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Conservatism and Conservation

by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
Presentation given to graduate environmental studies class, The Evergreen State College
Olympia, Washington, February 20, 2008

Republicans for Environmental Protection. The first reaction we often get is, "Republicans for environmental protection" -- that sounds like an oxymoron.

We were founded in 1995 by three women who attended an endangered species conference outside of DC and were greeted with titters when they identified themselves as Republicans.

Our goal is to bring forward the day when having Republicans at a conservation conference does not result in titters or even a second thought. REP is a reform movement that has become the leading Republican voice on the great environmental issues of our time. Our slogan: “Conservation Is Conservative” sums up in a nutshell who we are and what we’re trying to achieve.

We don't believe conservation should be a partisan issue. There are no Republican forests or Democratic rivers. As Theodore Roosevelt said, conservation is a moral issue, which gets at the heart of conservation as an element of the conservative ethic.

Conservation complements traditional conservative values, such as thrift, efficiency, paying your own way, discipline, self-restraint, putting society’s interests ahead of your own, and looking after the interests of future generations. More on that later.

Just to get things started, let’s start with an appetizer of history – conservation achievements that have a Republican pedigree.

Let me call out two of these. Two years ago, we celebrated the centennial of the Antiquities Act. Essentially, the Antiquities Act is an offspring of conservative thinking – that a great nation must protect its heritage. It empowers the president to set aside public lands that include objects of historic or scientific interest within national monuments.

The law was passed to stop the wanton looting of archaeological treasures. Thanks to Theodore Roosevelt’s generous interpretation, its remit expanded to include natural treasures. Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to establish 18 national monuments, including what is now Olympic National Park.

Presidents from both parties have used this law. Most recently, George W. Bush used the Antiquities Act in 2006 to set aside what is now the world’s second largest marine reserve. It’s now called the Papahnaumokukea Marine National Monument, which covers 88 million acres of ocean, reef, and islands.

The second I want to call out is John Saylor. He was a conservative Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who served in the House from 1949 until his death in 1973. He fought for eight years to get the Wilderness Act passed, led the fight against damming the Grand Canyon, and was at the forefront of numerous other conservation causes.

Saylor’s support for wilderness was based on conservative principles. A veteran of World War II and a man of deep patriotism, he argued that the American wilderness symbolized the nation’s greatness, in the same way that cathedrals or temples represented the greatness of the much older nations of Europe or Asia.

Our identity was forged in wilderness, Saylor believed, and preserving wilderness is necessary for inspiring future generations.

Saylor was a man of deep piety. He said: “To permit the despoilment of our natural resources would be to desecrate a divine inheritance.”

For John Saylor, a land set aside for preservation was sacrosanct. He would tolerate no dams, no oil wells, nothing that would impose man's fleeting agendas on the timeless beauty and our stewardship trust. That went for Dinosaur National Monument, the Grand Canyon, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

John Saylor spoke of wilderness from conservative principles – the need for humility, to see our place in a much larger world that is indifferent to our daily dramas, for acknowledging our faults, fallibilities and limitations, and for avoiding hubris and for leaving ourselves large margins.

So tonight, I’m going to share some genealogy with you.

There are two branches in the conservation family -- just like all of us. One branch originates from roots that are liberal/progressive, however you wish to describe it.

Republicans for Environmental Protection is interested in the other branch, which originates from the conservative tradition. And by conservative tradition, I don’t mean the radicalism of poseurs like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. I mean conservatism as an intellectual tradition developed over the past two centuries.

Much of this is summarized in one of your required texts, The Greening of Conservative America, by John Bliese. Among the sources Bliese drew from were Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk.

Edmund Burke was an 18th century British statesman and is widely regarded as the father of modern conservatism. He described society as an intergenerational contract, covering past, present and future. We, of the present, have a duty to pass on our common societal inheritance, intact, to future generations. To squander that inheritance is a violation of the contract.

As Burke said: “They (meaning the present generation) should not think it among their rights ... to commit waste upon the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation.”

