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Giving Gaia Her Due: Conservative Environmentalism
The environmentalist movement is filled with loons. That’s obvious enough. Frank Soto dismembered the extremists in his great recent post “Gaia Demands a Sacrifice“. As always, Frank is precise in his reasoning and hilarious in his takedown, but there is something of the knee-jerk in here, something that has cost conservatives much. Environmentalism should be a conservative cause, and, even amidst the lunacy, there is something to be said for Gaia and man’s place with her.
Reid Buckley made this point in a 2009 article at The American Conservative:
But within the hysteria and exaggeration of political activists, mostly of the Left, too often supported by cooked science, there is often a kernel of legitimate concern, be it economical, sociological, aesthetic, or environmental. We conservatives have shut our ears.
Why are we deaf? Is it because we have no alternatives? Buckley wondered whether, on the environment and elsewhere, conservatives have left themselves with ridicule as the only response to the left:
For 40 years, smug, snide right-wingers have made merry mocking Greenpeace fanatics and ecological doomsayers without learning a blessed thing about the precariousness of the ecology and the effect of human action (not to speak of avarice) on it, as when we promiscuously exfoliate the rain forests or condemn yet one more green acre on the southeastern shore of New Jersey to the desolation of heedless urban development. We conservatives are so self-satisfied that we have incapacitated ourselves from peering beneath the antics of idiots and the wild exaggerations of scruffy environmentalist kooks to the gathering of real dangers that their hysterical rhetoric obscures.
There are environmental disasters. To deny this, or to reassure ourselves that the market alone will take care of it, is naïve and even dangerous.
The market can create horrific ugliness.
I live in Montana, a state of wondrous beauty. But it is also a place of environmental degradations that are beyond comprehension. In Butte, long the center of copper mining in the US, the Anaconda Company — which operated the mines and smelters for nearly a century and which left the state in 1978 — bequeathed a pox of ugliness one and one half miles wide and nearly 1,800 feet deep. Once among the largest open pit mines in the world, the Berkeley Pit, which is right in the middle of town, is now full of water so filthy that insects fear to tread.
And the pit has done just what Buckley warned against:
…it is ugly, an affront to the eye, accustoming thousands of human beings to dehumanizing blows against the aesthetic sense until it is benumbed. The good, the true, and the beautiful are inseparably joined. One cannot damage one without doing harm to the others. Those who fail to comprehend this are morally in error on the dialectical front, though they may be personally virtuous.
Butte is a sad place.
Disdain and mockery may trigger the visceral satisfaction that comes from a sense of superiority, but it will gain us nothing if we fail to recapture a conservative ecology. Writing in The Guardian, Paul Foote argues that environmentalism lies deep within the conservative heart:
As the grandfather of modern conservative political thinking, Edmund Burke, put it: we are “temporary possessors or life renters” of this world and have a moral obligation not to squander our natural inheritance, lest we “leave to those who come after … a ruin instead of a habitation.” Respect for the past and responsibility to future generations creates a duty to conserve our resources and protect the environment.
A modest proposal is for conservatives to remember their roots. “Home is where one starts from,” Eliot said. Humans have natural affection, not just for home sweet home, but for their community and their nation. But as Burke said, “to be loved our country must be lovely.” A conservative environmentalism naturally springs from the understanding of man as creature in the world living together with those other walking shadows who seek the peace which home and community afford, and who also understand that it is wrong to soil one’s own nest. Foote adds:
A conservative argument for championing environmentalism involves marrying the principles of responsibility, conservation and security to an emphasis on the local environment. It is about guarding our green spaces, the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live and work on. It is the environment people see, experience, enjoy or hate – but in any case it is the immediate context of all our lives
Conservatives have a duty to enter the environmental debate, and not merely to call out the crazies. Conservatives need to offer an alternative ecological philosophy that is grounded in love—of country and community. Otherwise we will surrender what should be our issue to leftist environmental monopolists who are sure to send us into a nightmare of “global initiatives” that will only further the ecological entropy and rob us of the very thing conservatives most cherish: home.
