They only favor states' rights when it gives them the power to pollute the environment or eliminate individual rights.
Example: Was it "conservatives" or "libertarians" or "moderates" who prevented California from enforcing its own standards for auto emissions and fuel efficiency within its own borders?
Forcing their will and the will of their lobbyists on those below them. Conservatives' professed interest in smaller more, individualized and localized solutions is a shell game.
> an active and large pro-pollution element in US politics right now
No, there is not. Rather there is a Democratic strawman that they enjoy attacking.
What there is, is an element that doesn't want energy disruptions, and isn't willing to compromise on that. Look at this table: https://www.fool.com/research/renewable-energy-by-state/ and notice how with the exception of California, all the states with high renewable percentages are conservative leaning.
Conservatives are not reluctant they care about the environment themselves but they are reluctant with regards to letting the federal government determine who the winners are and I would tempt to agree with them.
As an example, shale gas did more for US CO2 reductions than any policy ever did while at the same time providing cheap energy and to conservatives, cheap energy is just as important as clean environment some would even claim those two go hand in hand.
I find the opposite to be true, democrat managed states produce more emissions and despite being branded as environmentally-friendly, prove otherwise by supporting anti-growth initiatives that ultimately reduce our ability to tackle environmental issues.
> One of the downsides of being a red state is less will to address environmental concerns like this.
This is patently false. Some of the most beautiful states in the country are home to "red" policies, and there isn't any evidence to the contrary that being "blue" makes anything better, considering some of the most polluted states in the country are blue.
California, for example, you might think has beautiful parts because of "being blue", but California wasn't always "blue", and it wasn't until the 90s where it started consistently going blue...which means the majority of it's natural beauty was designed and led under "red" leadership. Same for Colorado.
There is plenty of "red" environmental think tanks these days. Mostly everyone agrees the environment is worth protecting, just disagree the ways of going about it. Check out the American Conservative Coalition, for example, which argues for a more reasoned approach to tackling climate change, one that many here would find agreeable, such as including natural gas as a transitional energy source off oil and coal, and utilizing nuclear power. https://www.acc.eco/
Environmental protection was historically a conservative thing. "Conservation" and all that. Free markets were a left-wing thing in the past. These things aren't set in stone.
CSU (a conservative / right) is the only party that strongly is in favor of the 10H rule, which is responsible for stopping wind energy (it says that people need to have a distance of 10*heightOfThePlant to the plant
what you call environmentalists are mostly NIMBYs. The green party, actually, is in favor of abandoning 10H.
Do republicans really want to destroy the environment at any cost? Do they really want dirty air and rivers that are on fire due to chemical pollution? I don't get it. Where's the rational thinking? There's not even an obvious motivation of greed here - the automobile industry doesn't want the emission regulations to be turned back (cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/climate/automakers-califo...).
A reason the right is so against this is because aspects of their lifestyles are targeted by climate activists (who are largely on the left), while the left, especially left politicians, don't see much need to alter their lifestyles. They still fly (rich ones in private jets), use the AC, and get tax breaks on EVs that still run on energy generated by oil and gas, all while screaming that the world is ending, declaring themselves superior, and spewing derision like the above.
Perhaps if we both sides had some self control and didn't make everything left vs. right we could solve problems.
The folks who don't care about the environment are not conservatives in general, but the big money that owns the corporations that do resource extraction and their employees, who happen to be mostly in conservative areas. Which gives a lot of people the wrong idea about conservatives.
Plus a few ideologues who idolize the free market and don't care about externalities. Which also gives people the wrong idea about conservatives.
Having a revenue-neutral carbon tax (or cap-and-trade) has been the environmentalist left’s primary goal this whole time.
When Washington state tried to do that, most environmentalist groups opposed it because it returned the revenue to taxpayers rather than spending it on their pet projects: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/washington-state.... (Yes, most Republicans also opposed it, and they're wrong).
If you were going to criticize the left for rejecting basic science, the whole “nature vs. nurture” controversy would be a much better example.
Totally agreed. I only didn't mention that because it has more of a tendency to derail the conversation.
To caricature, the left wants to apply the precautionary principle to the environment but has no qualms about the destruction of national history, culture, etc. whereas the right is supposedly the opposite. Personally I'm a small c conservative, in that I oppose the destruction of the environment just as much as I oppose the ongoing push to erase individual nations.
Progressives tend to already support/buy in to conservation issues, so reaching and tapping In to the political right is where you can get the most bang for your buck.
The obvious question is why can’t other groups reach the conservative environmentalists? Some progressive leaning environmentalist groups embrace ideals which can be at odds with conservative views, while only being tangential to important things like wilderness conservation. Some progressive leaning environmental groups use ‘evil conservatives’ as a fund raising meme. Some simply identify as progressive and don’t leave any room for conservatives.
Truth is, in a huge chunk of this great nation, the people that enjoy, visit, and use national wilderness the most are conservative. They’re hunters and multi-generation farmers and ranchers. Sure, one of them might leave a beer bottle on the ground behind their skyjacked F250, but if they caught you poaching a doe out of season there’d be hell to pay.
and shit on the environment. this comment thread is full of the exact condescension that conservatives and libertarians are sick of. People who uphold the Constitution and the vision of the Founders are comically uninformed? Stanford's Hoover Institute is comically uninformed? What a joke.
I’m not following your example. You clarified in another comment that Louisiana is environmentally decimated due to the actions or votes of the blue states. However Louisiana typically goes hard red, and the GOP is very much opposed to environmental protections.
Also I’m not sure what you mean by them pushing all the bad stuff to Louisiana and what that has to do with presidential elections (aside from that the president sets EPA policy, but again, Louisiana voted for trump so I don’t get it)
One thing to note is that environmentalism itself has undergone some very odd political shifts and realignments. 70s-era conservationists have more political ground in common with Donald Trump now than they do with their ostensible successors fighting climate change. The Sierra Club of that era wanted to shut down the US immigration system because exporting that way of life was considered an environmental catastrophe. Similar concerns over overpopulation were used to dogwhistle racism - after all, the problem isn't us, it's them.
I suspect this is also why California is full of NIMBYs. While there are plenty of loud-and-proud right-wingers in that state, they're also far easier to circle the wagons around. If you are a racist in California it's more effective to do the normal liberal virtue-signalling thing, and then concern-troll the shit out of literally anything in your state that might actually make progress towards your stated goals. It's the "rich Mexicans only" strategy. Correctly point out the injustice of the American immigration system, but find every excuse you can to build a shadow immigration system out of housing costs and property tax grandfathering that's far more opaque and biased.
He was referring to the political right in the states. Historically speaking, in 70s/80s, even Nixon, passed laws for conserving the nature, protectionism and etc. At some point there was a switch into “nah, screw the environment” to align with the voter base.
Example: Was it "conservatives" or "libertarians" or "moderates" who prevented California from enforcing its own standards for auto emissions and fuel efficiency within its own borders?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/climate/trump-california-...
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