Newt Gingrich has a new book out called A Contract with the Earth, which purports to outline a "green conservatism." For a summary, you can check out this brief op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
I approached it with an open mind -- eagerly, even. There's nothing I would like more than for a vibrant green conservatism to join the debate over the best way to accomplish green goals. That would be an enormous step forward from the current situation.
Unfortunately, the op-ed is a rather vaporous string of cliches. Here's the nut:
We emphatically reject as ineffective the liberal environmentalists' focus on bureaucratic command-and-control regulations to preserve our natural world. Instead, Green Conservatism believes that we can realize more positive environmental outcomes faster by shifting tax code incentives and shifting market behavior than is possible from litigation and regulation.
The obvious point to make here is that virtually every green I know supports "shifting tax code incentives and shifting market behavior." It may have once been true ('70s? '80s?) that greens were disproportionately and stereotypically liberal in that they relied too much on punitive regulation and demonized markets. But that moment has long since passed. For many years now, the most innovative market-based environmental strategies have come from greens. Greens are now entering the corporate world in huge numbers. Greens run companies and investment funds; they sit on corporate boards; they coordinate business/nonprofit coalitions; they focus on eliminating perverse gov't subsidies. Etc.
The difference is not that greens oppose tax shifting and market mechanisms -- the difference is that greens also support legislative, regulatory, and legal strategies. Their primary concern is solving the problems, not with the mechanisms for doing so. After all, why fight with one hand tied behind your back?
On this point it's worth referencing Jon Chait's fantastic piece in TNR last year, which made a simple point: for conservatives, the size and power of the government is an ideological matter; shrinking the gov't is a goal in and of itself. But progressivism is not the mirror image. For progressives, growing gov't is not a goal in and of itself. The goal is to solve the problems of the day.
The galaxy of green has exploded in the last decade. It's huge, diverse, and innovative, with thoughtful people attacking problems from every angle, from gov't regulation to corporate reform to grassroots organizing to individual initiative.
What Gingrich offers is not an "alternative" to today's environmentalism, it's a desiccated, ideologically constricted subset of it, pitched to appeal to the shrinking core of far-right ideologues in this country.
Why should the rest of us care?
Climate psychology in cartoons: clues for solving the messaging mystery
Comments
View as Flat
NonprofitWatch Posted 6:48 am
10 May 2007
Can't wait til he partners with Environmental Defense (Fund).
bernardo issel - http://www.NonprofitWatch.org -
bernardo (at) NonprofitWatch.org
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Werdna Posted 7:25 am
10 May 2007
One of the reasons I am optimistic about the future of America is that we will experience between four and seven times as much new scientific knowledge and innovation in the next 25 years as we have had in the past 100. This means that America will excel at precisely those capabilities that will be required to renew and protect our environment -- unless, of course, we saddle ourselves with higher levels of regulation and taxation.
Where does he get these numbers!?!?!
From my experience, scientific knowledge and innovation is on the decline in the States. For example, academic funding in my area (computer science) in the states is so hard to find that many professors simply cannot afford to do any research. Whereas academic funding in Canada and Europe is still healthy (which is one of the reasons why I moved to Canada). You see the effects of this at academic conferences where there are very few Americans attending even if the location is on American soil.
This is all related to the systematic strangle-hold that the current administration is putting on any science that is not directly related to bomb making (I'm serious...the only people I know who do have funding are those who can pique the ear of the military).
I know, I know, this rant has had nothing to do with environmentalism. But, I can guarantee that we will see the effects of this 5-10 years from now when the rest of the world has surpassed the US in terms of innovation and new technologies (both green and not).
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.liveableregion.ca/
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:01 am
10 May 2007
Judging by their actions, the dominant conservative agenda is to grow the size and power of the government, particularly the executive branch. By repeating statements like this one, David is accepting a false frame.
But there is clearly a component of the conservative movement, the part that is more closely aligned with the libertarians than the authoritarians, for whom this statement is true. And in that, they follow in the footsteps of those early American statesmen who understood that the government that governed best was the government that governed least.
