majority of Democrats (56%) say it's best for the country's future to be active globally, up from 38% in 2014.

Republicans' views have changed little over this period: In the new surveys, 39% of Republicans say it's best for the U.S. to be active in world affairs, while 54% say we should pay less attention to overseas problems.

5 Republicans are divided over issues of economic fairness. Republicans with family incomes below $30,000 are more likely than those with incomes of $75,000 or more to regard economic inequality as a "very big problem." By contrast, majorities of Democrats across income categories view economic inequality as a very big problem.

Among Republicans overall, slightly more say the U.S. economic system is generally fair to most Americans (50%) than say it unfairly favors powerful interests (46%). A large majority of Democrats (82%) say the economic system unfairly benefits powerful interests.

6 Democrats are split on whether hard work leads to success. Only about half of Democrats (49%) say most people can get ahead if they're willing to work hard, compared with 77% of Republicans. Among Democrats, whites are more skeptical than either blacks or Hispanics that hard work leads to success. And while 57% of Democrats with at least a four-year degree say hard work is no guarantee of success for most people, fewer Democrats (45%) with less education say this.

7 Support for societal acceptance of homosexuality is at a record high. Seven-in-ten Americans now say homosexuality should be accepted rather than discouraged, up 9 percentage points in the past year and the highest share favoring acceptance of homosexuality dating back more than two decades. And for the first time ever, majorities of both Democrats (83%) and Republicans (54%) say homosexuality should be accepted.

8 Trump's job ratings are more polarized than past presidents'. Based on surveys conducted this year (in February, April and June), Donald Trump's job approval ratings are the most polarized of any first-year president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.

Nearly nine-in-ten Republicans (88%) approved of Trump's job performance, compared with just 8% of Democrats.

However, even before Trump took office, there had been a downward trend in presidential approval ratings among members of the party not in control of the White House. George W. Bush was an exception to this trend (46% average job rating among Democrats in his first year), largely because of his extraordinarily high level of support after the 9/11 attacks.
Correction: The section of this post on President Trump's approval ratings and the chart "Wider partisan gap on Trump job rating than for any president in six decades" have been updated to exclude independents who lean Democratic or Republican. The numbers have not changed.
Topics: Political Party Affiliation, Political Polarization

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Americans' growing partisan divide: 8 key findings

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For more than two decades, partisan polarization has been a powerful force in American politics. Today, the divide between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental values relating to the role of government, the environment, race, immigration and other issues dwarfs demographic, religious and education differences, according to surveys conducted by Pew Research Center in June and July.

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Global warming and environmental regulation, personal environmentalism

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Global warming and environmental regulation, personal environmentalism

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Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

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7. Global warming and environmental regulation, personal environmentalism

An increasing share of Americans - Republicans and Democrats alike - say there is solid evidence that the Earth's average temperature has been getting warmer. But attitudes about global warming and the value of stricter environmental laws remain deeply divided along partisan lines.

In fact, the partisan divide about whether stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, or hurt the economy, is now about as wide as the differences over global warming. This marks a major shift from a decade ago, when majorities in both parties said stricter environmental laws were worth the cost.

Most Americans say it is important to do things to help the environment. But those with higher family incomes are more likely than less affluent adults to say they take steps to help the environment, even if it costs time or money.

Changing views on global warming

In the survey, conducted in June, 74% say there is solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer, while 23% say there is no solid evidence that the Earth has been warming.

When asked a follow-up question about the causes of global warming, most people who see solid evidence of global warming - 53% of the public - say it is caused mostly by human activity such as burning fossil fuels, while fewer (18% of the public) say it is caused mostly by natural patterns in the Earth's environment.

Overall, 10% of the public says there is no solid evidence of warming and thinks it is because climate change is "just not happening," while a similar share (12% of the public) believes there is no solid evidence and says "we just don't know enough yet about whether the Earth is getting warmer."

The share of Americans who say there is solid evidence of global warming - and that this has been caused mostly by human activity - has increased since 2014. At that time, 61% of the public said there was solid evidence of warming, and 40% of the public said the Earth was warming and attributed this mostly to human causes.

Since then, growing numbers of both Republicans and Democrats say there is solid evidence that the Earth's temperature is increasing, but substantial differences persist.

About half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (52%) say there is solid evidence of rising global temperatures, up from 39% in 2014. Still, while the share of Republicans who say there is solid evidence of global warming has increased in recent years, it remains lower than a decade ago. By contrast, while clear majorities of Democrats have long said the Earth's temperature is rising, the current share (92%) is as high as it has ever been in surveys since 2006.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans are internally divided in views of global warming. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Republicans and Republican leaners younger than 30 say there is solid evidence of global warming. Among those 50 and older, just 46% say this.

In addition, Republicans who strongly approve of Trump's job performance (63% of Republicans and Republican leaners) are more likely than those who approve of him less strongly (or those who disapprove) to say there is no solid evidence of rising global temperatures.

Just 39% of Republicans who approve of Trump strongly say there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming, compared with majorities of those who approve of him not so strongly (65%) and those who disapprove (88%).

Few Republicans attribute rising global temperatures to human activity

While a growing share of Republicans say there is solid evidence of global warming, Republicans who express this view are divided about whether this is caused mostly by human activity. Only about a quarter of Republicans (24%) say there is solid evidence of rising global temperatures and that this is caused mostly by human activity; about as many (25%) say it is caused mostly by natural patterns in the environment.

Republicans who do not think there is solid evidence of global warming are divided in views of whether, in effect, this is a settled issue. Nearly identical shares of Republicans say global warming is "just not happening" (21%) and that not enough is yet known about this issue (22%).

An overwhelming share of Democrats (78%) say there is solid evidence the Earth's average temperature has been rising and that this has been caused mostly by human activity. While 90% of liberal Democrats express this view, a somewhat smaller majority of conservative and moderate Democrats say the same (69%).

Among conservative Republicans, just 18% say there is solid evidence of global warming and that this has been caused mostly by human activity. About twice as many moderate and liberal Republicans express this view (37%).

Wider partisan gap in views of stricter environmental regulations

When it comes to environmental laws and regulations, fully 59% of the public believes they are worth the cost. Less than half of the public (37%) believes stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. While these attitudes have fluctuated modestly since 1994, the partisan divide has grown substantially.

This has largely been caused by changes among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. A decade ago, 58% of Republicans said stricter environmental regulations were worth the cost; 34% said stricter environmental regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.

Today, these opinions have reversed: Just 36% of Republicans say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, while 58% say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.

Democrats' views have been more stable over the past two decades, but the share of Democrats who say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost has increased by 10 percentage points since 2007 (from 67% to 77%).

Younger adults are more likely than older Americans to express positive views of tougher environmental regulations. Two-thirds (67%) of those younger than 30 say such regulations are worth the cost, compared with 52% of those 50 and older.

People with higher levels of education are more likely than those with less education to say stricter environmental regulations are worth the cost. Three-quarters (75%) of those with a postgraduate degree say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, compared with 64% of college graduates, 59% of those with some college experience and 51% of those with no college experience.

Views of importance of personal action to protect environment

Most Americans say it is important for them to take action to protect the environment, but some say they are not able to do this because they lack time or money. About half of the public (53%) says environmental protection is so important that they take action, even when it costs time or money; 37% say this is important, but they do not have the time or money to help the environment; and 9% say protecting the environment is not that important.

These attitudes vary by partisan ideology and family income. A majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (63%) say taking action to protect the environment is personally important, even if it costs time or money. About four-in-ten Republicans (43%) say the same.

Those with higher family incomes are more likely than lower-income households to say that acting to protect the environment is important, even if it costs time or money. About six-in-ten (62%) of those earning $75,000 a year or more say it's important to do things to protect the environment, even if it costs time or money. Among those earning less than $30,000 a year views are mixed: 47% say protecting the environment is important but they don't have the time or money to help, while 42% say it's important and they do things in their everyday life to help.

The view that it's important to take action on the environment even if it costs time or money is particularly widely held among those with family incomes of $150,000 or more (74%), the highest income bracket measured in the survey.

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Views on global warming and environmental regulation, personal environmentalism

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An increasing share of Americans - Republicans and Democrats alike - say there is solid evidence that the Earth's average temperature has been getting warmer. But attitudes about global warming and the value of stricter environmental laws remain deeply divided along partisan lines.

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Liberals recognise the value of development in areas that do not damage the environment. We must have industry to improve the lot of impoverished people at both home and abroad, but we must remember that there is only so much oil, coal and other mineral resources and we must try to exercise strict controls over what we use and to what purposes we put them. There must be no more production for production's sake, no more "planned obsolescence". We need a policy of producing what we need and that such products should be as durable, repairable, and of as good a quality as is possible, designed with recycling and reduction of pollution during manufacture and disposal in mind. Liberals propose mandatory minimum guarantee periods of several years as a good way of combating planned obsolescence.

The production and consumption of energy is a major polluter. Liberals were the first to draw attention to the problems of acid rain and global warming and call for:

1. the promotion of more economical use of energy in transport, power generation, house construction, the insulation of plant and buildings, and energy efficiency standards in all new buildings. Transport in particular is a major energy consumer and energy conservation should be taken into account when planning all future projects such as motorways and new aircraft. Liberals believe that the need for travel can be greatly reduced by more considered planning;

2. greater investment in research into the most economical and clean methods of storing and generating energy, particularly renewable sources such as barrage schemes, solar, wind and wave power. Liberals also find merit in combined heat and power systems and district heating schemes fuelled by the incineration of non-recyclable waste products;

3. full exploitation of current technology for the curbing of vehicle and power station emissions and research into new technologies;

Government must take the lead and produce a national plan for all energy resources. It is for this reason that we opposed the privatisation of the gas and electricity industries and favour having the generation and supply industries under democratic control. We see gas and electricity as a coordinated whole with a vital role to play in energy conservation, not as competing companies.

We oppose the generation of electricity by nuclear fission due to the risks inherent in the design and function of such power stations and the problem of contamination of the surrounding environment and disposal of nuclear waste. Liberals call for an end to the use of nuclear fission but support the continued research and development on nuclear fusion.

Liberals are also concerned at the rate at which we are depleting other resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas and non-fuel minerals, and the way these are shown as being part of the nation's "wealth" production. We would seek a review all the nation's finite resources, with a view to a limit being put upon their rate of extraction and an increase in the tax on their use.

Liberal foresee problems with the nation's water supply. Over the past few years, rainfall has been below the long term average and, in order to meet a high growth in demand for water, many authorities are increasingly resorting to hosepipe bans, restrictions on irrigation for agriculture, and over-reliance on "ground water" drawn from rivers and from bore holes, with disastrous effects on the water table, tree root systems, soil and clay structure. A country with a temperate climate surrounded by water has no business to be short of the stuff. We therefore:

1. welcome the recent programme by the water companies to reduce the proportion of the supply which is lost through leaks in the mains system;

2. propose an investment programme in reservoir, rain collection and regional grid systems. A national grid feasibility study should be undertaken to investigate methods whereby water might be transferred from areas where there is an excessive supply to areas where there is a shortage;

3. propose a plan for a phased installation of desalination plants along our coastline and a rapid reduction in the use of bore holes by water companies and others, all to be policed by the National Rivers Authority.

Embodied in a Liberal plan for water would be a consumer policy to ensure that the supply is pure and free of contamination. In particular, we would prohibit the addition of fluoride or any other substance to public water supplies for the purpose of affecting or influencing directly the development or function of any part of the human body, nervous system or mind.

Liberals oppose households having to bear the cost of the installation of water meters.

The safeguarding and enhancement of our environment is as vital to the future of this planet as is the prevention of global war. Liberals recognise that the planet's ecology is as much in the hands of men and women in local communities as it is in those of national governments. Britain can take a lead by putting its own house in order.

