WHY DO WE NEED A CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM?

Liberalism doesn’t work to solve environmental problems just as it doesn’t solve problems of poverty, race, the economy, terrorism...

This blog is an effort to inspire the birth of a truly conservative alternative to contemporary liberal environmentalism.

Right off the bat that brings to mind a couple of questions:

First, isn’t “conservative environmentalism” an oxymoron? Isn’t it impossible to have a conservative environmentalism because all conservatives want to take us back to the “old ways” when everything was ruled by old white men whose lust for profits and dominance over nature created all of our environmental problems in the first place?

Second, why bother? Many conservative pundits are hard at work trying to do away with environmentalism. Rush Limbaugh has described environmentalism as “the new home of displaced communists” and “one of the tentacles of liberalism seeking to envelop our planet in its evil grip.” Others regularly refer to environmentalists as “radical” and “wackos.”

Why, then do we need a conservative environmentalism?

Addressing the second question first: We need a conservative environmentalism because it would identify and address environmental problems that are real and really need to be solved. It would not dream up problems (global warming, for instance) or pervert already existing problems (wildfire, species extinction), as does contemporary liberal environmentalism, so it can use them as tools to advance leftist goals, i. e., increase the sphere of government.

We need a conservative environmentalism because there are a lot of people who identify themselves as political conservatives who are as concerned about real environmental problems as any liberal. They want to have healthy watersheds, forests, and rangelands (I know because I’m one of those people.) but we don’t want to have to sign on to (or appear to sign on to) solutions to these problems that merely grow bigger government.

Which brings us back to the first question:

Is “conservative environmentalism” an oxymoron? Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I’m convinced, and I believe that via this blog I can convince you, that a conservative environmentalism is the only true environmentalism. The reason for this is because an environmentalism based on conservative principles would deal with environmental problems/opportunities rather than serve as merely a Trojan Horse for growing government. And, as in all instances where these two approaches go head to head, the conservative approach would solve the problem or realize the opportunity. The liberal approach would merely make the problem worse and then try to convince us that even more goverment would somehow give us a different result. That’s what it always does.

What’s the definition of insanity?

TAKING ON BIG GREEN
The actions of contemporary mainstream environmentalism harm the environment as well as help it. And in the cases where that is true, the more aggressively those actions are applied, the more harm they do. To let others know about those instances in which contemporary mainstream environmentalism, which I call Big Green) creates the opposite of what it purports to be its mission is the main reason I decided to create this blog.

Here on the RightWay2BGreen, you’ll see the true face of that harm and come to know why it happens, how it happens, and how it can be avoided. Most importantly, you’ll come to know what flaw in Big Green’s conceptual basis causes it to create the opposite of what it promises to create, and you’ll learn why people who sincerely believe they love nature end up harming it and refuse to even consider admitting or correcting their mistakes.

You will read things on this blog that you will read nowhere else. You will see pictures of environmental solutions that you will see nowhere else. In fact, you will see pictures of events and achievements that Big Green insists are impossible, and that it works constantly to discredit, coverup, or deny.

You’ll also read descriptions and see pictures of environmental harm perpetrated by Big Green that you will find nowhere else. Needless to say, Big Green is working constantly to discredit, cover up and deny that as well.

Coming next: Some of those descriptions and some of those pictures.

WHAT'S THE RIGHT WAY TO BE GREEN?

What’s the right way to be green? A way that works, that achieves your environmental goals, that creates or restores health and function to ecosystems and provides a sustainably abundant way for humans to live within those ecosystems. Notice that I say sustainably abundant. I do not subscribe to the zero-sum definition of sustainability—that more for anyone means less for someone (or something) else, or as it says on a bumper sticker: “Live simply that others may simply live.”

The abundance theory of sustainability goes like this... As we produce food, fiber, and other goods and services we produce abundance for ourselves and others, including for other species. In my most recent book, The Gardeners of Eden Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature, I said it this way: You can’t have your cake unless you eat it, too. Unhealthy ecosystems, after all, only produce money for environmental groups who are able to sell them as bones of contention and stairsteps to political power.

So, what’s the wrong way to be green? A way that produces scarcity rather than abundance; that damages ecosystems by impairing or even destroying their ability to function and thus produces scarcity for all in the process. Why, you may ask, would anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist do something that harms the environment? Because they’ve made a mistake, or they’ve been fooled, and they’re doing the wrong thing when they think they’re doing the right thing, is one answer, but the more accurate answer is: for the same reason anybody does something to harm the environment—when it brings them money or power or achieves their political agenda.

Those of you who have bought on to mainstream liberal environmentalism have been sold a phony.

A WORLD WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTALISTS

How Would The Environment Fare If It Was Unprotected?

Many of us in the U. S. and in other post-modern societies subscribe to the prejudice that the use by humans (especially modern technologically-adept humans) always has a negative impact on Nature. For this reason we have invented something called “environmentalism,” along with a body of laws, rules, regulations, interest groups, a servile media and education system, taboos, fads, fashions, movies, books etc., to protect Nature from us. The assumption upon which all of the above is based is that the more we protect things from us, the more they will return to “balance” or a state we call “pristine” and the better off we will all be. This is true, we are told, even though our standard of living may be diminished drastically. We will be better off, we are told, because we won’t keep making things worse until we destroy the planet, or end life as we know it, or all become cannibals, or whatever image some liberal Chicken Little du jour uses to convince us that we are doomed unless we follow Big Green.

One writer whom I have met and who reviewed my first book (Alan Weisman) has even written a book named The World Without Us. It is described as a “penetrating, page-turning, tour of a post-human Earth.” Actually, there are already a number of places here on planet Earth that show us what a “post-human Earth” would be. With that in mind I offer the photos that accompany this post as illustrations after the fact for Alan’s book or for a sequel called The World Without Environmentalists.

The photo sequence below shows an exclosure in central Arizona, the Drake Exclosure, which was set aside in 1946 to study what a “World Without Us” would look like. The top photo shows the exclosure in 2004 after 58 years of the remedy contemporary liberal environmentalism tells us will restore nature to health, diversity, and balance. The second photo (below the first) shows what the land outside the exclosure, which has continued to be grazed by a local rancher’s cattle and used by humans for firewood cutting, off-road vehicle recreation, hunting, etc, looked like that same year. The third photo was taken on the same day as photo #2 from a point inside the exclosure looking out. Notice which way the elk tracks are headed.

Is this piece of the Earth better off without humans or without environmentalists?













































OTHER EXAMPLES OF A WORLD WITHOUT US
(AND OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF BIG GREEN)

DESERTIFICATION On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of preservation or “World Without Us” management). In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.

ENDANGERED SPECIES A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent preserves, examples of “The World Without Us,” host none of those birds.

NATIVE PLANTS On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.

VERNAL POOLS In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.

To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and more have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.

My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.

HAWAII On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.

INDIA In Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy, Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.

In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or big green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT There are plenty of sources who say environmentalism is asking for too much, is too expensive, puts animals before humans, is wreaking havoc on our economy, is a religion, etc., but few if any are saying what you have just read: that contemporary liberal environmentalism and its cure for everything environmental—reducing the impact of humans—is bad for the environment.

The irony of what you will read in the Rightway2BGreen is that it doesn't call those of us who are concerned about the environment "wackos", it makes the case that we need to swap Big Green for a conservative environmentalism that judges the worth of an action on its results rather than on how well it fits a liberal, anti-capitalist, misanthropic agenda.