There is a legitimate reason to prefer a small government, and to view with skepticism solutions that rely on expansion of its powers. The reason is very simple: The government is nothing more, and nothing less, than the institution sanctioned by society to initiate the use of force in resolving conflicts.
The military, the police, the courts, and the tax system are all functions that are grounded firmly in the ability to coerce and control. By association, most other government functions, including welfare and environmental regulations, also rely on the government's ability to coerce. These are necessary and useful functions, but they do ultimately emanate from the barrel of a gun. As such, they present a potential danger of corrupt power run amok, one much be weighed against the intended good that these functions provide.
I am not advocating anarchy, and I am not advocating that we shrink the government into irrelevance. I certainly don't support the neocon agenda of "starving the beast" through tax cuts -- the failure mode in that case is not a graceful one. I am simply saying that government regulation is a very powerful tool, one which should be used judiciously and with caution. We should not eschew it, but neither should it be the first place we look for solutions. Governments throughout history -- even nominally democratic ones -- have abused the power they have held, in proportion to the amount of power they have held. In that sense, the conservative fear of "big government" is well founded and worthy of consideration by progressives.
Just because "they" are the "opposition" does not mean that they don't have a point. (Although, as I noted, they are enormously hypocritical about practicing what they preach.)
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:03 am
10 May 2007
I meant to say "one that must be weighed against the intended good that these functions provide."
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Gary Gifford Posted 9:45 am
10 May 2007
The one glimmer of intelligence in the op ed is that Newt seems to be suggesting a revenue neutral carbon tax as a cornerstone to tax reform:Green Conservatism believes that we can realize more positive environmental outcomes faster by shifting tax code incentives and shifting market behavior than is possible from litigation and regulation.
I'll believe it when I see it, however.
Cheers,
Gary Gifford
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:24 am
10 May 2007
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Baby Boomer Posted 12:52 am
11 May 2007
He lost me with his opening which slams and blames instead of trying to chart a way to solve the problem. Sorry, he was insulting and condescending and lost me.
Sometimes people who are "environmentalist" aren't conservative or liberal. Sometimes we're just people who are concerned about the future of the world and what following generations are facing.
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JMG Posted 3:33 am
11 May 2007
I think your concern has everything to do with environmentalism, partly because so many environmentalists are counting on wondertoys to obviate the need for basic behavioral changes; the bottom line is that most of the hoped-for wondertoys bandied about on this site as if they were already available at Ebay are not now and will never be commercially available to any but a thin slice of people. The sooner people understand that the wondertoys are not going to save us, the better. I've read articles about several papers that suggest that the global pace of innovation is falling, not just here in the US.
Someone commented at length about the distinction between the Bush junta claiming to want to shrink government while actually growing it, and true conservative desire for limited government ---
Barbara Ehrenreich noted years ago that the supposed desire to shrink government was merely an intent to shrink those parts of it that actually helped people, while using the money left over to increase funding for the repressive parts. Certainly this was true for Reagan/Bush and Bush, and if you look at it, Clinton too--the prison population boom and the "war on drugs" continued at full throttle throughout the Clinton Administration.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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JMG Posted 9:43 am
11 May 2007
==
2. SCIENCE BUDGET: MAYBE WE COULD PRIVATIZE THE WAR IN IRAQ.
At the annual AAAS Science and Technology Forum last week, one-time physicist Jack Marburger, told science policy wonks that prospects for increased science funding are poor. Marburger observed that science has been held to a constant slice of the federal pie for the past 40 years, and he says it's not going to change now. He cited "competing societal priorities," by which he must mean the war in Iraq. "New researchers will
either find new ways to fund their work, or they will leave the field."
3. NASA BUDGET: CLIMATE EXPERTS WARN THAT EARTH IS GOING BLIND.
Seventeen years ago, Dan Goldin, then head of NASA, pushed hard for a major effort, called Mission to Planet Earth, to monitor changes in Earth's environment from space. The head of the Space Subcommittee, Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), hated the idea, and transferred funding to the Space Station
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN97/wn111497.html .
I recalled the episode when I read an op-ed in Wednesday's Washington Post in which the heads of the three top climate/oceanographic labs warn that the shift of NASA funding to Moon/Mars is threatening observations of our own planet
at a very critical time.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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