Burke believed in slow change. Left to her own devices, Mother Nature does things conservatively – keeping things in balance, requiring her charges to earn their own keep, looking out for the long term, and above all, not wasting anything.

That’s why wilderness conservation and conservatism go well together. Now, I know that these days, such a notion strikes people as odd. Many of today’s Republican leaders are indifferent and, in many cases, even hostile to the idea of protecting a few places where nature can be left to its own devices, without tinkering or tampering in pursuit of narrow or short-term human agendas.

Another was Russell Kirk, who once wrote: “"To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped."

To put it more succinctly, in a 1970 op-ed Kirk wrote: “Nothing is more conservative than conservation.”

Lately, some of our Republican leaders have gotten crosswise on conservation. Whether it's the way they say it, or what they truly believe, sometimes it seems as if they don't place any value in conservation at all.

Our leaders have forgotten their history. Indeed, the Republican Party has a proud conservation history. Protecting nature is consistent, as Bliese wrote, with traditional conservative ideas about what makes for a well-ordered healthy society.

One that he talked about was the appreciation and importance of beauty, which is related to Bliese's theme that traditional conservatism is not materialistic, that in fact a single-minded pursuit of material things is a threat to our culture.

The 19th century conservation movement was driven by reverence for beauty. You see it in the writings of the Transcendentalists, the poetry and paintings of that time.

Let's go back to 1864, when Abraham Lincoln protected Yosemite Valley, setting a precedent that led to our national parks.

Shortly afterward, a landscape architect named Frederick Law Olmsted – the man who designed New York's Central Park and laid out Seattle’s green spaces – studied Yosemite. His report highlighted the importance of natural beauty to our physical, mental and emotional health. Few other activities are enjoyed in and of themselves, for their own sake, in the present moment.

It is a democratic government's duty, he said, to hold beautiful lands in trust so that all may enjoy its benefits, not just a privileged few. Olmsted correctly predicted that in a century's time, millions would visit Yosemite to enjoy its beauty.

The preservation of Yosemite Valley was the precedent that set the precedent for establishing other national parks.

Theodore Roosevelt is often thought of as a utilitarian conservationist, one who believed in protecting natural resources for their economic value. That is true, but he also had a streak of romantic preservationism that saw natural beauty as good for its own sake. A century ago, Roosevelt took a long train tour of the West, visiting Yellowstone, Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon, the redwood country, Yosemite, and the Pacific Northwest.

At the edge of the Grand Canyon, he implored his fellow citizens to "leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work upon it and man can only mar it."

Roosevelt also was concerned about keeping the country strong and prosperous. He called natural resources "the final basis of national power and perpetuity."

Roosevelt's conservation was based on a great insight. Conservation is the essence of democracy because it leaves an endowment that provides choices for future citizens.

He wrote in 1916: "Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."

Roosevelt called conservation of natural resources the "final basis of power and perpetuity." That was his greatest insight -- one that today we call "natural capitalism."

TR spoke of the “strenuous life.” John Saylor picked up the thread in arguing for wilderness, so that Americans would not “soften into an easygoing people deteriorating in luxury and ripening for the hardy conquerors of another century.”

This was the conservatism that helped produce the Wilderness Act of 1964 -- one of the greatest conservation achievements of our nation’s history. Getting that law passed took eight years of hard debate and even harder compromises.

Here is a bit more history. Not many people think about Herbert Hoover’s role in conservation, or anything else these days, as his presidency was tarred by the Great Depression. Still, it’s worth noting that his interest in conservation stemmed from his moral sense, and he sought an increase in outdoor recreation as an antidote to excessive materialism.

Ah, the curious case of Richard Nixon. He didn’t think much about the environment, but what he did know was that environmental protection had broad, cross-partisan appeal. Hence, his record of establishing EPA and pushing Congress to pass the Clean Air Act and other laws that make up the framework of today’s national environmental policy.

Ronald Reagan should be remembered for supporting the Montreal Protocol and recommending its ratification. He dismissed critics within his administration and paid heed to his science advisers.

