April 22 marks the 54th celebration of Earth Day. Unfortunately, there should be much more to celebrate five decades later.
Even today, with an administration that has made environmentalism a top priority, the majority of the public believes President Joe Biden has “mostly failed” on climate change. Perhaps that’s because his administration insists on counterproductive methods of decarbonization, such as mandating electric vehicles and pausing permits for American liquefied natural gas export terminals. These policies have also resulted in spiraling costs and shrinking consumer choice for hard-working people.
Thankfully, there’s a different, better approach that taps a rich history of environmental leadership and charts a path to a future with cheaper and cleaner energy. But it will require conservatives to reinsert ourselves into the discussion about conservation instead of simply allowing far-Left voices to run rampant, pushing devastatingly costly mandates and regulations.
Recently, the conversation about the environment has been dominated by the likes of Greta Thunberg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who call for panic-and-despair-driven measures such as the immediate and total ban of fossil fuels. Unlike these well-known climate activists, I’m a conservative. I want to decisively change the narrative surrounding climate change. Specifically, I want to spread the good news that there is so much we can do — and are already doing — to fix the climate without sacrificing the things that are important to us: economic security, an open and free market, and our liberty. I want to take care of the environment with local solutions, capitalist incentives, and innovation. As I hinted above, “conservation” and “conservative” are cognates, after all.
Eyebrows always raise when I tell people I’m a conservative environmentalist, but the reality is that there are many of us. In 2019, 82% of 18 to 35-year-olds polled indicated that climate change is important to them, including 77% of right-leaning and 90% of independent respondents. Many rural, conservative people whose hometowns are among regenerative farms, sustainable agriculture, and land conservancies see caring for the environment as a natural way of life.
Further, some of the most climate-friendly states, including Maryland, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Georgia, which all boast some of the highest rates of emissions reductions in the country, are led by Republican governors. Yet when it comes to finding their voice in a political climate driven by fear and catastrophic thinking, most conservatives don’t know where to start.
It wasn’t always this way. Conservatives have a track record of enacting pro-climate policies, even if you never hear about it in forums such as social media. Theodore Roosevelt earned his name as the Conservation President when, during his time in office, he created 150 national forests, 55 federal bird reserves, and five national parks, altogether protecting approximately 230 million acres of public land.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency through executive order, which has since served as a cornerstone in the protection of human health and the environment. In his State of the Union address that year, Nixon declared, “The great question of the Seventies is … shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?”
Two years later, frustrated with the lack of movement on the 18 environmental bills he hoped to pass, he delivered an urgent message to Congress: “These problems will not stand still for politics or for partisanship.”
When it was all said and done, Nixon ended up leaving a legacy of legislation such as the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act.
During his term, President Ronald Reagan set aside more than 12.5 million acres of public land and helped mitigate the national ozone crisis by establishing the international Montreal Protocol, which succeeded in phasing out harmful chemicals from common household products. This policy was lauded as one of the greatest environmental achievements of the 20th century.
My goal is to carry on this admirable tradition of conservative environmentalism. Our approach lets the free market pick the cheapest, cleanest, and most reliable energy technologies. Exporting those innovations worldwide immediately catalyzes the U.S. economy and curbs global emissions. This is how we can develop cost-effective and world-changing solutions that will both supercharge our economy and slash global greenhouse gas emissions.
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Most people have concluded that the Biden administration’s climate plan is bankrupt. They’re right. Regulations and mandates are not just too costly for our nation, they are too expensive for the planet as a whole. While the Left has certainly brought the aspiration, it’s missed the boat on pragmatism.
Starting this Earth Day, conservatives must finally reassert their time-honored principles to advance an environmentalism that can actually succeed — one that is not revolutionary, but additive.
Benji Backer is founder and executive chairman of the American Conservation Coalition. This piece has been adapted from his new book, The Conservative Environmentalist: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future, with permission from Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Benjamin Backer.