Green Conservatism
Connie Hedegaard (photo by Kate Sheppard)
Kate Sheppard was on the same trip to Denmark as I was, and wrote up this post about our conversation with Connie Hedegaard, Folketing member for the Conservative People’s Party and Minister for Climate and Energy in the current Liberal-CPP coalition government:
“It’s at the core of conservatism to take care of the environment, to protect nature, to use resources responsibly,” said Hedegaard. “I can think of nothing that’s more conservative than that.”
Her priority, she said, is that their policies be vehicles for economic growth. The export of clean tech increased 19 percent last year, triple what it was ten years ago. Just recently it passed pork as the country’s leading export product.
“I have tried to turn this into a growth agenda. It is not an anti-growth agenda,” she said. “Often back in the ’70s for the left, socialists and liberals, it was an anti-growth agenda. In a world where we’re going to become 9 billion people by the middle of this century, we must have growth. The challenge is to make this growth more green, to make it sustainable.”
This is basically a Teddy Roosevelt kind of view that from time to time has been espoused by John McCain here in the United States. Starting in the waning days of the Presidential campaign, and continuing for most of the Obama administration, this strain of green conservatism seems to have largely vanished. It recently got a bit of a boost, however, in the form of a joint op-ed by John Kerry and Lindsay Graham. Still, one strains to come up with an example of a right-of-center American politician whose level of commitment to the climate change issue would be recognizable by a Hedegaard or an Angela Merkel or a Nicholas Sarkozy. In part that reflects interest-group politics—the United States is a significant producer of fossil fuels in a way that only Norway is in Europe. But in large part I do think it reflects a kind of failure of intellect and imagination that American politicians have occasionally flirted with transcending, usually only to return to orthodoxy soon enough.
24 Responses to “Green Conservatism”
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October 13th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Given the crises of climate change, pollution, and capital accumulation, I think we rather need zero-growth policies.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Yes, John Kerry’s conservative credentials are impeccable.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
This is basically a Teddy Roosevelt kind of view that from time to time has been espoused by John McCain here in the United States.
I’m pretty sure it goes all the way back to people like Edmund Burke, and beyond. The idea that stewardship of the planet’s resources is a sacred trust is a deeply conservative value. And it underlines the inauthenticity and faith-based free market radicalism of America’s contemporary so-called “conservatives.”
October 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Obama and many Democrats want to do something about carbon emission trends and climate change, therefore those efforts must be opposed.
It doesn’t get much more complicated than that for many of the opposition. It isn’t even as sophisticated as interest group politics, just raw partisanship and tribalism.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Re: This is basically a Teddy Roosevelt kind of view that from time to time has been espoused by John McCain here in the United States
I believe John McCain is basically a good man, albeit one withe seriously wrong ideas, who cares about the environment. Which is why I was offended that he seemed, in the 2008 campaign, to be making a hearty effort to look dumber and more amoral than he actually is.
I think John McCain likes grizzly bears and wants to conserve them, for example. I think his comment about a government-funded study of grizzly bear genetics, viz. “I don’t know if it was for a paternity test or a criminal investigation, but I do know it was a waste of money”, is even more annoying then it would be coming from Dumbya Bush. Because feigned, affected ignorance is even worse then the real thing. Especially when it’s about issues as important as environmental protection.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Re: I’m pretty sure it goes all the way back to people like Edmund Burke, and beyond. The idea that stewardship of the planet’s resources is a sacred trust is a deeply conservative value
This is very true. Ain’t nothing ‘conservative’ about the idea that this planet is ours to trash as we see fit.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Yes, it’s partly a failure of intellect in the conservative leadership, but keep in mind that a very sizable chunk of the conservative base has a Santa Claus view of the universe based on primitive creation story written 3,000 years ago, and to one degree or another sees the Earth as under the dominion of men by God’s will. They simply don’t have a vision in which to fit the idea that humans are recycling a massive carbon store accumulated over millions of years back into the atmosphere-ocean system in a geologic instant, and that such a development could play havoc on a biosphere adapted to the current constraints. If part of your base lives in a fantasy world and another part the business interests that stand to lose the most from emission restrictions, what incentive does the leadership have to think clearly themselves?
October 13th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The governator does talk like a conservationist.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
This is very true for the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans.
There may be a handful, though, who “get it”.
For example, Dave Reichert, one of the 8 Rs to votes for Waxman-Markey. His statement on why he voted for the bill, emphasis mine:
Link
Reichert is certainly better on this than scores of coal/cow-fart Dems.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
“The idea that stewardship of the planet’s resources is a sacred trust is a deeply conservative value”
To be sure, but ‘conservatism’ in that sense has long ceased to have any application to 99% of present-day self-styled American onservatives, and isn’t what most people understand by talk of ‘conservatism’. I’d say that ‘Monster raving Loony Party’ would be a more accurate name for most so-called conservatives these days, but the name has already been taken by a humorous party in Britain.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Reichert is certainly better on this than scores of coal/cow-fart Dems.