So, what went wrong? Why has the environment become such a partisan issue?

There are many reasons. Both parties became much more ideological and political disagreements have become much more personal. The days have passed when liberal Hubert Humphrey and conservative Barry Goldwater cold argue vigorously on the Senate floor but after the close of business go off and enjoy dinner as friends.

As recently as the 1980s, Ronald Reagan invited members of Congress from both parties over to the White House for cocktails and story telling, only hours after battling over the great issues of the day.

Today, the penalty for perceived apostasy from party dogmas is more severe. That holds true in both parties, but for the Republicans here is a telling quote from a recent column by David Brooks, a conservative commentator who writes for the NY Times:

…A great tightening occurred. Conservative institutions and interest groups proliferated in Washington. The definition of who was a true conservative narrowed. It became necessary to pass certain purity tests — on immigration, abortion, taxes and Terri Schiavo.

An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax. If The New York Times editorial page worried about waterboarding, then the code of conservative correctness required one to think it O.K.

Apostates and deviationists were expelled or found wanting, and the boundaries of acceptable thought narrowed. Moderate Republicans were expelled for squishiness. Millions of coastal suburbanites left the party in disgust.

Environmental battles have always been difficult, but they have become much more so in recent years.

The result is mutual suspicion.

At its most extreme, some liberal/progressives see all Republicans as pillagers, uninterested in protecting nature.

At the other end, some conservatives view all environmentalists as against freedom - determined to destroy business enterprise and send us all back to the caves.

Old paradigms about building a transitory sort of wealth through extraction clash – see Don Young and bridges to nowhere -- with new paradigms about building lasting communities through land protection.

We may have more in common with adversaries than we think, but our differing words obscure those areas of agreement. You say “protect biodiversity,” your neighbor says “protect my old hunting grounds.”

This is the status quo that we’re up against. But there is reason for hope. There are Republicans who get it right on the environment.

The party is about to nominate a presidential candidate whom many of the dogmatic ideologues loathe – because he’s willing to work across the aisle to solve problems, including global climate change.

Despite what you may hear, there are strong Republican constituencies for environmental protection. Sportsmen who want the kind of primitive outdoors experience their parents and grandparents enjoyed, without all the gadgets and gizmos. Suburban professionals who worry about passing on a decent quality of life to their kids. Rural communities that want to protect the land they love from the grasping consumption of a globalized economy. Evangelicals who talk about caring for creation.

Energy is the topic of the hour. Here's why: Energy is the story of our lives. It touches on how we live, how we eat, how we move around, and how we relate to other countries.

If we get energy policy wrong, we’ll get a lot of things wrong. We will endanger our security, put our economy at risk, and ultimately, undermine the natural life support systems upon which we depend.

On the other hand, if we get energy policy, right, we’ll get a lot of things right. We will be safer, we will have a foundation on which to build sustainable prosperity, and we will be better stewards of the natural capital that underpins our civilization.

It won't be easy. There are no magic bullets. But we can figure this out without finding ourselves on a treadmill of futility, abusing more wildlands to chase more oil and gas, to burn away on more badly designed buildings, cars, and machinery, and maintaining our dependence on a commodity that enriches the worst regimes in the world.

But to better stewards of creation, we need more than programs and policies. We need to rediscover and rejuvenate our conservation ethic. We need to revive and reconnect a healthy, civil political culture. We need to understand that conservation and environmental protection is not a liberal or conservative issue, but a transcendent human concern that is rooted in both liberal and conservative traditions.

There is a conservative case for conservation. It's been with us since conservatism emerged as an intellectual and moral tradition centuries ago.

Let me close with a quote from a contemporary conservative thinker, Rod Dreher, who has published a very funny, very informative book that you ought to read: It's called: Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party).

Dreher wrote: It's not easy being a green conservative, but if we conservatives want to be true to our principles, we have to move in that direction. It is morally right. It is religiously correct. It is economically prudent. It strengthens national defense. And it makes a better world for our children, and our children's children.