As a conservative Gen Z environmentalist, I am often told the Left has the best climate policies. So I traveled to Chicago ahead of the Democratic National Convention to hear what they had in mind.
Their solutions to climate change, however, were worse than the problem itself and seemed to fully ignore the progress we have made.
Throughout the convention, I was told to give up meat, air conditioning, electric dryers, and even grass on my front lawn — dirt and rocks are more water-conscious, one woman told me. The U.S. military, specifically “the war machine,” was singled out by one man for its alleged pollution.
Nearly everyone I spoke to was also anti-car, at least the gas-powered kind. Solutions differed on whether people should cough up the cash for electric vehicles or simply rely on public transit. Most activists wanted a swift transition to electric vehicles that runs over the free market’s demand for them, despite the fact that U.S. passenger vehicles account for just 2.5% of global emissions.
One clear theme emerged: Drastic daily offerings are required to deal with the angry god of climate change. But if the Left’s solution is liquidating our lawns, forsaking meat, and trashing our AC units, then perhaps the cure is worse than the disease.
An environmental platform that prioritizes reducing consumption is short-sighted, ineffective, and isn’t making environmentalists any friends. We can only reduce consumption so far until people get sick of giving up their food, vehicles, and warm homes. It’s a vision that doesn’t appeal to anyone who seriously considers it. While college-aged protesters might not feel an attachment to cars they don’t drive and lawns they don’t own, the average person hears their ideas and shudders at the thought of moving backward in the name of “progress.”
Leftists were also reluctant to mention that the United States is, in fact, making quite a lot of progress on climate. It’s not politically expedient, for example, to brag that the U.S. has had greater emissions reductions than the rest of the developed world combined, nor is it advantageous to mention that this is because of conservative policy-supported innovation, including fracking and horizontal drilling that allowed natural gas to displace higher-emitting coal.
The conservative-minded approach is better because it has worked. When we prioritize innovation, competition, and markets, we lower the cost of energy and lower carbon pollution. Conservatives support common sense, market-based solutions such as nuclear energy, domestic mining for critical minerals to build more clean energy, and liquefied natural gas exports. That is how we can expand America’s emissions-reducing leadership, continuing to pace the world in both energy production and climate progress.
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When it comes to the environment, the liberal climate activists I spoke with mostly missed the forest for the trees. The purpose of making a cleaner, better planet is to improve people’s lives and promote human flourishing, not to improve Earth’s climate metrics at the expense of the people actually living here.
Thankfully, we can have it all. We just need to support the conservative path to get there.
Alina Clough is a fellow with ConservAmerica.