Is Environmental Protection A Conservative Issue?
I’ve been reading “The Conservative Mind” recently, a seminal history of conservative thought by the late Russell Kirk. It profiles and catalogues a number of great thinkers, including the Irishman Edmund Burke, John Adams, and John Randolph. Not only is it good to revisit their writings, but it highlights just how far our political thought has drifted in the past two centuries – or fifty years, for that matter.
Conservatism, as Burke writes, is characterized by a number of principles, including a belief in transcendent [God's] law, a prejudice towards tradition, and a responsibility to provide future generations with a positive legacy (sort of like the Boy Scout pledge to leave places nicer than when you found them.) It is a fairly simple process: tradition and prejudice allow us to preserve the past and maintain a connection to our ancestors, while stewardship communicates our precious cultural intelligence to posterity, thus insuring continuity.
So what does that mean for environmentalism? Listening to today’s conservatives, you would think that doctrine prescribes plundering resources for the benefit of corporate benefactors, campaign coffers, and consumers. Interestingly, Burke speaks to the subject directly in Reflections:
One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation – and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers.
While environmentalism has recently become associated with tree-hugging progressives, we should be reminded that trashing our inheritance – God’s bounty – goes against the very conservative principles of prejudice and tradition. This is firm, common ground on which all Americans can work together.
And, speaking of working together on the environment, Congress is considering adjustments to the Clean Water Act which, among other things, would strictly limit the dumping of toxic wastes into small streams (thank you conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.) These streams feed our rivers and lakes, which are the source of drinking water for a sizable portion of the population. Contact your Senators and Representatives and tell them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act, or S.787. If they have an “R” behind their name, feel free to remind them of Edmund Burke!
