All three respondents to my article have offered thoughtful glosses that propel some of my propositions forward in useful and productive directions.
First, Richard Morrison adds an important dimension that I overlooked, namely, that regulation—and especially environmental regulation (which repeated studies have shown to be the most expensive kind of government regulation)—has imposed large deadweight losses that have significantly reduced net social welfare. Even if you are a true believer in Pigouvian economics, it ought to be comprehensible that when you are wasting money (i.e., failing a cost-benefit test), you are wasting resources. But for most environmental advocates, the only unlimited resource is other people’s money. To be sure, some left-leaning environmental scholars understand this at last, such as Cass Sunstein, for example, but note how much of the activist left hates him for it. We’ve paid a high price for this deep economic ignorance.
Morrison raises a salient question with a wonderful phrase I wish I had thought up: Kuznets Populism, in which the public’s revealed preference of rising opposition to aggressive environmentalism should be understood as part of the general “populist” disgust, both here and abroad, with incompetent managerial government. As Morrison rightly points out, environmentalism was one of the earliest examples of the slow divergence of elite opinion of the “professional managerial class” (PMC) from popular opinion that has overtaken many domains of public policy. Early environmental policy landmarks delivered genuine environmental gains, albeit often at high costs and with little regard for bureaucratic bloat.
We have long exceeded the point of diminishing returns for many legacy regulatory regimes, but are still inventing new programs without the underlying cause that can justify them. My favorite current example is the bike lanes that have gobbled up street parking and traffic lanes in American cities from coast to coast (even in Texas). As an avid cyclist in my younger days, I appreciate bike lanes, but was the explosion of bike lanes in the last decade because of a groundswell of popular demand for them—or yet another utopian affectation of the PMC? (Guess who provides the leading cost-benefit template for bike lanes: The World Bank.) They seem like a perfect example of what Morrison rightly describes as a policy in which “people have no direct influence on how such policy is made.” Surface street bike lanes are a nice amenity for DoorDash delivery riders and the ghost of Murray Kempton, but they likely have net negative externalities. (The studies offered in their defense are quite shoddy.)
While there are positive developments in American law regarding bureaucratic government underway just now, the PMC is unlikely to yield its entrenched power and privilege easily. And Morrison is right to worry about the possibility of a statist populism making the kind of symmetrical mistakes that fueled their indignation in the first place. Eco-protectionism is already occurring, to name one way the PMC might successfully sabotage sensible reforms.
Allowing the environment to become a near-monopoly of the left hasn’t quite been suicidal for conservatism, but it has been bad for … the environment.
Ironically, the best prospects for sensible environmental stewardship in the next generation might be in developing nations that decide to ride the “Kuznets Wave,” and figure out how to find the equilibrium point that maximizes human well-being and environmental health. Among other things, developing nations may avoid the political fixation with “equity” and “environmental justice” that have come to distort American environmental policy further, and stick to issues where genuine scientific expertise is needed.
Allan Carlson’s reflections leave me scratching my head a little bit. He aligns on the right side of the old saying, “Think globally, act locally”—a shorthand disposition whose origin is unclear. Most of the time, when you saw this bumper strip on a Volvo or on protest rally signs, it meant the opposite—think locally, but freak out about the planet and demand eco-revolution! Or at best, a virtue-signal. A consciously place-based environmentalism, as Roger Scruton explained most persuasively in his excellent 2012 book How To Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, marries local knowledge with responsibility, and will depoliticize many environmental problems.
Carlson is right to raise the question about whether land privatization will further favor the billionaire class, though I think this is a question of proportion. There aren’t that many billionaires who can buy up a significant area of public land in the aggregate. Local concentration is a different matter, such as in Montana and Wyoming, as Carlson mentions. To be sure, Ted Turner angered local cattle ranchers when he acquired his 116,000 acres outside Bozeman 30 years ago, depressing cattle prices by dumping the entire existing herd on the market all at once to make room for his buffalo ranching project. His buffalo restaurant plan hasn’t gone especially well, but his ranch restoration is a determined effort to restore the land to its native, pre-Columbian condition, with reintroduction of native plants and species and removal of non-native species. This project employs dozens of wildlife biologists and botanists, expending considerable resources toward this goal. I’d rather have billionaires doing this than meddling with America’s K-12 education system, and I think most of the billionaire mega-land barons intend to follow good land conservation practices. (I do know of some egregious exceptions.)
Moreover, while good statistics are hard to come by, I think private land trusts like the Nature Conservancy hold more private land than the billionaires. Not all of their practices are sound; the Nature Conservancy in particular often transfers private land it acquires back to the federal or state government, and there have been credible allegations of corrupt dealings over the years, such as acquisitions of open space conveniently adjacent to the vacation homes of … billionaires! But their stewardship of the TNC-owned 62,000-acre Santa Cruz island off the California coast is a solid example of ecosystem restoration that is likely beyond the capacity of the state or the federal government to achieve.
But from this salutary focus on what he calls “smallholders” of “the middling sort,” Carlson defaults back to the global focal point that is wrecking environmentalism: climate change. He chides me for not identifying anyone I describe as “climate fanatics” or “climate hysterics,” making me wonder whether Carlson has stopped taking in the news from the mainstream media (which I can’t decide is grounds for criticism or praise). Has he missed the climate activists who throw tomato soup at priceless artworks, glue themselves to roadways, and attempt to block airports? “Fanatics” might be a mild term to describe them, but I lack the knowledge of a clinical psychologist necessary to offer a worse one, unless it is “cult.” As for the mainstream media and much of the academic establishment, I could fill a file cabinet with receipts of figures appearing routinely in the prestige press like Bill McKibben, Tim Flannery, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, etc., whose climate claims depart from the scientific conclusions of the IPCC by several standard deviations. Just to cite one favorite example: Naomi Oreskes, a tenured Harvard professor, called James Hansen a “climate denier” because of his support for nuclear power. James Hansen! (And the ubiquitous use of “climate denier” ought to be a sign that something is seriously wrong with climate advocacy.) It takes some kind of fanaticism to say something that insane. The politicians are worse. Governor Gavin Newsom likes to blame every wildfire in California on climate change, even though every professional forester in California, not to mention several peer-reviewed studies in the mainstream scientific literature, conclude this is unfounded. I’ll retreat to “demagogue” if “fanatic” is too strong for Carlson.