Liberals call for:

1. and end to all dumping of waste at sea;

2. the creation of a Pollution Inspectorate with power to investigate actual and potential causes of pollution, to order its reduction and to penalise institutions responsible;

3. research into the use of raw materials, recycling and problems created by the manufacture of indestructible synthetics and noxious substances;

4. more money to be made available for recycling projects and legislation to ensure that manufactured goods contain minimum percentages of recycled materials.

Liberals deplore the recent marketing of a self-cooling drink can which involves the venting of refrigerant liquid into the air to chill the can's contents, thereby releasing a powerful "greenhouse" gas into the atmosphere. We believe that this represent yet another unwelcome development of the disposable packaging of foodstuffs which is costly in terms of resource consumption, costly to dispose of, is environmentally unsound, and which past governments have done nothing to curb. The Liberal Party calls for an investigation into the packaging of foodstuffs with a view to the standardisation and promotion of reusable containers, and the eventual phasing out of much of today's disposable packaging.

In the countryside, copses, hedges and wildlife habitats must be preserved and compulsory powers must be used to ensure the survival of meadow land, wetlands and nature reserves. Grants for the provision of new hedges and the restoration of meadow land that could viably support a grazing herd should be introduced, together with the designation of "Landscape Areas" to protect such places from the rigours of intensive farming. We also recognise the benefits derived from planning controls in ensuring that our environment is protected from exploitation by advertising signs and hoardings, and call for existing laws to be developed to provide further protection for rural and urban environments.

Liberals call for statutory protection rights at national level relating to societies such as The National Trust and English Heritage provided that these are not in conflict with the principles of freedom of movement, religious observance, or cultural interests. The on-going management and procurement of open spaces should be monitored by new Green Space Authorities, presided over by non-partisan Regional Directors. Proposals relating to open spaces, particularly the selling off of school playing fields and other public land should be presented to the residents within communities affected and their views given a favourable hearing.

It is inevitable that tourism will have a detrimental effect on the rural environment. To help combat this, rural communities should be encouraged to be reliant on small industries providing for their needs, instead of being too dependent on tourism for economic security.

We recognise that there will be a continuing need for landfill sites but believe that these should never be the major means of waste disposal. Every opportunity should be taken to convert waste material to other uses by recycling, composting and energy recovery. In particular we would welcome a nation-wide programme for the construction of small scale (under 60,000 tonnes capacity) non-polluting incineration plants to reduce the haulage distances for waste materials, reduce the need for landfill and to provide the capacity for energy generation.

Liberals believe that we have a right to information about products offered to us. As well as comprehensive ingredients labelling, Liberals would like to see product labels showing the country of origin of the product and whether any ingredients are the result of genetic engineering.

For cosmetic, household, garden and medicinal/remedy products, labels should clearly show whether the product or its ingredients have been tested on animals by or for the manufacturers, or by or for other parts of the same company or corporation. We would support a universal labelling scheme to this effect.

We would also support a scheme to identify the environmental impact of every product's manufacture, use and disposal. We believe that such schemes are necessary in order to provide people with informed choices about what they buy, and because companies' own labelling is often confusing or misleading (eg: a company can label a product "not tested on animals" although the ingredients within the product have been tested, and companies who declare that they do not test on animals may be contracting these tests out to other companies.)

Liberals believe that the owners and employees of businesses should have a better awareness of the environmental impact of their activities. We therefore call for all companies to include in every third Annual Report and Accounts an "Environmental Audit Report" to be carried out by appropriately qualified professionals. The report should include expert opinions on the company's dependence on non-renewable resources in its production processes; the form and extent of any pollution emanating from the company's operations; and energy efficiency, use of road transport, packaging, product life and any other relevant factors. The report would be available to the public through filing at Companies House.

In urban, as well as rural, areas, Liberals recognise that the failure to meet the needs of the people living in such communities has lowered the quality of life for many. Uncontrolled and badly planned commercial development in many of our cities has gone ahead to the detriment of the environment and community life. Liberals believe that the urban environment should be placed in the hands of the people living in such areas by reviving urban communities through the creation of Community Councils on the lines of Parish Councils. These, together with community enterprises and residents' and tenants' co-operatives, would revive a sense of responsibility in local people for their own environment.

Present planning practices such as 'zoning' mean that people are often unable to work near where they live, causing dependence on cars. The integration of housing and industry should be encouraged, whilst strengthening planning controls on the location of hazardous industrial processes.

Liberals favour the rehabilitation of buildings and protection of our architectural heritage. Such schemes could provide an ideal environment for residential use, small retail outlets, businesses and workshops.

Liberals call for an investigation into the stress and nuisance caused by noise with a view to introducing comprehensive legislation.

Liberals condemn the Government's bias in favour of massive spending on roads and the environmental damage this causes and call for a national rail strategy and increased investment in the rail network. In addition, unused lines should be maintained as wildlife corridors, footpaths and cycle-ways or reopened, where practical, as light railways.

In every area of policy making, Liberals call for a "Green Audit" to assess the effects of policy on the environment.

In common with other developed countries, Britain is profligate in the use of resources and it will be difficult to persuade developing countries to be responsible until we have put our own house in order.

Globally, Liberals recognise that international co-operation is required to safeguard the planet and avoid ecological disaster. We recognise the potential role of the United Nations is developing and co-ordinating action. Liberals urge the establishment of a task force for the preparation of a UN Covenant on Environment and Development.

Liberals call for international law to recognise ecocide as an offence against humanity comparable with genocide. We look for minimum standards of environmental rights and obligations, increased awareness of the impact of natural calamities and increased research, education and communication in all parts of the world. Sustainable development must take into account local knowledge, indigenous viewpoints and the participation of local peoples. Action on the environment requires freedom of access to information and an adequate system of addressing complaints and grievances.

Liberals recognise the role of the developed world in creating many of the problems faced in the third world. In particular, the indebtedness of may third world countries militates against sustainable and environmentally friendly development. Liberals therefore call for the removal of third world indebtedness initially by the retrospective cancellation of all debt which should have been met by adequate levels of aid related to the proper distribution of the world's resources.

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Liberals recognise the value of development in areas that do not damage the environment. We must have industry to improve the lot of impoverished people at both home and abroad, but we must remember that there is only so much oil, coal and other mineral resources and we must try to exercise strict controls over what we use and to what purposes we put them.

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Liberalism, the environment and environmental regulation: how can liberalism be environmental?

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Liberalism, the environment and environmental regulation: how can liberalism be environmental?

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Compiled by the Editors. Copyright 2005 (revised 2010) StudentNewsDaily.com. We all want the same things in life. We want freedom; we want the chance for prosperity; we want as few people suffering as possible; we want healthy children; we want to have crime-free streets. The argument is how to achieve them...

Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems.

Conservatives believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense. Believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems.

Related comparison page: Socialism vs. Capitalism

And check out our page: 2019 General Election Resources for teachers.
NOTE: The terms "left" and "right" define opposite ends of the political spectrum. In the United States, liberals are referred to as the left or left-wing and conservatives are referred to as the right or right-wing. On the U.S. political map, blue represents the Democratic Party (which generally upholds liberal principles) and red represents the Republican party (which generally upholds conservative principles).
Abortion

Liberal
A woman has the right to decide what happens with her body. A fetus is not a human life, so it does not have separate individual rights. The government should provide taxpayer funded abortions for women who cannot afford them. The decision to have an abortion is a personal choice of a woman regarding her own body and the government must protect this right. Women have the right to affordable, safe and legal abortions, including partial birth abortion.

( Conservative
Human life begins at conception. Abortion is the murder of a human being. An unborn baby, as a living human being, has separate rights from those of the mother. Oppose taxpayer-funded abortion. Taxpayer dollars should not be used for the government to provide abortions. Support legislation to prohibit partial birth abortions, called the "Partial Birth Abortion* Ban"*Partial Birth Abortion: the killing of an unborn baby of at least 20 weeks by pulling it out of the birth canal with forceps, but leaving the head inside. An incision is made in the back of the baby's neck and the brain tissue is suctioned out. The head is then removed from the uterus.)

Affirmative Action

Death Penalty

Economy

Education - vouchers & charter schools

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Support the use of embryonic stem cells for research. It is necessary (and ethical) for the government to fund embryonic stem cell research, which will assist scientists in finding treatments and cures for diseases. An embryo is not a human. The tiny blastocyst (embryos used in embryonic stem cell research) has no human features. Experimenting on embryos/embryonic stem cells is not murder. Embryonic stem cells have the potential to cure chronic and degenerative diseases which current medicine has been unable to effectively treat. Embryonic stem cells have been shown to be effective in treating heart damage in mice.

Conservative
Support the use of adult and umbilical cord stem cells only for research. It is morally and ethically wrong for the government to fund embryonic stem cell research. Human life begins at conception. The extraction of stem cells from an embryo requires its destruction. In other words, it requires that a human life be killed. Adult stem cells have already been used to treat spinal cord injuries, Leukemia, and even Parkinson's disease. Adult stem cells are derived from umbilical cords, placentas, amniotic fluid, various tissues and organ systems like skin and the liver, and even fat obtained from liposuction. Embryonic stem cells have not been successfully used to help cure disease.

Energy

Euthanasia & Physician-assisted suicide

Global Warming/Climate Change

Gun Control
Full text of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Healthcare

Homeland Security

Liberal
Airport security - Passenger profiling is wrong, period. Selection of passengers for extra security screening should be random. Using other criteria (such as ethnicity) is discriminatory and offensive to Arabs and Muslims, who are generally innocent and law-abiding. Terrorists don't fit a profile.
"...Arabs, Muslims and South Asians are no more likely than whites to be terrorists." (American Civil Liberties Union ACLU)
Asked on 60 Minutes if a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach should receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim from Jersey City, President Obama's Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said, "Basically, I would hope so."

Conservative
Airport security - Choosing passengers randomly for extra security searches is not effective. Rather, profiling and intelligence data should be used to single out passengers for extra screening. Those who do not meet the criteria for suspicion should not be subjected to intense screening. The terrorists currently posing a threat to the U.S. are primarily Islamic/Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 38. Our resources should be focused on this group. Profiling is good logical police work.
"If people are offended (by profiling), that's unfortunate, but I don't think we can afford to take the risk that terrorism brings to us. They've wasted masses of resources on far too many people doing things that really don't have a big payoff in terms of security." - Northwestern University Aviation Expert, A.Gellman.

Immigration

Support legal immigration. Support amnesty for those who enter the U.S. illegally (undocumented immigrants). Also believe that undocumented immigrants have a right to:
- all educational and health benefits that citizens receive (financial aid, welfare, social security and medicaid), regardless of legal status.
- the same rights as American citizens. It is unfair to arrest millions of undocumented immigrants.

Conservative
Support legal immigration only. Oppose amnesty for those who enter the U.S. illegally (illegal immigrants). Those who break the law by entering the U.S. illegally do not have the same rights as those who obey the law and enter legally. The borders should be secured before addressing the problem of the illegal immigrants currently in the country. The Federal Government should secure the borders and enforce current immigration law.

Private Property

Religion & Government

Liberal
Support the separation of church and state. The Bill of Rights implies a separation of church and state. Religious expression has no place in government. The two should be completely separate. Government should not support religious expression in any way. All reference to God in public and government spaces should be removed (eg., the Ten Commandments should not be displayed in Federal buildings). Religious expression has no place in government.

Conservative
The phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." This prevents the government from establishing a national church/denomination. However, it does not prohibit God from being acknowledged in schools and government buildings. Symbols of Christian heritage should not be removed from public and government spaces (eg., the Ten Commandments should continue to be displayed in Federal buildings). Government should not interfere with religion and religious freedom.

Same-sex Marriage

Liberal
Marriage is the union of people who love each other. It should be legal for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, to ensure equal rights for all. Support same-sex marriage. Opposed to the creation of a constitutional amendment establishing marriage as the union of one man and one woman. All individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation, have the right to marry. Prohibiting same-sex citizens from marrying denies them their civil rights. [Opinions vary on whether this issue is equal to civil rights for African Americans.]