Conservatives were once out in front on the environmental cause. As Governor of California Ronald Reagan laid out the conservative ecological position in quite certain terms:
“[There is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment. . . The bulldozer mentality of the past is a luxury we can no longer afford. Our roads and other public projects must be planned to prevent the destruction of scenic resources and to avoid needlessly upsetting the ecological balance.”
This means that a conservative environmental philosophy must recognize and honor sacrifice. It will sometimes be necessary to say no to the new factory, the strip mall, or the pipeline, not merely because they pollute, but because they are ugly, dehumanizing, and a breach of the trust we hold for coming generations. We need to remember, as Burke wrote in The Vindication of Natural Society, that “the great error of our nature is not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more.”
Sometimes Gaia must be given her due.
Published in General
I am rather unsure what you are proposing here. If the people of Butte, Montana wanted an open pit copper mine then fine. If the people of Butte, Montana had decided, “no that is not the type of business we would like here we would rather preserve the landscape” that is fine as well.
As long as it is the actual residents of the area that are making the decision I do not believe you will find much conservative criticism either way.
Gaia be damned! Yet another false god to obey instead of the true and living Creator God, Who calls us to be stewards of His creation. As conservatives we have lost sight of what it is we seek to conserve. It is the Creation and the gift of Life from our Creator. To first forget the Creator and to seek our own wealth and happiness, without the duty to accept His authority in our lives leaves us with gaia and a whole panoply of false gods which have neither the living authority nor the Presence of God the Creator.
We are left with rules which we will almost always seek to turn to our own benefit, regardless the necessity to play our roles as stewards.
Here in beautiful Colorado Springs the front range is despoiled by three scars where gravel was pulled to build the roads in this area. The companies acted irresponsibility because the politicians that the people depended upon proved to be worth no more than the money the developers donated to their campaigns.
Therein lies the truth. The citizens of C.S. were of the mind that having elected the politicians, they had no other ownership.
continued…
Roberto:
The argument that Butte residents chose to allow the mine is at best half true. The present residents did not have a vote. Under a trustee theory like Burke’s the residents who lived when the pit was started had little information on the long term effects. Their children did not have a vote. Nor did others who may also be affected. While there is a plan in place to clean up the water (a plan which has great uncertainty), the water in the pit continues to rise and could soon spill into Silver Bow Creek which feeds into the Clarke’s Fork River which flows ultimately into the Columbia River. The Clarke’s Fork is among the most majestic rivers in the country. If the pit water enters the Clarke’s Fork it would be a tragedy.
Conservatives of the Burkean type understand the social contract as a trust between the dead, the living, and the unborn. Anaconda Company and its successors owe a duty to the dead and unborn not to destroy natural beauty or at least to do everything that can to repair what they have done.
… but we do. We own our own immediate surroundings. If we don’t care where we drop a coke can or a broken bicycle, then we are no less guilty than the developer or the politician. We get the beauty that we invest in by being good stewards of our own space. That is the message that conservatism should be sending. “Do as I do, not just as I say.” Live the excellence that is required to bring excellence to the world around us.
Traveling in the underdeveloped world you can see that God isn’t honored in their environment. Junk and garbage dumped along streets and highways. Vultures circling the roads where their dinner has been dumped by a population who not only disrespects God’s creation, they disrespect themselves.
Do we really want a message that siezes the environmental initiative from the left? Then we start by living it ourselves, and then teaching our children first, and then making demands on the polity to follow suit. As long as conservatives believe in the false prophet of profits, we will have no credibility. If the wealthy developer, perhaps thinking himself a conservative, can rape the environment, we believe alie.
I am SOLIDLY against Gaia. It is a false god that is purely pagan in its origin and worship. It demands that progress moves backward, that people live lives of deprivation and want and disease because these are all “natural”.
It is lovely that you moved to Montana. If you want a nice neighborhood, band together with your neighbors and agree to a social compact on how everyone uses their land. Otherwise, respect private land rights. As and when someone infringes on their neighbor, then there may be a tort caused, and we have a legal system that handles those.