Carlson says “recent research in and on science may help clarify matters here,” and indeed it does. But I’m doubtful he’s read it since he brings up the by-now 15-year-old controversy on what Exxon knew and when it knew it. To be sure, even the mainstream media is failing to report that the latest IPCC report has significantly dialed back its long-range warming forecast, though it did so in an indirect way to obscure this fact. (It’s the RCP 8.5 scenario dispute for the wonks reading along.) One person who seems to have actually noticed this is John Kerry. In 2021, Kerry’s standard climate change stump speech claimed, “Currently, as we’re talking today, we are regrettably on course to hit somewhere between 3, 4 degrees at the current rate.” But by 2023 Kerry’s numbers changed: “We’re currently heading towards something like 2.4 degrees, 2.5 degrees of warming on the planet.” Give Kerry some credit for “following the science,” as we are so often urged to do.
Carlson’s argument approaches a variation of the non-sequitur at the heart of climate change discourse for a generation: because climate ruin is ahead, current renewable energy must be affordable and practical! He doesn’t quite go this far, but misses the point or fails to respond to my main argument, which is that regardless of what anyone thinks future climate risk is, our current climate policies are unserious and ineffective. I agree with Carlson that doing nothing is not acceptable, but in fact, decarbonization proceeds apace, except without a splashy White House lawn signing ceremony that provides the only frisson environmentalists ever enjoy. (Fun fact: the 2009 Waxman-Markey climate change bill set 2020 emission reduction targets that the US accomplished several years early, even though the bill never passed, and the Obama backup “Clean Power Plan” never went into effect.) Meanwhile, Science magazine in August published a study of 1,500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries. It concluded that only 63 had a significant effect on emission reductions.
Jonathan Adler’s contribution makes some of my arguments better than I do, which is no surprise, since I have two rules about anything Adler writes in this domain: 1) Never disagree or argue with Adler; 2) If you disagree with Adler, see Rule Number 1. There is one aspect of his reflections I want to amplify—the political malpractice of most conservatives and Republicans on environmental policy. He does not put it quite that bluntly, but I will. Back in 1970, National Review editorialized that “it would be political suicide to concede [the environment] to the Left.” Allowing the environment to become a near-monopoly of the left hasn’t quite been suicidal for conservatism, but it has been bad for … the environment.
The environment for Republicans is like national defense for Democrats—an issue they don’t like, study, or make a policy priority.
Here, the nub of the problem is a non-sequitur unique to conservatives. It has become the default position to reason that because we dislike costly and centralized bureaucracy, environmental problems must therefore be phony, or even a “hoax.” To be sure, many environmental problems have been overestimated or deliberately exaggerated, from acid rain, deforestation, soil erosion, resource depletion, bee colony collapse, various toxic threats, the population bomb, etc., but that does not mean they are phony or insignificant. And the environmental policy record of most Republican Administrations is quite good, only Republicans seem not to know this or how to talk about it (or usually both). The environment for Republicans is like national defense for Democrats—an issue they don’t like, study, or make a policy priority.
I have a small dog in this fight. Back in 2015, I wrote a long memo on energy and environmental issues for the “Reform Conservatives” movement. Remember them? We could be—and were—accused of being “big government conservatives,” but at least we didn’t advocate for trade tariffs or government ownership stakes in industry. My memo included these suggestions, beginning with an inauspicious paraphrase of Jimmy Carter:
Conservatives need to get over their inordinate dislike of environmental issues. … There is one good reason for conservatives to engage environmental issues more seriously: The environment is much too important to be left to environmentalists. They just make a mess of things and have a stale playbook: more bureaucracy, political control over people and resources, and lawsuits. A sensible environmentalism is a naturally conservative issue. … To the extent that conservatives devote considerable attention to the necessity and the means of conserving “social ecosystems,” we should be equally up to the task of offering creative ideas for conserving physical ecosystems. …
Conservative office holders need to shed defensiveness about the environment and adopt exactly the reverse attitude with assertive confidence: we can do a better job of environmental protection than liberals and centralized bureaucrats.
The Reformicon movement was shortly swept away into the dustbin by someone unexpected, and hasn’t been heard from since.
But then I picked up the 2016 Republican Platform a year later, and came across this:
Conservation is inherent in conservatism. As the pioneer of environmentalism a century ago, the Republican Party reaffirms the moral obligation to be good stewards of the God-given natural beauty and resources of our country.
The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists. They are using yesterday’s tools to control a future they do not comprehend. The environmental establishment has become a self-serving elite, stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, subordinating the public’s consensus to the goals of the Democratic Party. Their approach is based on shoddy science, scare tactics, and centralized command-and-control regulation.
Seems like someone was paying attention after all. Alas, there was no GOP platform in 2020, and the stripped-down 2024 platform makes no mention of the environment at all. There are a couple of small but serious efforts within Congress to revive the older, less-ideological approach in search of newer and better ideas, but I agree with Adler: There needs to be a lot more.