Conservative
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Oppose same-sex marriage.
Support Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed in 1996, which affirms the right of states not to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states.
Requiring citizens to sanction same-sex relationships violates moral and religious beliefs of millions of Christians, Jews, Muslims and others, who believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Social Security

Taxes

United Nations (UN)

War on Terror/Terrorism

Welfare

Compiled by the Editors. Copyright 2005, (revised 2010) StudentNewsDaily.com.

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Liberals believe in government action...Conservatives believe in limited government.

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When It Comes To Saving The Environment, Liberals And Conservatives Speak Different Languages

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When It Comes To Saving The Environment, Liberals And Conservatives Speak Different Languages

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Devan Schwartz/OPB

A new study in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology" looks into the different ways that liberals and conservatives respond to messages about the environment.

The research, led by Oregon State University-Cascades professor Christopher Wolsko, shows conservatives can be persuaded by environmental messaging when it speaks to their system of values.

"Conservatives are not inherently anti-environmental," says Wolsko. "They are just, to some extent, rejecting the very liberal, pro-environmental discourse."

Wolsko's research built on the work of previous studies that show liberals respond most strongly to messages about compassion and justice, while conservatives respond more to messages about loyalty, authority, purity and patriotism.

Participants in Wolsko's study were asked to respond to a set of questions that determined their political views. Then they were shown two very different messages asking them to support the environment.

One was meant to appeal to liberal sentiments:

"Show your love for all of humanity and the world in which we live by helping to care for our vulnerable natural environment. Help to reduce the harm done to the environment by taking action. By caring for the natural world you are helping to ensure that everyone around the world gets to enjoy fair access to a sustainable environment. Do the right thing by preventing the suffering of all life-forms and making sure that no one is denied their right to a healthy planet. SHOW YOUR COMPASSION."

The other was meant to appeal to conservative values:

"Show you love your country by joining the fight to protect the purity of America's natural environment. Take pride in the American tradition of performing one's civic duty by taking responsibility for yourself and the land you call home. By taking a tougher stance on protecting the natural environment, you will be honoring all of Creation. Demonstrate your respect by following the examples of your religious and political leaders who defend America's natural environment. SHOW YOUR PATRIOTISM!"

The study found conservatives were much likelier to say they would take environmental actions - like recycling and turning off the lights in their house - after reading the second message. They also became more concerned about climate change, felt a stronger connection to nature and were more likely to donate to environmental groups after having read the conservative statement.

The messaging worked the opposite way as well. Liberals' pro-environmental sentiments would decrease slightly in response to the conservative messaging.

Wolsko says the results of the study indicate that decision-making is not based on reason alone. "To say that we're just talking about issues rationally, which people often do, is, I think, a mistake."

Instead, people see the values of the groups that they identify with in certain messages. And that makes them more likely to agree. When those values are absent - or when the values of a group one disagrees with are present - one is more likely to disagree.

"We want to fit in," Wolsko says. "We want to be right. We want to be accepted. We want to be liked. We want to be loved. And so we express attitudes not just for some utilitarian purpose but we express attitudes as an affirmation of who we are and what we stand for."

He cautions against the study being used to further divide political messaging. "We really don't want to just deliver separate realities to people - to tell them what they want to hear from who they want to hear it from," he says. "That is the kind of thing that creates divisiveness and the tremendous political polarization in this country."

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When It Comes To Saving The Environment, Liberals And Conservatives Speak Different Languages

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Devan Schwartz/OPB A new study in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology" looks into the different ways that liberals and conservatives respond to messages about the environment. The research, led by Oregon State University-Cascades professor Christopher Wolsko, shows conservatives can be persuaded by environmental messaging when it speaks to their system of values.

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(Archived document, may contain errors) The Conservative As Environmentalist

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The Conservative Case for the Environment

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The Conservative Case for the Environment

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Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Educating for Liberty

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One of the strangest phenomena in the realm of public discourse of the last two or three decades is the extent to which conservatives have avoided the debate over environmental issues. Air and water pollution and other environmental problems affect everyone, regardless of politics, and many of the problems are acute and critical. But by and large conservatives have ignored these issues, during the very period when the environment was becoming a major political concern throughout America and the world. If, for example, one looks through Modern Age or The Intercollegiate Review one will find virtually nothing on the environment. National Review comments on practically everything in the political and social realms-and yet one finds there only a handful of not very thoughtful articles, almost all of which merely condemn some extremist fringe group or idea. The one major exception is The Heritage Foundation, which has published a few serious articles on the environment in Policy Review and in its Mandate for Leadership books.

Conservative politicians have done no better. As the Federal government and the states were tackling pollution using bureaucratic systems of regulation proposed by the Left, conservatives in Congress and the legislatures have offered nothing more than ineffective opposition. The Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership III summed up the Reagan Administration's record this way:

The Reagan Administration . . . had a rare opportunity to offer an alternative policy model for environmental controls: to place greater emphasis on developing property rights and on other solutions using market incentives. It has failed to do so and has provided absolutely no vision for a tough environmental policy based on market mechanisms. Without this vision and with its ill-chosen appointments at EPA, the Reagan Administration has lost the initiative on environmental issues. . . . It has appeared simply to offer lower budgets, federal inaction, and fewer restrictions on polluting industries. When dealing with highly charged political issues with moral and even religious overtones, a philosophy that seems to consist only of doing less cannot compete effectively with statist activism. ¹

By and large, the Bush Administration and the current Republican congress have given us more of the same.

There is nothing inherently liberal about environmental concerns. In fact, as The Economist observed, "the environment is an issue without any obvious political home." ² A Roper poll that ranked Americans on their environmental awareness and commitment found that the group of the most active environmentalists contained the highest share of conservatives as well as of liberals. ³

Yet, conservatives have largely abdicated the field, so environmental policy has been made with very little serious contribution from the Right. The results have been misguided policies that have not been nearly as effective as some possible alternatives, and in some cases have left our environment in worse shape than before.

It is not my purpose here to advocate any specific policies. The problem for conservatives at this point in time is more fundamental than that: we need, in the first place, to get conservatives thinking about environmental issues at all, and thinking about them in positive and constructive ways. When we do so, I believe one conclusion is inescapable: conservatives should be environmentalists.

There is a fairly well-defined and widely recognized split in the ranks of post-war American conservatism, between "traditionalists" and "libertarians" or "free-market"conservatives. George H. Nash explains "the gap between the two streams of thought":

While libertarians tended to emphasize economic arguments against the State, the new conservatives [traditionalists] were more concerned with what they saw as the ethical and spiritual causes and consequences of Leviathan. On the whole, the new conservatives were little interested in economics. . . . Instead, they were fundamentally social and cultural critics, for whom conservatism meant the restoration of values, not the preservation of material gains. . . . ⁴

Nevertheless, certain bonds did link the two independent wings of the conservative revival. Both abhorred the totalitarian state and collectivism; both tended to support private property, decentralization, and (at least in a general way) a free economic system.

It is not my purpose to advance or mediate between these two perspectives. Rather, I will argue that both philosophical positions should lead conservatives to be at the forefront in the public debate on the environment, not merely in opposition but as activists with serious proposals of their own.

When considering the implications of the libertarian position on environmental issues, I am not concerned with a radical, anti-government philosophy, but rather with those who focus primarily on economics and the virtues of the free-market. For the libertarian, the free market system is believed to be not only the most efficient means of improving mankind's standard of living, but also the only sure foundation and protection for political freedom. From the free-market perspective, there should be great interest in solving many of our environmental problems-and indeed, there is a small group of free-market environmentalists, primarily associated with the Political Economy Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana.

In a free market, producers and consumers negotiate their sales and purchases with no outside interference and without affecting third parties. The market price of a product, which the consumer pays, includes all of the costs of making it and some profit for the producer.

However, the real cost of production in the modern world often includes "externalities," costs that are not reflected in the price of goods and which must be paid by others, rather than by the consumers of the products. All forms of pollution are just such costs. If, for example, a factory does not properly dispose of its waste but saves money by dumping it untreated in a river, its customers get the products more cheaply, but downstream users of the river suffer damages. Perhaps they cannot use the river any more (say, for fishing or swimming). Or perhaps to keep using its water, they have to pay extra to clean it up first. If the factory processed its waste properly, the cost of doing so would be included in the price of its products and would be paid by their consumers, not by innocent third parties downstream.

As mentioned, the libertarian values the free market as a source and protection of freedom-freedom from interference by government and by others. But your freedom is decreased if someone can impose on you some of the cost of his production, or can invade your property with his pollution. Nothing in the theory of the free market justifies a producer and a consumer forcing an outsider to pay part of their costs. And your payment may be much more than just a few dollars; it may be in the form of acute suffering (e.g., illness from breathing polluted air or drinking polluted water). Wherever there is pollution, the libertarian should be devising ways to make sure that the market works properly. The costs of production need to be "internalized" in the market price of goods in some way that also maximizes liberty.

The liberals who have dominated environmental policy attempt to force producers to bear the full costs of production by means of governmental regulation, enforced by ever growing bureaucracies. But a command and control system, besides infringing on freedoms, is seldom the most efficient or effective means of accomplishing the goal.

Command-and-control generally delivers less clean-up per penny than more sophisticated alternatives. . . . Regulations tend to load high costs onto some producers, low costs onto others. . . . Command-and-control often means telling polluters what technology they must use to clean up. But government rarely knows best. As regulations are often tougher for new entrants to an industry than for existing firms, they may discourage new investment-even if it is cleaner than the old. ⁵

We obviously, then, should look for the most efficient and least intrusive means of getting all costs included in market prices. There are several possible mechanisms: effluent taxes, treating pollution as an invasion of property rights (giving owners proper legal recourse for environmental "trespassing"), tradeable pollution permits, as well as many other "market-based environmental policies [to] give businesses and individuals an incentive not just to meet regulatory requirements but to go beyond them." ⁶ However, this is not the place to advocate any specific approach to particular problems, but the concern for those problems needs to be there, on the part of libertarians above all. ⁷

Many other kinds of environmental problems should also be of direct concern to the libertarian. Libertarians are, on principle, opposed to subsidies and governmental regulations in general. But many of the environmental problems we face are the direct result of governmental actions, and would not have developed otherwise. Here we can look at only a few examples.

Government agencies systematically mismanage natural resources, often with devastating effects to the environment. Perhaps the most obvious evidence can be seen in the mismanagement of our public lands. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Forest Service control hundreds of millions of acres, mostly in the western United States, and for many years they have allowed these lands to be plundered and even destroyed at the taxpayers' expense. "The federal land bureaucracies have used taxpayer funds to subsidize economic activity that would never have taken place in the absence of subsidies. Perversely . . . American taxpayers have been financing the destruction of environments they increasingly value." ⁸

As with many regulatory agencies, an "Iron Triangle" develops, with a relatively few rich and powerful people who want subsidized use of public resources, some powerful Congressmen beholden to them who get control of the relevant Congressional subcommittees, and the agency that happily does the bidding of the other two groups and is rewarded every year at appropriations time.

And what happens to the resources being managed? Look, for example, at the national grazing lands. The Forest Service and the BLM have allowed them to be devastated, "cow bombed," by massive overgrazing for many years. For this privilege, the ranchers pay less than a fourth of the going market rate to lease similar private land, and the government loses money on the deal every single year. Congress makes sure that the grazing fees are kept low and the agencies kept properly subservient ⁹ -for which the agencies will get their rewards through appropriations and new projects, and individual bureaucrats will get their promotions.

Likewise, the Forest Service loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year in below-cost timber sales. With its system of "idiot forestry" (as the late Senator Herman Talmadge called it), the Forest Service is destroying our national forests by cutting timber too cheap to cover its costs. ¹⁰ The result is a devastated forest, erosion from the cleared land which then pollutes the rivers and destroys them as fisheries and for recreation, and damages water supplies downstream as well. For years, Congress even subsidized, with a specific annual appropriation, the systematic destruction of America's last great rain forest, the Tongass in Alaska.