As and where there are massive deposits of something that people need, yes: holes will be dug. And I am glad for it.
Only rich countries can afford to care about natural beauty. Conservatives should stand for maximizing human potential, which includes allowing them the freedom to decide their own priorities. The end result will be a lovelier country.
Perfect information is an impossibility, long term effects are often unknowable without actually seeing the results of the policies implemented.
Currently Butte has an environmental problem if they had chosen instead all those years ago to forgo the mine and the city had withered away due to lack of economic activity would that have been the better outcome? Many of the children who had no vote all those years past may not even have existed today if people had decided to forgo having families because finances were too tight.
You seem somewhat unrealistic regarding the realities of economic trade offs and the impossibility of perfect information.
Roberto:
There is no middle ground? I’ll grant that perfect information is rarely available, but it should have been easily apparent that digging a pit 1 mile long and a half mile wide to a depth of 1800 feet and right in the middle of town would have some serious environmental issues. Anaconda Company surely know at least that. The residents of Butte circa 1955 likely did not. The Anaconda Company has a checkered history in Montana. Perhaps it owed some responsibility to Butte, the communities down stream, and to the people of Montana.
All I am suggesting is that conservatives have a vested interest in maintaining a heritage that includes the environment. I cannot understand why that understanding of environmentalism is not at the top of conservative politics. We too often laugh at the loons, but have we no obligation to enter the fray? Have we no obligation to future generations. Is the only thing that matters today?
Wealth creation and technology are far more valuable to future generations than the absence of a hole in the ground somewhere.
I am very much having some difficulty following your train of thought. How is letting the local residents who live in the area, which bears the consequences of any decision, not the middle ground? Maybe it was the right decision, maybe it was the wrong one but the people who live there are the ones who have to live with it one way or the other. Why should it not be their choice?
Have we no obligation to future generations. Is the only thing that matters today?
I do not wish to accuse you of being disingenuous but I have difficulty believing you are making this statement with any degree of seriousness. Who is more concerned for their children’s future than conservatives? Who cares more about the insanely crushing debt of the nation, the out of control inflation in the cost of college or the coming collapse of entitlement programs?
Everything, everything in life is a question of trade offs and there are often no good choices. However increasing economic opportunity is very often the best choice because then you have the freedom and resources to worry about and deal with others.
I agree that reflexive anti-environmentalism is an unhelpful feature of elements of the Right, but I’m not sure that this particular instance is an example of it.
On the whole, conservatives need to do a better job of arguing that their opposition to the environmentalist agenda is due to their caring about people and not their lack of care for the earth.
Roberto:
First, my argument is that conservatives who do have concern for future generations ought also have consern for the environment we leave to our children. How is that not conservative?
As for the middle ground, I am again arguing that conservatives ought to encourage consideration of ecological issues every bit as much as they are concerned with the economic future. Human beings need beauty. That is a conservative matter. To simply say “hey, we don’t know what will happen so let’s just do it,” is not only to ignore our status as trustees, but to concede a monumentally important issue to the globalist extremists.
Here’s an example of a middle way, also in Montana. Great Falls, Montana is home to the Great Falls of the Missouri, which were discovered by Lewis and Clarke. Decades ago the Montana Power Company dammed several of the falls. In many ways the dams are a fusion of nature and human ingenuity. Even with the dams the power and beauty of the falls has been largely maintained. MPC went to great effort not only to maintain the natural environment, but to insure that future generations could enjoy that beauty. MPC built an island below Ryan Dam where people can picnic and enjoy both the natural beauty, but also the brilliance of the dams themselves. The power company also planted a huge grove of trees along the northern side of the dams in the city, and used to put up 10s of thousands of Christmas lights for the public to enjoy. Giant Springs, just down water from one of the dams, , has been maintained and improved. Most of this was done decades ago. There was an appreciation for the need to maintain the natural state, as well as the electricity generated. It is possible to consider the future.