Reichert has been one of the very top targets for Democrats for several election cycles now, and has faced very close races from Darcy Burner who was funded with millions of netroots dollars. It would make sense that Republicans who need to run as moderates to stay in office make votes like this, just as red-state Democrats feel they need to do the opposite.
For a rather amusing example, look at Mark Kirk – voted for Waxman-Markey in his rather blue district, then when facing a Republican primary for the Senate seat claimed that he wouldn’t have voted for the same bill as a Senator.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
the United States is a significant producer of fossil fuels in a way that only Norway is in Europe.
Uh, Russia isn’t in Europe?
Also, Germany and Poland are the world’s 7th and 9th largest coal extractors, with higher per-capita coal extraction than the U.S. Germany uses almost all of that coal itself, but Poland exports more than a third as much as the U.S. does.
You’d think that plenty of oil-intensive industries like oil refiners and petrochemical makers would be among the strongest lobbyists for energy conservation and alternative energy, as it would make the chief input into their products cheaper.
I guess this is an institutional problem: even though in the U.S., the consumers of oil (21 million barrels/day) are bigger than the extractors of oil (8 million barrels/day) and thus should have more lobbying power, oil consumers are more diffuse than oil producers. And oil extractors controlled the co-presidency for the past eight years.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Conservatism in America consists of 1 belief: make sure Obama fails.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
The UK isn’t in Europe??? Production of 1.6 million barrels a day?
October 13th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
The days of conservative environmentalists like James Buckley and James J. Kilpatrick are long gone. Today, we have fucktards like James Inhofe and Joe Barton.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
The three most conservative aspects of the Democratic Party are unions, environmentalists and anti-globalizationists. All three fear change as much as any fire-breathing southern racist.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Much of the leadership of the immigration restriction movement comes out of the environmental movement:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/090927_wasp.htm
McCain, of course, like Matt, never mentions immigration’s effect on the environment.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Consider how Dick Lamm, the Democratic governor of Colorado from 1975-1987, who was one of the first governors in the country elected due to his leadership of a citizen’s environmental movement, has been relentlessly smeared over the years by the Southern Poverty Law Center for pointing out how immigration restriction would benefit the environment.
That’s basically the acid test of whether you are a true environmentalist or just a Stuff White People Like poseur: do you follow the logic out to supporting immigration restriction even though it’s unfashionable in SWPL circles?
October 13th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
“United States is a significant producer of fossil fuels in a way that only Norway is in Europe.”
Denmark produces quite a bit of oil as well. Actually more than twice the amout the US produces per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro_percap-energy-oil-production-per-capita
October 13th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
It would seem from this women’s comment that at least part of the political divide here–namely, that conservative charge that environmentalists are a bunch of anti-capitalist hippies–had at least some basis in reality. As recently as the the early 1990s, the “green” agenda in many places was to stop commercial development. The spotted owl is an interesting case in point. Approximately 10 people on the planet were concerned about owls. But scads were committed to a zero-cut policy on federal land. Those scads caught wind of the spotted owl and used it to forward an entirely different agenda. Most of them admit this. If you read “The Final Forest,” which is a great account of the battle, the activists basically admit that if the spotted owl hadn’t been there, they would have had to invent it.
The zero cut agenda later spread to my old stomping grounds in Western PA. Only by that time the spotted owl had become an Indiana bat. Courts later decided the Forest Service could cut whatever it wanted.
Why does it matter now? Because the new issue is oil and gas development in the Marcellus Shale. I think people would be generally inclined to agree with environmentalists about the issue. Except the whole zero-cut experience is the way people remember the activists. And people generally hate them.
The younger people are, the less they hate them. But it’s going to take a while to get over that experience.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I always thought it rather disappointing that conservatives don’t co-opt the environmentalist cause, as it is probably the only issue the solid, hard left could ever use to get significant, domineering leverage with upscale, wealthier liberals.
That the GOP hasn’t done so is testament to stupidity.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
She’s lying. The center-right Danish government tried to suppress green policies for years until they realized how reactionary they had become and did an about-face. Don’t fall for it.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
[The] conservative charge that environmentalists are a bunch of anti-capitalist hippies–had at least some basis in reality.
Sure, the Conservative Movementarians’ habit of vilifying all members of opposing tribes by asserting each embodies all the worst aspects of the worst among them usually has “some basis in reality” if by that you mean you can often find some individuals or actions that are in fact somewhat subject to such critiques.
Yippee for them.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Surely you’re overlooking another important reason that the Republican Party and the American conservative movement are resolutely anti-environmentalist: American politics is tribal. (And especially the Republican Party, which is largely a regional party for southern whites.) Cultural self-identification is usually more important than policy analysis, and anti-environmentalism is part of the conservative movement’s culture.