The system works just fine, as long as no outsider figures out how much the taxpayers are losing and how much damage is being done to the land. But, as has so often been noted, those who benefit from the system have an intense and constant interest in maintaining it, while the individual taxpayers being fleeced have only a very limited motive even to learn what these mostly obscure agencies are doing, let alone to fight to stop the raid on the Federal treasury. The system also distorts markets by giving subsidies to some producers (e.g., western ranchers) but not to others (ranchers in states without federal lands). So, the Iron Triangle system mismanages resources and subsidizes the destruction of nature, which obviously ought to be stopped.

These are just a couple of instances where governmental policies distort markets, add to pollution, and damage natural resources. There are many other cases. Overall, the Economist concluded, "in all sorts of ways American policy rigs market incentives in favour of pollution." ¹¹ Free-market enthusiasts should search out all those policies and work to get them changed.

Another area of great concern today is hazardous waste disposal, and here, too, market-oriented proposals would be much better than the current system of regulation. Modern industry uses large amounts of toxic materials, which have to be safely disposed of somehow. "It is in hazardous waste management, if anywhere in environmental policy, that the infamous 'command and control' approach is to be found." ¹² The result is a burdensome system that is not the most effective, and could only be made effective with an enormous and very expensive enforcement effort. A market-based system would be an attractive alternative.

Rather than fining a generator or transporter for instances of detected improper disposal, why not pay for proper disposal?. . . If the amount of the payment is tuned correctly, the source should have an incentive not to try to conceal its waste . . . but rather to work to collect the reward. Presto! The terribly difficult monitoring problems seem to be solved. Toxic wastes all end up in the right places. 13

And to keep the reward system from being adrain on taxpayers, it could be instituted as a deposit and refund system. ¹⁴

Finally, from the market perspective, we may take a quick look at tax structures. Current taxes raise revenue but often do economic harm because they penalize jobs and profits. Shifting to "green" taxes (e.g., on effluents or on use of certain raw materials) could raise revenue and do some good at the same time, by protecting resources and making polluters pay the costs that they now pass on to others. ¹⁵

Libertarians should be interested in environmental policy not just because market mechanisms can be effective in reducing pollution, but because pollution itself is evidence that the market is not working correctly. Pollution is also evidence that our freedom is being infringed.

Granted, market mechanisms may not work to protect the environment everywhere. "The bits of the planet that have no single owner (the sea, the rain forest, clean air) are the most vulnerable. Only governments have the power to protect them." ¹⁶ Governments, for example, may still have to control fishing and whaling in the open seas to keep commercial operations from completely wiping out all these creatures. ¹⁷

But wherever possible-and that includes the vast majority of our environmental problems-libertarians should be guiding the public debate and proposing ways to use market incentives rather than command and control to solve our problems. This will be even more important in the future, because "the most intractable sources of pollution will increasingly be small companies and individuals, not big firms. It is easier to police a big power station or chemical company than lots of garages, farmers or shoppers. The best hope of getting small polluters to clean up will be to give them the right price signals." ¹⁸

One major objection that business interests always raise against any and all efforts to protect nature or clean up our environment is that they will harm economic growth. Several observations here may put this objection into proper perspective, and lead us into a consideration of the traditionalist position.

In the first place, "not all growth is good. Metastasis is growth too"-even National Review was willing to print that. ¹⁹ Moreover, in order to preserve the ability of our economy to grow in the future, it is critical that we protect the environment now. "The real limits to growth are (a) the capacity of the environment to deal with waste in all its forms, and (b) the threat to resources which play no direct part in world commerce. These 'critical' resources-the ozone layer, the carbon cycle, Amazonia-are treated as free goods when in reality they serve the most basic economic functions: that of enabling people to survive." ²⁰ If we have to give up producing a few more gadgets in order to preserve them, we obviously should do so.

In some ways, cleaning up the environment can even help economic growth. The technology needed to clean up our environment and keep it clean will itself be "one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy well into the twenty-first century." ²¹ The country that is at the forefront of developing this technology will reap huge benefits in jobs and income for its citizens. "America's fast-growing environmental-services industry is already worth $130 billion a year-and its capital is California," which "has the toughest environmental rules in the world." ²²

Finally, a clean environment, while expensive, may be considered the latest in a series of added costs that have successively contributed to our quality of life. Not many years ago, the same arguments were made that reasonable working hours and safe workplaces would be a burden on business and barriers to growth. But now they are universally accepted as proper expenses. So, too, must a reasonably clean environment be accepted as worth the cost, and a good in itself.

American conservatism of the traditionalist perspective is in many ways quite different from the free market one.

Shocked by totalitarianism, total war, and the development of secular, rootless, mass society during the 1930s and 1940s, [these conservatives] urged a return to traditional religion and ethical absolutes and a rejection of the 'relativism' which had allegedly corroded Western values and produced an intolerable vacuum that was filled by demonic ideologies. ²³

From this traditionalist perspective as well, conservatives should be environmentalists.

Conservatives have all too often been willing to go along with business interests when they opposed environmental protection. The free-market position, we have seen, does not justify such passivity. Traditionalists provide an important corrective from a very different perspective.

Many "traditionalist" conservatives are quite critical of unregulated capitalism. They view unregulated capitalism as an integral part of the materialism and hedonism they so dislike in the modern Western world; they spurn the civilization that has grown up around the capitalist order. They believe that unregulated capitalism has placed great burdens on the way of life they think necessary for the development of human freedom along virtuous lines. . . . [Their] primary concern is to emphasize the importance of culture and virtue. ²⁴

Russell Kirk is perhaps foremost among the traditionalists. He adopts Edmund Burke's "concept of society as joined in perpetuity by a moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born-the community of souls. . . . And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption- society . . . is the end for which Providence has prepared man." ²⁵ Likewise, Richard Weaver "was profoundly concerned by the growth of 'mass plutocracy'-the 'greatest danger' America confronted. He distrusted advertising and lamented the popular views that man was a being of merely 'appetitive function' and that material goods . . . could save us." ²⁶ He praised the old South, because it was "the last non-materialist society in the Western World." ²⁷

Kirk decisively rejects the "practical conservatism [which has] degenerated into mere laudation of 'private enterprise,' economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests." ²⁸ He "Indignantly denie[s] . . . that his conservatism could or should be identified with businessmen." ²⁹ Other leading traditionalists concur. Peter Viereck admonishes conservatives to "conserve the humane and ethical values of the West rather than the economic privileges of a fraction of the West." ³⁰ Stephen Tonsor contends that the traditionalist conservatives "are not now, nor will they be, identified with the American business community. They are clearly identified with natural law philosophy and revealed religion." ³¹

From a traditionalist perspective, just as we have inherited our culture and must preserve it for future generations, so have we inherited this earth, and we have to take proper care of it as good stewards. As Margaret Thatcher stated when she announced her conversion to environmentalism, "No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy-with a full repairing lease." ³² The principle of stewardship, and consequently of "sustainable development," should lead conservatives to accept their duty to design our economy so that we produce our goods in a way that does not impair the planet's ability to provide for future generations.

Closely related to the notion of stewardship is one of the cardinal virtues for the traditionalist conservative: piety, which includes a proper veneration for this earth. For Richard Weaver, nature is one of the things we should "regard with the spirit of piety." ³³ One of the reasons he defends the older South is because the "ancient virtue of pietas " dominated its thinking.

There existed veneration for the transcendent and the order of things; there was reverence for nature. . . . Man was the creature, not the Creator, and it was that most ancient vice, hubris, that contended man was self-produced and thus entitled to war on creation and the nature of things. ³⁴

A sense of piety should also lead the conservative to be in the front lines of the battle against the wanton destruction of nature by man, which Weaver thought was nothing less than a "sin." ³⁵ We should condemn, with Russell Kirk, "the modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining . . . [as] evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors." ³⁶

For the traditionalist, the highest political virtue is prudence. Russell Kirk calls prudence "that transcendent conservative virtue . . . which Burke so often commends." ³⁷ William Harbour explains:

Prudence is supposed to be the guide by which the political leader is to mediate general principles by practical considerations in order to deal with the specific considerations of the moment. . . . Prudence is the key word for the Conservative whenever it comes to dealing with specific political problems. 38

Prudence should also lead the conservative to take the vanguard in confronting some of our most daunting ecological challenges.

We are, for example, pumping enormous quantities of "greenhouse" gases into the atmosphere, which may alter the world's climate far more rapidly than nature's own cycles. Of course, we do not now have conclusive proof of what the ultimate effects will be. But "environmental policy . . . often requires that decisions be made on the basis of incomplete knowledge, because of the grievous risks posed by lack of action." ³⁹ Atmospheric scientists say it may take another decade of study before we will have anything close to certain knowledge. But it is virtually impossible to remove those gases from our atmosphere. If we do not change our ways in the meantime, we will simply compound the risks with another decade's generation of greenhouse gases. Prudence would dictate that we should follow Stephen Schneider's advice:

The prospect of climatic change occurring on a global scale ten to fifty times faster than typical natural average rates of change is not one we should relish. The possibility of major environmental surprises increases with the rate at which climate changes. Moreover, if there are things we can do to slow down this rate of change that simultaneously will provide multiple benefits, then it would seem logically compelling to take them seriously. . . . The prudent course to follow would be making high-leverage investments, a common business practice that seeks to earn multiple benefits on the same investment. Using fuel efficiently not only reduces CO ₂ injection, but also cuts acid rain, reduces the health effects of air pollution in cities, reduces the dependence of our energy security on unreliable resources, and improves our long-term competitiveness by cutting the energy cost of manufactured products. ⁴⁰

Likewise with species preservation. Our attack on planet earth is destroying habitat at such an enormous rate that entire species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at an ever accelerating rate. Preserving diversity of species and the necessary habitat is another matter of good stewardship. We do not know what roles most of those organisms play in the ecosystem. We do not know what benefits we might be able to obtain from them. In the often-quoted words of Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, "the catastrophic reduction of species diversity throughout the world is the crime future generations are least likely to forgive us for." Again, sheer prudence would dictate that we should follow the first rule of the mechanic: when you take something apart, save all the pieces.

In many ways, modern technology has put an enormous premium on the traditionalists' virtue of prudence. Robert Solo warns:

Throughout his habitat on earth, man's technologies have been formed on the assumption that the autonomous system that produces the environment needed for life cannot be reached by what we do nor destroyed by us. And here, I think, a crucial change has come. The life system itself is no longer beyond the reach of man's technology nor beyond his power to disarrange, degrade, and destroy. This is a danger no age has ever faced before . ⁴¹

It is a danger that cries out for conservatives to take the lead in advocating prudence.

The traditionalist should be active in efforts to preserve nature, especially in our parks and wilderness areas, for other reasons as well. The traditionalist wants to conserve our heritage, or at least the good parts of it, including those that make America unique. One significant factor in developing the American character was wilderness. As one of its foremost advocates contends, "wilderness is a fundamental constituent of the national culture, an indigenous part of Americanism, bearing qualities that set it apart as a contribution to civilization." ⁴² Now that our wilderness is virtually all gone, conservatives should be involved in preserving what little remains, just as we would want to preserve any major historical building.

The very concept of a national park is an American invention. The traditionalist with a concern for virtue should be at the forefront of efforts to preserve these and other natural areas for recreation. Michael Frome, an advocate for wilderness, calls the contemplation of nature "the most ennobling kind of recreation." ⁴³ Richard Weaver shows how important it is in the modern world:

What humane spirit, after [exposure to modern journalism and advertising] has not found relief in fixing his gaze upon some characteristic bit of nature? It is escape from the sickly metaphysical dream. Out of the surfeit of falsity born of technology and commercialism we rejoice in returning to primary data and to assurance that the world is a world of enduring forms which in themselves are neither brutal nor sentimental. ⁴⁴

And he wrote that before the age of television!