The environmental movement ceased being anything conservative once it took up the environmental label and dropped the conservation label. The environmental movement became not about preserving landscapes, flora, and fauna for the benefit of current and future generations, but merely a self-hating suicide cult whose purposes are political and economic, not environmental. James Delingpole’s term “watermelons” is the perfect description for them.
What Z in Montana said! I’m conservative (Burkean) and have mixed emotions about Environmentalism. I’m for careful stewardship of all resources and the environment. I like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, parks and tax schemes that allow the continuance of farms near urban areas. The Environmental Movement changed beyond recognition in the last 40 years and left me behind. The Global Warmists have ruined the Conservationist Movement (Sierra Club, etc), but that could be seen as an opportunity to start a relevant alternative. The world still needs careful stewardship. I think you are onto something.
The key fact everyone seems to forget is that the VERY BEST WAY to help the natural world is to make it something that people OWN.
The government is a dreadful landlord. Restrictions on use of land and wildlife leads to spoilage and poaching and starvation.
It is like fish in the wild. When fishers get to own areas that they cultivate, fish stocks thrive. When everything is a commons, or is forbidden for ownership (which amounts to the same thing), then the fish are destroyed.
Seconded.
Two objections:
1) In many cases, the locality agrees to the mine (or other intervention) on the condition that the company bear the responsibility for cleaning up any contamination which may affect public health. But too often, the mine ends up being more toxic than imagined, the company skips town, and it is nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable (at least without bringing in the EPA).
2) Often the detrimental effects aren’t limited to the locality, but are more wide-reaching – yet the neighboring communities were never asked.
I don’t think the GOP should make environmentalism a big issue, but it would be helpful to acknowledge that the conservative tenets of “let those affected decide” and “hold those responsible to account” are in reality often quite toothless when it comes to acute environmental damage.
Agree, with one caveat. But to your main point, there would most certainly be fewer problems from spills/contamination/etc. if almost all land was privatized. For all the demonization of the EPA, it is often easy for big polluters (especially mining companies) to escape being punished by the Feds. A large group of property owners is more difficult to buy off.
My one caveat is that not all violations of property can be defined clearly enough to take action. Whom does a longtime resident of LA sue for the degradation of the air he breathes?
Which goes directly back to my main point. This is a question of local governance. If citizens feel they are ill served by their local elected officials who agreed to business propositions that turned out poorly where should they seek redress? The answer seems quite obvious to me.
As to your subsequent question if neighboring communities feel they are bearing the cost of actions occurring in nearby municipalities they have redress in the courts.
Now we are simply talking past each other.
I am in no way arguing conservatives should be against environmental considerations. What I am stating is that all such considerations should be made by the cities and municipalities involved. I do not understand why this is hard for you to follow. Conservatives have never been against environmental considerations per se, what is at issue is environmental considerations dictated at the federal level by the EPA or administrative dictat.
When cities and states are making these decisions this “problem” will resolve itself.
I think perhaps 50% of the time, leftists and progressives have legitimate concerns. We really do want improved fortunes for low wage workers. We really do want to conserve natural resources. However, on policies that will actually achieve good ends, I think leftists and progressives are right around zero to 1% of the time.
I would identify myself as a conservationist, not an environmentalist. Making a small, ecological footprint is the ultimate moral goal of modern environmentalism. I’ve never been able to figure out why true believing environmentalists don’t just kill themselves, since that would seem to be the most moral option in that worldview. There are some that do advocate this.
Humans definitely introduce disruption to the world ecosystem. We’re not the first taxon to do this. E.g. flowering plants may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs, as they crowded out the species that herbivorous dinosaurs ate. Extinctions are followed by new species evolving to fill open niches. I don’t think the disruption we create is all that terrible in the scale of geological time.
We should be careful with our environments, with the goal of making them optimal for human flourishing.
