While the apocalyptic rhetoric and the collectivist approach to the environment from the Left are unhelpful, Republicans cannot keep ignoring the issue for much longer. A truly conservative approach to environmentalism does not mean doing nothing. Instead, the Right needs to work on finding market-based solutions to climate change.
Conservatives should be careful not to fall into the climate alarmism that has consumed the Democratic Party, but they also cannot continue to deny the fact that the climate is changing and that human activities are at least partially responsible. Their “do-nothing” attitude is not only environmentally unsustainable, but it is electorally unsustainable. Climate change is consistently ranked as one of the top issues for young voters, and total ignorance will spell long-term troubles for the GOP.
The Left now presents us with a false dichotomy: choosing the environment or the economy. Approaches such as the Green New Deal, requiring that all cars be electric by a certain date, subsidizing ineffective renewable energy methods, or simply banning fossil fuels are either completely meaningless or so economically unwise that they could not be implemented without causing uproar.
Moreover, continued left-wing opposition to nuclear energy, which has consistently proven to be one of the most successful green energy sources, demonstrates the silliness of their climate alarmism. It is increasingly clear that expanding state control over the economy is the goal, not just a side effect, of left-wing climate change legislation.
Republicans need to work on ways to address the subject without sacrificing economic growth. Solutions proposed by the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative organization that focuses on environmentalism, include cutting bureaucratic red tape that is delaying critical green energy projects, promoting competition in energy markets, and establishing a “tax credit that supports new clean technologies and phases out as they become more competitive in the market.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
However, another fundamental piece of the puzzle is that the biggest carbon polluters are generally not in the industrialized West but in the developing world. While promoting green energy domestically should be an important goal, lowering barriers to trade so that clean technologies are made available worldwide and combating extremely environmentally unfriendly economies (such as China’s) need to be at the forefront of conservative environmental policy.
It is undeniable that the topic of climate change has become a rallying cry for the Democratic Party, but it is just as undeniable that neither party is providing any real solutions. Republicans need to get serious on climate because Democrats clearly are not.