The traditionalist perspective perhaps suggests fewer specific remedies for environmental challenges than the free market one. But both are authentically conservative positions. "Both implicitly accept, to a large degree, the ends of the other" and they fight together "against the collectivist Leviathan state of the twentieth century." ⁴⁵ The traditionalist would perhaps be more willing to advocate actions by the government to preserve the natural areas that have historically belonged to it. Since the market by itself might not be able to preserve a sufficient amount of natural habitat, the libertarian should be willing to accept that. ⁴⁶ If, on the other hand, the libertarian can devise market mechanisms to solve pollution and protect the environment, the traditionalist might well be disposed to endorse them.

As we have seen, there are good philosophical reasons for conservatives of both kinds to be in the forefront of the public debate on environmental policy, devising proper measures to solve all of the different kinds of environmental problems we face.

Moreover, it is dangerous to leave these issues to be dealt with exclusively by the Left. Their propensity for governmental control and bureaucratic regulation, besides infringing ever more on our freedom, is seldom the best or most efficient way to solve environmental problems.

It is lamentable that more conservative intellectual activity has not been directed toward conservation of our environment. If conservatives had been engaged in environmental issues from the very first, we might have avoided a lot of dead ends and been spared much bureaucratic meddling. All of us would now be better off politically, economically, and environmentally.

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Notes

1. Nolan Clark, "The Environmental Protection Agency," in Charles L. Heatherly and Burton Yale Pines, eds., Mandate for Leadership III: Policy Strategy for the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 1989), 217-8.

2. "Costing the Earth, A Survey of the Environment," The Economist (Sept. 2, 1989), 5.

3. Marshall Ingwerson, "On the Environment, Americans' Words Are Louder Than Deeds," The Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 2, 1990), 2.

4. George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Wilmington, DE., 1996, 2007), 73.

5. "Costing the Earth," 7.

6. Robert N. Stavins, "Clean Profits," Policy Review 48 (Spring 1989), 59.

7. For an excellent analysis of many possible market-based environmental policies, see the two volumes of Project 88 (Washington, D.C., 1988, 1991), sponsored by Senators Timothy Wirth and the late John Heinz.

8. John Baden, "Crimes Against Nature," Policy Review 39 (Winter, 1987), 36.

9. Just how subservient these agencies have been can be seen in an instance discovered by the General Accounting Office. "They reported the case of a BLM area manager who caught a rancher cutting trees without authorization in a sensitive riparian zone and ordered him to stop. Word came down through political channels that the BLM manager was to apologize to the rancher-and deliver the wood to his house" Robert Conniff, "Once the Secret Domain of Miners and Ranchers, the BLM Is Going Public," Smithsonian (Sept. 1990), 34.

10. Jeremy Kalmanofsky, "Subsidized Timber Sales Raise Public-Benefit Issue, " The Christian Science Monitor (June 20, 1991), 10-11.

11. "Green My Lips," The Economist (Feb. 17, 1990), 19.

12. Clifford S. Russell, "Economic Incentives in the Management of Hazardous Waste," Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 13 (1988), 262.

13. Ibid., 265-6.

14. Ibid., 267.

15. "Money from Greenery," The Economist (Oct. 21, 1989), 16-17.

16. "Costing the Earth," 4.

17. See Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968), 1243-8, for the classic explanation of why a resource no one owns, a commons, will be rapidly depleted.

18. "Money from Greenery," 16.

19. David Horowitz, "Making the Green One Red," National Review (Mar. 19, 1990), 40. Gross national product figures can be misleading here. For example, the costs of trying to clean up the oil spill in Prince William Sound were added to the gnp, so would mathematically appear to be "growth."

20. "Costing the Earth," 5-6.

21. Joan Berkowitz, quoted by Brad Knickerbocker, "Green Conservatives," The Christian Science Monitor (Feb. 4, 1992) 13.

22. "California Cashes in on Cleaning Up," The Economist (Nov. 16, 1991), 79.

23. Nash, Op. Cit., xv.

24. William R. Harbour, The Foundations of Conservative Thought (Notre Dame, IN, 1982), 109-10.

25. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 7th ed. (Chicago, 1986), 10-11.

26. Nash, Op. Cit., 189.

27. Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay (New Rochelle, NY, 1968), 391.

28. Kirk, Op. Cit., 455.

29. Nash, Op. Cit., 183.

30. Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (New York, 1949), x.

31. Nash, Op. Cit., 123.

32. "Costing the Earth," 3.

33. Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago, 1948), 172.

34. John P. East, The American Conservative Movement: The Philosophical Founders (Chicago, 1986), 64-5.

35. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 171.

36. Kirk, Op. Cit., 44-5.

37. Ibid., 184. 38.Harbour, Op. Cit, 62-3.

38. Strock, "Putting Our Habitat in Order," Policy Review 45 (Summer 1988), 40.

39. Stephen H. Schneider, Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? (San Francisco, 1989), 283-4.

40. Robert Solo, "Problems of Modern Technology," Journal of Economic Issues 8 (1974), 863.

41. Michael Frome, Battle for the Wilderness (New York, 1974), 49.

42. Ibid., 89.

43. Weaver, Op. Cit., 112.

44. Frank S. Meyer, "Freedom, Tradition, Conservatism," Modern Age 4 (1960) 356, 360.

45. Stavins, "Clean Profits," 62.

One of the strangest phenomena in the realm of public discourse of the last two or three decades is the extent to which conservatives have avoided the debate over environmental issues. Air and water pollution and other environmental problems affect everyone, regardless of politics, and many of the problems are acute and critical. But by and large conservatives have ignored these issues, during the very period when the environment was becoming a major political concern throughout America and the world. If, for example, one looks through Modern Age or The Intercollegiate Review one will find virtually nothing on the environment. National Review comments on practically everything in the political and social realms-and yet one finds there only a handful of not very thoughtful articles, almost all of which merely condemn some extremist fringe group or idea. The one major exception is The Heritage Foundation, which has published a few serious articles on the environment in Policy Review and in its Mandate for Leadership books.

Conservative politicians have done no better. As the Federal government and the states were tackling pollution using bureaucratic systems of regulation proposed by the Left, conservatives in Congress and the legislatures have offered nothing more than ineffective opposition. The Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership III summed up the Reagan Administration's record this way:

The Reagan Administration . . . had a rare opportunity to offer an alternative policy model for environmental controls: to place greater emphasis on developing property rights and on other solutions using market incentives. It has failed to do so and has provided absolutely no vision for a tough environmental policy based on market mechanisms. Without this vision and with its ill-chosen appointments at EPA, the Reagan Administration has lost the initiative on environmental issues. . . . It has appeared simply to offer lower budgets, federal inaction, and fewer restrictions on polluting industries. When dealing with highly charged political issues with moral and even religious overtones, a philosophy that seems to consist only of doing less cannot compete effectively with statist activism. ¹

By and large, the Bush Administration and the current Republican congress have given us more of the same.

There is nothing inherently liberal about environmental concerns. In fact, as The Economist observed, "the environment is an issue without any obvious political home." ² A Roper poll that ranked Americans on their environmental awareness and commitment found that the group of the most active environmentalists contained the highest share of conservatives as well as of liberals. ³

Yet, conservatives have largely abdicated the field, so environmental policy has been made with very little serious contribution from the Right. The results have been misguided policies that have not been nearly as effective as some possible alternatives, and in some cases have left our environment in worse shape than before.

It is not my purpose here to advocate any specific policies. The problem for conservatives at this point in time is more fundamental than that: we need, in the first place, to get conservatives thinking about environmental issues at all, and thinking about them in positive and constructive ways. When we do so, I believe one conclusion is inescapable: conservatives should be environmentalists.

There is a fairly well-defined and widely recognized split in the ranks of post-war American conservatism, between "traditionalists" and "libertarians" or "free-market"conservatives. George H. Nash explains "the gap between the two streams of thought":

While libertarians tended to emphasize economic arguments against the State, the new conservatives [traditionalists] were more concerned with what they saw as the ethical and spiritual causes and consequences of Leviathan. On the whole, the new conservatives were little interested in economics. . . . Instead, they were fundamentally social and cultural critics, for whom conservatism meant the restoration of values, not the preservation of material gains. . . . ⁴

Nevertheless, certain bonds did link the two independent wings of the conservative revival. Both abhorred the totalitarian state and collectivism; both tended to support private property, decentralization, and (at least in a general way) a free economic system.

It is not my purpose to advance or mediate between these two perspectives. Rather, I will argue that both philosophical positions should lead conservatives to be at the forefront in the public debate on the environment, not merely in opposition but as activists with serious proposals of their own.

When considering the implications of the libertarian position on environmental issues, I am not concerned with a radical, anti-government philosophy, but rather with those who focus primarily on economics and the virtues of the free-market. For the libertarian, the free market system is believed to be not only the most efficient means of improving mankind's standard of living, but also the only sure foundation and protection for political freedom. From the free-market perspective, there should be great interest in solving many of our environmental problems-and indeed, there is a small group of free-market environmentalists, primarily associated with the Political Economy Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana.

In a free market, producers and consumers negotiate their sales and purchases with no outside interference and without affecting third parties. The market price of a product, which the consumer pays, includes all of the costs of making it and some profit for the producer.

However, the real cost of production in the modern world often includes "externalities," costs that are not reflected in the price of goods and which must be paid by others, rather than by the consumers of the products. All forms of pollution are just such costs. If, for example, a factory does not properly dispose of its waste but saves money by dumping it untreated in a river, its customers get the products more cheaply, but downstream users of the river suffer damages. Perhaps they cannot use the river any more (say, for fishing or swimming). Or perhaps to keep using its water, they have to pay extra to clean it up first. If the factory processed its waste properly, the cost of doing so would be included in the price of its products and would be paid by their consumers, not by innocent third parties downstream.

As mentioned, the libertarian values the free market as a source and protection of freedom-freedom from interference by government and by others. But your freedom is decreased if someone can impose on you some of the cost of his production, or can invade your property with his pollution. Nothing in the theory of the free market justifies a producer and a consumer forcing an outsider to pay part of their costs. And your payment may be much more than just a few dollars; it may be in the form of acute suffering (e.g., illness from breathing polluted air or drinking polluted water). Wherever there is pollution, the libertarian should be devising ways to make sure that the market works properly. The costs of production need to be "internalized" in the market price of goods in some way that also maximizes liberty.

The liberals who have dominated environmental policy attempt to force producers to bear the full costs of production by means of governmental regulation, enforced by ever growing bureaucracies. But a command and control system, besides infringing on freedoms, is seldom the most efficient or effective means of accomplishing the goal.

Command-and-control generally delivers less clean-up per penny than more sophisticated alternatives. . . . Regulations tend to load high costs onto some producers, low costs onto others. . . . Command-and-control often means telling polluters what technology they must use to clean up. But government rarely knows best. As regulations are often tougher for new entrants to an industry than for existing firms, they may discourage new investment-even if it is cleaner than the old. ⁵

We obviously, then, should look for the most efficient and least intrusive means of getting all costs included in market prices. There are several possible mechanisms: effluent taxes, treating pollution as an invasion of property rights (giving owners proper legal recourse for environmental "trespassing"), tradeable pollution permits, as well as many other "market-based environmental policies [to] give businesses and individuals an incentive not just to meet regulatory requirements but to go beyond them." ⁶ However, this is not the place to advocate any specific approach to particular problems, but the concern for those problems needs to be there, on the part of libertarians above all. ⁷

Many other kinds of environmental problems should also be of direct concern to the libertarian. Libertarians are, on principle, opposed to subsidies and governmental regulations in general. But many of the environmental problems we face are the direct result of governmental actions, and would not have developed otherwise. Here we can look at only a few examples.