Roberto:
I’m going to restrain from responding in kind to your condescension
While I agree in principle that local governments ought to be in control, it is unlikely they will always consider long term consequences which is a must duty for present stewards. Moreover, it is not always a local issue. In my example, the pit is at risk of spilling into the Clarke’s Fork which winds through over 250 miles of Montana (through Missoula) on into Idaho where it spills into Lake Pend Oreille and into the Columbia. Not every issue is simply local. Not every decision can be concerned only with present needs or wishes. That is at the essence of trusteeship. A trustee holds the property of the trustor for the benefit of the beneficiary. The trustee may use a portion of it, but he may not squander resources for his sole benefit.
Nor did I say that conservatives are anti-environment. But conservatives are not nearly enough engaged to counter the globalist/socialist environmentalists. We laugh at the loons. What do we offer? I suggest we begin with stewardship. I quoted Reagan. Was he wrong?
What condescension? I strongly disagree with you that is all.
If I wished to insult you I would insult you plainly. There are few I detest more than those who hide their true opinions, if I was outraged enough to spit at your face rest assured I would do so. We disagree Rapkoch, that is all.
I am not arguing against your issue of trusteeship, what I am arguing against is that anyone other than those who are local have the right or capacity to decide the issue.
Here I will insult you sir, you are arrogant. You are immeasurably arrogant to imagine some unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat in the EPA is more qualified to make such decisions rather than those who actually have to live with the results.
In theory, yes. In practice this is often impossible: by the time the mercury (or whatever) starts leeching, the company responsible has long since disbanded, and the municipality which allowed the mining company to come in is itself broke because the mine has closed.
So the neighboring municipality may win in court, but receives nothing as compensation.
Gee, Roberto, I don’t recall praising the EPA.
As for those who actually live with the results, you evidently believe those are only the few who live within a small radius of the problem. Ecological problems, like most everything else, tend to have long end trails. How do the locals protect the other folks downstream? Or does that not matter because when the sludge hits them, well, it’s their problem.
When I was in college (okay — that was a while ago. Don’t mock me and don’t expect me to remember details), I wrote a research paper on the mining scars in the foothills of Colorado Springs.
Mike has a legitimate point about poor environmental outcomes, but it’s no coincidence that they’re a more recent problem in the West and mostly related to mining. Now, modern life wouldn’t be possible without the mining done here, but we have to look at the incentives leading to open mines in places where people live and have to view the ugliness.
Vast swaths of the west are owned and or managed by the BLM. In order to encourage the development of western states, the feds have sold acres and acres of land for pennies (or nearly) based on proven mineral resources. In Arizona, much of this under-priced property has been made into golf courses. But, in places like Colorado Springs, it was worth it to mining companies to scalp the foothills for road grade because the initial outlay was so low. This is a problem of government diddling with “natural” markets.
Legitimate ownership makes for good stewardship.
And if we’re going to ban ‘teh ugly,’ can we start with wind turbines? Have you seen northwest Texas??! Nightmarish. There’s not much to recommend the landscape to begin with, but at least there was an open vista instead of a hideous forest of whirling bird blenders.
I agree with that. We’ve got a wind “farm????” about 80 miles away. At first it’s kind of cool to see one of these contraptions. But then you look a little further and see dozens of them and it begins to look like Leprosy.
Funny, I spent four years looking at that one razed hillside (above Glen Eyrie/Queens Canyon) and never knew how it came to be. But it definitely stuck out like a sore thumb.
Morning Mike,
The down stream effects of human activity are the area of difficulty. In farming, raising animals, building homes do these common activities preserve the environment or will they be viewed as degradations? Even if one is the owner of the property on which these activities occur, building homes and raising food changes what was one type of environment to an environment designed to man’s benefit. If we were to say that there were areas where mining, foundries, manufacturing were designated, if would be good if they were economically responsible for their pollution in an on going fashion. We also might select areas as parks where homes, farming, and manufacture would be limited. All organisms reshape the environment by their existence, however we can measure the effects our existence has on the animals and plants we displace. The difficulty comes when we judge our environmental impact and ask is the benefit to ourselves worth the disturbance to the rest of the environment and to the future generations. Should we drain a swamp on our own land? Should we build a dam? I like stewardship and trusteeship as a model, however there are issues left unaddressed.
Jim Beck