Government agencies systematically mismanage natural resources, often with devastating effects to the environment. Perhaps the most obvious evidence can be seen in the mismanagement of our public lands. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Forest Service control hundreds of millions of acres, mostly in the western United States, and for many years they have allowed these lands to be plundered and even destroyed at the taxpayers' expense. "The federal land bureaucracies have used taxpayer funds to subsidize economic activity that would never have taken place in the absence of subsidies. Perversely . . . American taxpayers have been financing the destruction of environments they increasingly value." ⁸

As with many regulatory agencies, an "Iron Triangle" develops, with a relatively few rich and powerful people who want subsidized use of public resources, some powerful Congressmen beholden to them who get control of the relevant Congressional subcommittees, and the agency that happily does the bidding of the other two groups and is rewarded every year at appropriations time.

And what happens to the resources being managed? Look, for example, at the national grazing lands. The Forest Service and the BLM have allowed them to be devastated, "cow bombed," by massive overgrazing for many years. For this privilege, the ranchers pay less than a fourth of the going market rate to lease similar private land, and the government loses money on the deal every single year. Congress makes sure that the grazing fees are kept low and the agencies kept properly subservient ⁹ -for which the agencies will get their rewards through appropriations and new projects, and individual bureaucrats will get their promotions.

Likewise, the Forest Service loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year in below-cost timber sales. With its system of "idiot forestry" (as the late Senator Herman Talmadge called it), the Forest Service is destroying our national forests by cutting timber too cheap to cover its costs. ¹⁰ The result is a devastated forest, erosion from the cleared land which then pollutes the rivers and destroys them as fisheries and for recreation, and damages water supplies downstream as well. For years, Congress even subsidized, with a specific annual appropriation, the systematic destruction of America's last great rain forest, the Tongass in Alaska.

The system works just fine, as long as no outsider figures out how much the taxpayers are losing and how much damage is being done to the land. But, as has so often been noted, those who benefit from the system have an intense and constant interest in maintaining it, while the individual taxpayers being fleeced have only a very limited motive even to learn what these mostly obscure agencies are doing, let alone to fight to stop the raid on the Federal treasury. The system also distorts markets by giving subsidies to some producers (e.g., western ranchers) but not to others (ranchers in states without federal lands). So, the Iron Triangle system mismanages resources and subsidizes the destruction of nature, which obviously ought to be stopped.

These are just a couple of instances where governmental policies distort markets, add to pollution, and damage natural resources. There are many other cases. Overall, the Economist concluded, "in all sorts of ways American policy rigs market incentives in favour of pollution." ¹¹ Free-market enthusiasts should search out all those policies and work to get them changed.

Another area of great concern today is hazardous waste disposal, and here, too, market-oriented proposals would be much better than the current system of regulation. Modern industry uses large amounts of toxic materials, which have to be safely disposed of somehow. "It is in hazardous waste management, if anywhere in environmental policy, that the infamous 'command and control' approach is to be found." ¹² The result is a burdensome system that is not the most effective, and could only be made effective with an enormous and very expensive enforcement effort. A market-based system would be an attractive alternative.

Rather than fining a generator or transporter for instances of detected improper disposal, why not pay for proper disposal?. . . If the amount of the payment is tuned correctly, the source should have an incentive not to try to conceal its waste . . . but rather to work to collect the reward. Presto! The terribly difficult monitoring problems seem to be solved. Toxic wastes all end up in the right places. 13

And to keep the reward system from being adrain on taxpayers, it could be instituted as a deposit and refund system. ¹⁴

Finally, from the market perspective, we may take a quick look at tax structures. Current taxes raise revenue but often do economic harm because they penalize jobs and profits. Shifting to "green" taxes (e.g., on effluents or on use of certain raw materials) could raise revenue and do some good at the same time, by protecting resources and making polluters pay the costs that they now pass on to others. ¹⁵

Libertarians should be interested in environmental policy not just because market mechanisms can be effective in reducing pollution, but because pollution itself is evidence that the market is not working correctly. Pollution is also evidence that our freedom is being infringed.

Granted, market mechanisms may not work to protect the environment everywhere. "The bits of the planet that have no single owner (the sea, the rain forest, clean air) are the most vulnerable. Only governments have the power to protect them." ¹⁶ Governments, for example, may still have to control fishing and whaling in the open seas to keep commercial operations from completely wiping out all these creatures. ¹⁷

But wherever possible-and that includes the vast majority of our environmental problems-libertarians should be guiding the public debate and proposing ways to use market incentives rather than command and control to solve our problems. This will be even more important in the future, because "the most intractable sources of pollution will increasingly be small companies and individuals, not big firms. It is easier to police a big power station or chemical company than lots of garages, farmers or shoppers. The best hope of getting small polluters to clean up will be to give them the right price signals." ¹⁸

One major objection that business interests always raise against any and all efforts to protect nature or clean up our environment is that they will harm economic growth. Several observations here may put this objection into proper perspective, and lead us into a consideration of the traditionalist position.

In the first place, "not all growth is good. Metastasis is growth too"-even National Review was willing to print that. ¹⁹ Moreover, in order to preserve the ability of our economy to grow in the future, it is critical that we protect the environment now. "The real limits to growth are (a) the capacity of the environment to deal with waste in all its forms, and (b) the threat to resources which play no direct part in world commerce. These 'critical' resources-the ozone layer, the carbon cycle, Amazonia-are treated as free goods when in reality they serve the most basic economic functions: that of enabling people to survive." ²⁰ If we have to give up producing a few more gadgets in order to preserve them, we obviously should do so.

In some ways, cleaning up the environment can even help economic growth. The technology needed to clean up our environment and keep it clean will itself be "one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy well into the twenty-first century." ²¹ The country that is at the forefront of developing this technology will reap huge benefits in jobs and income for its citizens. "America's fast-growing environmental-services industry is already worth $130 billion a year-and its capital is California," which "has the toughest environmental rules in the world." ²²

Finally, a clean environment, while expensive, may be considered the latest in a series of added costs that have successively contributed to our quality of life. Not many years ago, the same arguments were made that reasonable working hours and safe workplaces would be a burden on business and barriers to growth. But now they are universally accepted as proper expenses. So, too, must a reasonably clean environment be accepted as worth the cost, and a good in itself.

American conservatism of the traditionalist perspective is in many ways quite different from the free market one.

Shocked by totalitarianism, total war, and the development of secular, rootless, mass society during the 1930s and 1940s, [these conservatives] urged a return to traditional religion and ethical absolutes and a rejection of the 'relativism' which had allegedly corroded Western values and produced an intolerable vacuum that was filled by demonic ideologies. ²³

From this traditionalist perspective as well, conservatives should be environmentalists.

Conservatives have all too often been willing to go along with business interests when they opposed environmental protection. The free-market position, we have seen, does not justify such passivity. Traditionalists provide an important corrective from a very different perspective.

Many "traditionalist" conservatives are quite critical of unregulated capitalism. They view unregulated capitalism as an integral part of the materialism and hedonism they so dislike in the modern Western world; they spurn the civilization that has grown up around the capitalist order. They believe that unregulated capitalism has placed great burdens on the way of life they think necessary for the development of human freedom along virtuous lines. . . . [Their] primary concern is to emphasize the importance of culture and virtue. ²⁴

Russell Kirk is perhaps foremost among the traditionalists. He adopts Edmund Burke's "concept of society as joined in perpetuity by a moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born-the community of souls. . . . And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption- society . . . is the end for which Providence has prepared man." ²⁵ Likewise, Richard Weaver "was profoundly concerned by the growth of 'mass plutocracy'-the 'greatest danger' America confronted. He distrusted advertising and lamented the popular views that man was a being of merely 'appetitive function' and that material goods . . . could save us." ²⁶ He praised the old South, because it was "the last non-materialist society in the Western World." ²⁷

Kirk decisively rejects the "practical conservatism [which has] degenerated into mere laudation of 'private enterprise,' economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests." ²⁸ He "Indignantly denie[s] . . . that his conservatism could or should be identified with businessmen." ²⁹ Other leading traditionalists concur. Peter Viereck admonishes conservatives to "conserve the humane and ethical values of the West rather than the economic privileges of a fraction of the West." ³⁰ Stephen Tonsor contends that the traditionalist conservatives "are not now, nor will they be, identified with the American business community. They are clearly identified with natural law philosophy and revealed religion." ³¹

From a traditionalist perspective, just as we have inherited our culture and must preserve it for future generations, so have we inherited this earth, and we have to take proper care of it as good stewards. As Margaret Thatcher stated when she announced her conversion to environmentalism, "No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy-with a full repairing lease." ³² The principle of stewardship, and consequently of "sustainable development," should lead conservatives to accept their duty to design our economy so that we produce our goods in a way that does not impair the planet's ability to provide for future generations.

Closely related to the notion of stewardship is one of the cardinal virtues for the traditionalist conservative: piety, which includes a proper veneration for this earth. For Richard Weaver, nature is one of the things we should "regard with the spirit of piety." ³³ One of the reasons he defends the older South is because the "ancient virtue of pietas " dominated its thinking.

There existed veneration for the transcendent and the order of things; there was reverence for nature. . . . Man was the creature, not the Creator, and it was that most ancient vice, hubris, that contended man was self-produced and thus entitled to war on creation and the nature of things. ³⁴

A sense of piety should also lead the conservative to be in the front lines of the battle against the wanton destruction of nature by man, which Weaver thought was nothing less than a "sin." ³⁵ We should condemn, with Russell Kirk, "the modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining . . . [as] evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors." ³⁶

For the traditionalist, the highest political virtue is prudence. Russell Kirk calls prudence "that transcendent conservative virtue . . . which Burke so often commends." ³⁷ William Harbour explains:

Prudence is supposed to be the guide by which the political leader is to mediate general principles by practical considerations in order to deal with the specific considerations of the moment. . . . Prudence is the key word for the Conservative whenever it comes to dealing with specific political problems. 38

Prudence should also lead the conservative to take the vanguard in confronting some of our most daunting ecological challenges.

We are, for example, pumping enormous quantities of "greenhouse" gases into the atmosphere, which may alter the world's climate far more rapidly than nature's own cycles. Of course, we do not now have conclusive proof of what the ultimate effects will be. But "environmental policy . . . often requires that decisions be made on the basis of incomplete knowledge, because of the grievous risks posed by lack of action." ³⁹ Atmospheric scientists say it may take another decade of study before we will have anything close to certain knowledge. But it is virtually impossible to remove those gases from our atmosphere. If we do not change our ways in the meantime, we will simply compound the risks with another decade's generation of greenhouse gases. Prudence would dictate that we should follow Stephen Schneider's advice:

The prospect of climatic change occurring on a global scale ten to fifty times faster than typical natural average rates of change is not one we should relish. The possibility of major environmental surprises increases with the rate at which climate changes. Moreover, if there are things we can do to slow down this rate of change that simultaneously will provide multiple benefits, then it would seem logically compelling to take them seriously. . . . The prudent course to follow would be making high-leverage investments, a common business practice that seeks to earn multiple benefits on the same investment. Using fuel efficiently not only reduces CO ₂ injection, but also cuts acid rain, reduces the health effects of air pollution in cities, reduces the dependence of our energy security on unreliable resources, and improves our long-term competitiveness by cutting the energy cost of manufactured products. ⁴⁰

Likewise with species preservation. Our attack on planet earth is destroying habitat at such an enormous rate that entire species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at an ever accelerating rate. Preserving diversity of species and the necessary habitat is another matter of good stewardship. We do not know what roles most of those organisms play in the ecosystem. We do not know what benefits we might be able to obtain from them. In the often-quoted words of Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, "the catastrophic reduction of species diversity throughout the world is the crime future generations are least likely to forgive us for." Again, sheer prudence would dictate that we should follow the first rule of the mechanic: when you take something apart, save all the pieces.

In many ways, modern technology has put an enormous premium on the traditionalists' virtue of prudence. Robert Solo warns:

Throughout his habitat on earth, man's technologies have been formed on the assumption that the autonomous system that produces the environment needed for life cannot be reached by what we do nor destroyed by us. And here, I think, a crucial change has come. The life system itself is no longer beyond the reach of man's technology nor beyond his power to disarrange, degrade, and destroy. This is a danger no age has ever faced before . ⁴¹

It is a danger that cries out for conservatives to take the lead in advocating prudence.

The traditionalist should be active in efforts to preserve nature, especially in our parks and wilderness areas, for other reasons as well. The traditionalist wants to conserve our heritage, or at least the good parts of it, including those that make America unique. One significant factor in developing the American character was wilderness. As one of its foremost advocates contends, "wilderness is a fundamental constituent of the national culture, an indigenous part of Americanism, bearing qualities that set it apart as a contribution to civilization." ⁴² Now that our wilderness is virtually all gone, conservatives should be involved in preserving what little remains, just as we would want to preserve any major historical building.

The very concept of a national park is an American invention. The traditionalist with a concern for virtue should be at the forefront of efforts to preserve these and other natural areas for recreation. Michael Frome, an advocate for wilderness, calls the contemplation of nature "the most ennobling kind of recreation." ⁴³ Richard Weaver shows how important it is in the modern world:

What humane spirit, after [exposure to modern journalism and advertising] has not found relief in fixing his gaze upon some characteristic bit of nature? It is escape from the sickly metaphysical dream. Out of the surfeit of falsity born of technology and commercialism we rejoice in returning to primary data and to assurance that the world is a world of enduring forms which in themselves are neither brutal nor sentimental. ⁴⁴

And he wrote that before the age of television!

The traditionalist perspective perhaps suggests fewer specific remedies for environmental challenges than the free market one. But both are authentically conservative positions. "Both implicitly accept, to a large degree, the ends of the other" and they fight together "against the collectivist Leviathan state of the twentieth century." ⁴⁵ The traditionalist would perhaps be more willing to advocate actions by the government to preserve the natural areas that have historically belonged to it. Since the market by itself might not be able to preserve a sufficient amount of natural habitat, the libertarian should be willing to accept that. ⁴⁶ If, on the other hand, the libertarian can devise market mechanisms to solve pollution and protect the environment, the traditionalist might well be disposed to endorse them.

As we have seen, there are good philosophical reasons for conservatives of both kinds to be in the forefront of the public debate on environmental policy, devising proper measures to solve all of the different kinds of environmental problems we face.

Moreover, it is dangerous to leave these issues to be dealt with exclusively by the Left. Their propensity for governmental control and bureaucratic regulation, besides infringing ever more on our freedom, is seldom the best or most efficient way to solve environmental problems.

It is lamentable that more conservative intellectual activity has not been directed toward conservation of our environment. If conservatives had been engaged in environmental issues from the very first, we might have avoided a lot of dead ends and been spared much bureaucratic meddling. All of us would now be better off politically, economically, and environmentally.

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Notes

1. Nolan Clark, "The Environmental Protection Agency," in Charles L. Heatherly and Burton Yale Pines, eds., Mandate for Leadership III: Policy Strategy for the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 1989), 217-8.

2. "Costing the Earth, A Survey of the Environment," The Economist (Sept. 2, 1989), 5.

3. Marshall Ingwerson, "On the Environment, Americans' Words Are Louder Than Deeds," The Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 2, 1990), 2.

4. George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Wilmington, DE., 1996, 2007), 73.

5. "Costing the Earth," 7.

6. Robert N. Stavins, "Clean Profits," Policy Review 48 (Spring 1989), 59.

7. For an excellent analysis of many possible market-based environmental policies, see the two volumes of Project 88 (Washington, D.C., 1988, 1991), sponsored by Senators Timothy Wirth and the late John Heinz.

8. John Baden, "Crimes Against Nature," Policy Review 39 (Winter, 1987), 36.

9. Just how subservient these agencies have been can be seen in an instance discovered by the General Accounting Office. "They reported the case of a BLM area manager who caught a rancher cutting trees without authorization in a sensitive riparian zone and ordered him to stop. Word came down through political channels that the BLM manager was to apologize to the rancher-and deliver the wood to his house" Robert Conniff, "Once the Secret Domain of Miners and Ranchers, the BLM Is Going Public," Smithsonian (Sept. 1990), 34.

10. Jeremy Kalmanofsky, "Subsidized Timber Sales Raise Public-Benefit Issue, " The Christian Science Monitor (June 20, 1991), 10-11.

11. "Green My Lips," The Economist (Feb. 17, 1990), 19.

12. Clifford S. Russell, "Economic Incentives in the Management of Hazardous Waste," Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 13 (1988), 262.

13. Ibid., 265-6.

14. Ibid., 267.

15. "Money from Greenery," The Economist (Oct. 21, 1989), 16-17.

16. "Costing the Earth," 4.

17. See Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968), 1243-8, for the classic explanation of why a resource no one owns, a commons, will be rapidly depleted.

18. "Money from Greenery," 16.

19. David Horowitz, "Making the Green One Red," National Review (Mar. 19, 1990), 40. Gross national product figures can be misleading here. For example, the costs of trying to clean up the oil spill in Prince William Sound were added to the gnp, so would mathematically appear to be "growth."

20. "Costing the Earth," 5-6.

21. Joan Berkowitz, quoted by Brad Knickerbocker, "Green Conservatives," The Christian Science Monitor (Feb. 4, 1992) 13.

22. "California Cashes in on Cleaning Up," The Economist (Nov. 16, 1991), 79.

23. Nash, Op. Cit., xv.

24. William R. Harbour, The Foundations of Conservative Thought (Notre Dame, IN, 1982), 109-10.

25. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 7th ed. (Chicago, 1986), 10-11.

26. Nash, Op. Cit., 189.

27. Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay (New Rochelle, NY, 1968), 391.

28. Kirk, Op. Cit., 455.

29. Nash, Op. Cit., 183.

30. Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (New York, 1949), x.

31. Nash, Op. Cit., 123.

32. "Costing the Earth," 3.

33. Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago, 1948), 172.

34. John P. East, The American Conservative Movement: The Philosophical Founders (Chicago, 1986), 64-5.

35. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 171.

36. Kirk, Op. Cit., 44-5.

37. Ibid., 184. 38.Harbour, Op. Cit, 62-3.

38. Strock, "Putting Our Habitat in Order," Policy Review 45 (Summer 1988), 40.

39. Stephen H. Schneider, Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? (San Francisco, 1989), 283-4.

40. Robert Solo, "Problems of Modern Technology," Journal of Economic Issues 8 (1974), 863.

41. Michael Frome, Battle for the Wilderness (New York, 1974), 49.

42. Ibid., 89.

43. Weaver, Op. Cit., 112.

44. Frank S. Meyer, "Freedom, Tradition, Conservatism," Modern Age 4 (1960) 356, 360.

45. Stavins, "Clean Profits," 62.

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The Conservative Case for the Environment

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One of the strangest phenomena in the realm of public discourse of the last two or three decades is the extent to which conservatives have avoided the debate over environmental issues. Air and water pollution and other environmental problems affect everyone, regardless of politics, and many of the problems are acute and critical.

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A conservative approach to environmental principles

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A conservative approach to environmental principles

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The lyrics of the classic hymn "America the Beautiful" - written by the poet Katharine Lee Bates during an 1893 trip to Pike's Peak - testify to the natural splendor of the United States. But it is sometimes underappreciated that among those who most want to preserve those "amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain majesties" are many who also believe strongly in the country's other lasting inheritance - a free market.

Reducing our impact on the environment is a fundamentally conservative principle. Rather than seeing people as separate from nature, or inherently harmful to the environment, conservatives understand that stewardship of the land honors nature as both bounty and beauty. Conservatives believe you should have the freedom to choose how to live, but take responsibility to pay for the impact you cause. Just as conservatives understand that punishing criminals for their crimes is superior to blanket gun-control regulation, we believe those who put pollution in a stream should pay for the loss of clean water and opportunities to fish.

Alas, that core conservative principle has not always translated into a consistent environmental agenda. Ever since the early 1970s, environmentalism has been synonymous with left-wing, big-government policies. From the expanding authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to numerous state and local regulations, the voices of those who revere nature, but are skeptical of expanding regulation, have been lost. This has created problems both for conservatives and for the environment.

In the public imagination, concern for the environment has become virtually synonymous with calls for increased government regulation. As a consequence, any time an environmental problem arises, the public immediately looks for more regulation or more taxes. Conservatives themselves appear to have internalized this connection, leaving right-of-center legislators with few policy options to address environmental concerns in ways that do not expand the size and scope of government.

Without an alternative approach to environmental policy, conservatives can feel boxed in, forced to claim environmental problems either are a "hoax" or not as serious as environmentalists claim. This is, indeed, sometimes the case. But where there is real pollution or other problems of environmental degradation, the standard conservative line of defense is untenable. Lacking effective policy alternatives, each fight over environmental issues that conservatives lose necessarily means more government expansion. For those who believe in the American ideals of freedom and free enterprise, the path ahead is one of slow but inevitable retreat.

What relatively few realize is that the political left's reflexive preference for more regulation often has been demonstrated to be bad for the environment. Witness the poor record of the Endangered Species Act. Only 1 percent of listed species have recovered and, in some cases, regulations actually have actually encouraged habitat destruction. As noted by Michael J. Bean - former head of the Environmental Defense Fund's wildlife program and current principal deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and National Parks at the U.S. Interior Department - in a 1994 address: "The red-cockaded woodpecker is closer to extinction today than it was a quarter century ago when the protection began."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement - a pledge initiated by the City of Seattle in 2005 to reduce emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 - stands as another dramatic failure. Few, if any, of the more than 1,000 cities that ultimately signed the document ever even attempted to meet its carbon-reduction targets.

Conservatives and others who believe in the free market need an alternative to the failed 1970s environmental approach of ever-expanding government bureaucracy. Rather than simply refusing to acknowledge environmental risk, conservatives need approaches that honor our belief in personal freedom while demanding actual environmental results.

From cooperative approaches to market forces, there are several options that offer effective alternatives to the standard big-government approach. Outlined here is a priority list of approaches to environmental policy, beginning with cooperative and property-rights-based approaches and turning to regulation only when it is the only effective and reasonable option.

It is time for conservatives, many of whom surround themselves every day with the natural beauty described in "America the Beautiful," to put environmental policy back on track. With these principles, we can, as the seldom-sung second verse says, make environmental policy: "A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness."

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A conservative approach to environmental principles - R Street

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The lyrics of the classic hymn "America the Beautiful" - written by the poet Katharine Lee Bates during an 1893 trip to Pike's Peak - testify to the natural splendor of the United States. But it is sometimes underappreciated that among those who most want to preserve those "amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain ...

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GreenPeace

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"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."
- Zeno ~ 450 BC (from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers)

Awareness of our delicate relationship with our habitat likely arose among early hunter-gatherers when they saw how fire and hunting tools impacted their environment. Anthropologists have found evidence of human-induced animal and plant extinctions from 50,000 BCE, when only about 200,000 Homo sapiens roamed the Earth. We can only speculate about how these early humans reacted, but migrating to new habitats appears to be a common response.

Ecological awareness first appears in the human record at least 5,000 years ago. Vedic sages praised the wild forests in their hymns, Taoists urged that human life should reflect nature's patterns and the Buddha taught compassion for all sentient beings.

In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, we see apprehension about forest destruction and drying marshes. When Gilgamesh cuts down sacred trees, the deities curse Sumer with drought, and Ishtar (mother of the Earth goddess) sends the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh.

In ancient Greek mythology, when the hunter Orion vows to kill all the animals, Gaia objects and creates a great scorpion to kill Orion. When the scorpion fails, Artemis, goddess of the forests and mistress of animals, shoots Orion with an arrow.

In North America, Pawnee Eagle Chief, Letakots-Lesa, told anthropologist Natalie Curtis that "Tirawa, the one Above, did not speak directly to humans... he showed himself through the beasts, and from them and from the stars, the sun, and the moon should humans learn."

Some of the earliest human stories contain lessons about the sacredness of wilderness, the importance of restraining our power, and our obligation to care for the natural world.

Early environmental response

Five thousand years ago, the Indus civilisation of Mohenjo Darro (an ancient city in modern-day Pakistan), were already recognising the effects of pollution on human health and practiced waste management and sanitation. In Greece, as deforestation led to soil erosion, the philosopher Plato lamented, "All the richer and softer parts have fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land remains." Communities in China, India, and Peru understood the impact of soil erosion and prevented it by creating terraces, crop rotation, and nutrient recycling.

The Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen began to observe environmental health problems such as acid contamination in copper miners. Hippocrates' book, De aëre, aquis et locis ( Air, Waters, and Places), is the earliest surviving European work on human ecology.

Advancing agriculture boosted human populations but also caused soil erosion and attracted insect infestations that led to severe famines between 200 and 1200 CE.

In 1306, the English king Edward I limited coal burning in London due to smog. In the 17th century, the naturalist and gardener John Evelyn wrote that London resembled "the suburbs of Hell." These events inspired the first 'renewable' energy boom in Europe, as governments started to subsidise water and wind power.

In the 16th century, the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted scenes of raw sewage and other pollution emptying into rivers, and Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius wrote The Free Sea, claiming that pollution and war violate natural law.

Environmental rights

Perhaps the first real environmental activists were the Bishnoi Hindus of Khejarli, who were slaughtered by the Maharaja of Jodhpur in 1720 for attempting to protect the forest that he felled to build himself a palace.

The 18th century witnessed the dawn of modern environmental rights. After a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin petitioned to manage waste and to remove tanneries for clean air as a public "right" (albeit, on land stolen from Indigenous nations). Later, American artist George Catlin proposed that Indigenous land be protected as a "natural right".

At the same time in Britain, Jeremy Benthu, wrote An Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation which argued for animal rights. Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay warning that human overpopulation would lead to ecological destruction. Knowledge of global warming began 200 years ago, when Jean Baptiste Fourier calculated that the Earth's atmosphere trapped heat like a greenhouse.

Then, in 1835, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote , encouraging us to appreciate the natural world for its own sake and proposing a limit on human expansion into the wilderness. American Botanist William Bartram and ornithologist James Audubon dedicated themselves to the conservation of wildlife. Henry David Thoreau wrote his seminal ecological treatise, , which has since inspired generations of environmentalists.

A few decades later, George Perkins Marsh wrote Man and Nature, denouncing humanity's indiscriminate "warfare" upon wilderness, warning of climate change, and insisting that "The world cannot afford to wait" - a plea we still hear today.

At the end of the 19th century, in Jena, Germany, zoologist Ernst Haeckel wrote Generelle Morphologie der Organismen in which he discussed the relationships among species and coined the word 'ökologie' (from the Greek oikos, meaning home), the science we now know as ecology.

In 1892, John Muir founded the Sierra Club in the US to protect the country's wilderness. Seventy years later, a chapter of the Sierra Club in western Canada broke away to become more active. This was the beginning of Greenpeace.

Environmental action

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology," wrote Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, "but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics ... a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

In the early 20th century, the chemist Alice Hamilton led a campaign against lead poisoning from leaded gasoline, accusing General Motors of willful murder. The corporation attacked Hamilton, and it took governments 50 years to ban leaded gasoline. Meanwhile, industrial smog choked major world cities. In 1952, 4,000 people died in London's infamous killer fog, and four years later the British Parliament passed the first Clean Air Act.

Ecology grew into a full-fledged, global movement with the development of nuclear weapons. Albert Einstein, who felt morally troubled by his contribution to the nuclear bomb, drafted an anti-nuclear manifesto in 1955 with British philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed by ten Nobel Prize winners. The letter inspired the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in the UK - a model for modern, non-violent civil disobedience. In 1958, the Quaker Committee for Non-Violent Action launched two boats - the Golden Rule and Phoenix - into US nuclear test sites, a direct inspiration for Greenpeace a decade later.

Rachel Carson brought the environmental movement into focus with the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, describing the impact of chemical pesticides on biodiversity. "For the first time in the history of the world," she wrote, "every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals." Shortly before her death she expressed the emerging ecological ethic in a magazine essay: "It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the Earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility."

Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss cited Silent Spring as a key influence for his concept of 'Deep Ecology' - ecological awareness that goes beyond the logic of biological systems to a deep, personal experience of the self as an integrated part of nature.

In The Subversive Science, Paul Shepard described ecology as a "primordial axiom," revealed in ancient cultures, which should guide all human social constructions. Ecology was "subversive" to Shepard because it supplanted human exceptionalism with interdependence.

In India, villagers in Gopeshwar, Uttarakhand, inspired by Gandhi and the 18th century Bishnoi Hindus, defended the forest against commercial logging by encircling and embracing trees. Their movement spread across northern India, known as Chipko ("to embrace") - the original tree-huggers.

In 1968, the American writer Cliff Humphrey founded Ecology Action. One media stunt involved Humphrey gathering 60 people in Berkeley, California, to smash his 1958 Dodge Rambler into the street, declaring, "these things pollute the earth." Prophetically, Humphrey told Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter, "This thing has just begun."

A year later, inspired by the writings of Carson, Shepard, and Naess, and by the actions of Chipko and Ecology Action, a group of Canadian and American activists set out to merge peace with ecology, and Greenpeace was born.
Co-founder Ben Metcalfe commissioned 12 billboard signs around Vancouver that read:
Ecology
Look it up.

You're involved.

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1969, most people did have to look it up. Ecology was still not a household word, although it soon would be.

In 1977, after two anti-nuclear bomb campaigns and confrontations with Soviet whalers and Norwegian sealers, Greenpeace purchased a retired trawler in London and renamed it the Rainbow Warrior, after a indigenous legend from Canada. The Cree story (recounted in Warriors of the Rainbow, by William Willoya and Vinson Brown) tells of a time when the land, rivers, and air are poisoned, and a group of people from all nations of the world band together to save the Earth.

Nearly a half-century after the foundation of Greenpeace, the global ecology movement has reached every corner of the world, with thousands of groups springing up to defend the environment. Meanwhile, the challenges facing us grow ever more daunting. The next half-century will test whether or not humanity can respond to the challenge.
Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International. Resources and Links:
Environmental History Timeline: Radford University

Ramachandra Guha: Environmentalism: A Global History, 2000

The European Society for Environmental History: ESEH.org

Environmental History, Oxford Journals

Donald Worster: Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 1977

J. D. Hughes: Ecology in Ancient Civilizations (U. New Mexico Press, 1975): Oxford Academic

Society for Environmental Journalists: sej.org

Letakots-Lesa (Eagle Chief) and Natalie Curtis on Pawnee songs: Entersection

William Willoya and Vinson Brown: Warriors of the Rainbow

Alice Hamilton, MD: Exploring The Dangerous Trades, 1943

Aldo Leopold: Sand County Almanac, 1949

Rachel Carson: Silent Spring, 1962

Barry Commoner: The Closing Circle, 1971

Paul Shepard: The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, 1973

Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature, 1978

Roderick Nash: The Rights of Nature, 1989

Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: A good survey of ecology writers, Arne Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Gary Snyder, Paul Shepard, and others

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A Brief History of Environmentalism - Greenpeace International

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Anthropologists have found evidence of human-induced animal and plant extinctions from 50,000 BCE, when only about 200,000 Homo sapiens roamed the Earth. We can only speculate about how these early humans reacted, but migrating to new habitats appears to be a common response.

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Environmental policy is partisan. It wasn’t always.

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Environmental policy is partisan. It wasn’t always.

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Environmental policy is partisan. It wasn't always.

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When the Clean Air Act first became law in 1970, the Senate passed it without a single nay vote. Only one representative had voted against the bill.

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Nixon and 1970's Environmental program was not as partisan as it is now...at least, they got stuff done.

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Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

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President Nixon signing the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) - National Archives

The way that climate change has been approached in President Trump's administration might suggest that views on both climate change and environmental issues more broadly have always been staunchly divided along party lines. Democrats supporting regulations and greenhouse gas mitigation on one side, Republicans supporting market approaches and questioning the legitimacy of climate change on the other. But despite Trump's words and actions, this partisan split is an oversimplification.

Historically, environmentalism has not been such a polarized issue. In his 1970 state of the union address, President Nixon said: "Shall we make peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our land, to our air, and to our water? It has become a common cause of all people of this country, clean air, open spaces. These should once again be the birthright of every American."[1] The Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association were both established under Nixon's presidency.[2] It's been argued that Nixon's support for environmental initiatives was a political strategy, not an expression of his sincere concern for the environment;[3] regardless, these American environmental milestones all occurred under his administration.

We can also see this bipartisan approach to environmental challenges in Congress. The Clean Air Act of 1970 had a Senate vote of 73-0.[4] Trends in the League of Conservation Voters' environmental voting scores also illustrate a less partisan past. (The League of Conservation Voters determines scores by dividing the number of pro-environmental votes by the total number of all potential votes on environmental legislation. Read more about their methodology here.) On a scale of 1-100, Senate and House Republicans' scores hovered around the late 20s - early 30s in 1970, compared to scores between 50 and 60 for Senate and House Democrats. By 2012, the party scores had diverged drastically: Congressional Republicans between 0 and 20, and Congressional Democrats between 85 and 95.[5] Though Democrats' scores have always been higher, the parties started to pull farther apart in the early 1990s.[6]

The shift from 1970 to now has been attributed to a number of different factors: the rise of the global environmental movement,[7] deregulation and smaller federal government under President Reagan,[8] and even income inequality.[9] Whatever the reason, we see the split manifest in views of American voters today. 29% of Republican voters are worried about global warming in 2017, compared to 41% in 2008. 88% of Democrats are worried about global warming in 2017, up 11 percentage points since 2008.[10] Fewer Republican voters believe that global warming is even happening today than in 2008.[11]

Still, even this sharp divide can be questioned. When asked about taking action on global warming rather than views on global warming, the divide is not so stark. The difference here is seen more in which people and institutions Republicans believe are responsible for addressing global warming. 56% of registered Republicans want corporations and industry to do more on climate change, and nearly half think citizens should do more.[12] Only 24% think it should be a priority for Congress or the president. But if we break that down further, some specific policy initiatives have much broader backing. Almost half of Republican voters support regulating CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and 57% support regulating CO2 as a pollutant.[13] Nearly three-quarters are in favor of funding renewable energy research and tax rebates for electric vehicles.[14]

It's undeniable that there is a party-lines split on environmental issues, and across the board, YPCCC has found higher levels of Democrat support for climate change policy. But the blanket assumption that Republicans don't care about environmentalism is misguided. Specific, targeted initiatives and policies garner more support than general statements about global warming. Despite years of partisan environmental messaging, registered voters, both Republicans and Democrats, share common ground in supporting some proposed pollution and emissions reductions strategies.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/can-environmentalism-become-a-bipartisan-movement-again/

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/republicans-environment-hate-polarization/

[3] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/can-environmentalism-become-a-bipartisan-movement-again/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?_r=0

[5] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/republicans-environment-hate-polarization/

[6] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/republicans-environment-hate-polarization/

[7] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/republicans-environment-hate-polarization/

[8] https://newrepublic.com/article/128835/politicized-environment

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?_r=0

[10] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Politics-and-Global-Warming-May-2017-DATA-TABLES-AND-SAMPLE-DEMOS.pdf

[11] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Politics-and-Global-Warming-May-2017-DATA-TABLES-AND-SAMPLE-DEMOS.pdf

[12] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-may-2017/6/

[13] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-may-2017/7/

[14] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-may-2017/7/

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Environmentalism's Less-Partisan Past - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

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President Nixon signing the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) - National Archives The way that climate change has been approached in President Trump's administration might suggest that views on both climate change and environmental issues more broadly have always been ...