We Can Have Green Conservatism -- And We Should
by Newt Gingrich
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20393
Posted: 04/23/2007

I had a debate a couple weeks ago with Sen. John Kerry -- followed by
a speech last week -- about something called "green conservatism."
Some of my old friends have approached me to ask why I'm spending so
much time talking about the environment -- and with a former
Democratic nominee for President no less.

The answer is simple: For the last 36 years, I have watched the
pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation liberals label themselves
as the only Americans who care about the environment.

The leftwing machine would have you believe that to care about clean
air and water, biodiversity, and the future of the Earth you have to
both buy in to their catastrophic scenarios and sign on to their
command-and-control bureaucratic liberal agenda, including dramatic
increases in government power and draconian policies that will
devastate our economy, as the only solution to environmental
challenges.

The time has come to define a fundamentally different approach to a
healthy environment and a healthy economy. The time has come for the
development of Green Conservatism as an alternative to big bureaucracy
and big litigation liberal environmentalism.

Conserving Our Environment, Not Expanding Our Government

Before I talk about what I mean by Green Conservatism, I want to say a
few words about how I got to this belief and why I think it's so
important for the future of our movement.

I first became interested in conservation when I was a kid in
Pennsylvania. Notice that I use the word "conservation." It reflects
my fundamental disagreement with today's liberal environmentalists. I
believe we should be good stewards of the natural world. We should
"conserve" it for our benefit and our children's and grandchildren's
benefit, not use it as an excuse for massively expanding regulation,
litigation and bureaucracy.

In any case, as a child I originally wanted to be either a zoo
director or a vertebrate paleontologist because I was fascinated by
the natural world -- and still am. In 1971, I participated in the
second Earth Day and became the coordinator of an interdisciplinary
Environmental Studies program at West Georgia College. In my
commitment to the environment, I was echoing the conviction of two
well known Republican leaders. The first was President Theodore
Roosevelt, who said that "the nation behaves well if it treats the
natural resources as assets, which it must turn over to the next
generation increased, and not impaired, in value." The other was then
Gov. Ronald Reagan, who upon the occasion of the first Earth Day said
that "[there is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against
the debauching of the environment."

Liberal Environmentalism: Radical, Hysterical and Inaccurate

I care about conserving our environment. But for too many years,
liberals have defined what it means to care about the environment --
and too often at a level that is so radical, so hysterical and so
inaccurate that the first reaction of conservatives is to oppose them.
Without articulate conservative leadership on conservation

has too often been that conservatives are labeled anti-environment.
For too long, we have not led with our solutions for the environment,
while liberals propose and dominate the debate with ill-conceived
regulations, a focus on litigation instead of science, and a focus on
taxes instead of markets and incentives.

liberals to monopolize and hold the high ground on a subject of great
concern to all Americans. With your help, I want to change that.

We have every reason to call out all outlandish, fear-mongering
exaggerations -- but that doesn't mean we should stop there when it
comes to the issue of the environment.

For example, former Vice President Al Gore suggests that global
warming is so bad that we could have a 20-foot rise in the oceans in
the near future.

true. But if the debate becomes, "Al Gore cares about the earth, and
we're against Al Gore," we end up in a defensive position where the
average American could end up perceiving conservatives as always being
negative about the environment.

Green Conservatism: Pro-Freedom, Pro-Market, Pro-Environment

I'd like to offer you a different view: You can be totally committed
to conservative principles -- to individual liberty, a market economy,
entrepreneurship and lower taxes -- and still be a Green Conservative.
You can believe that with the sound use of science and technology and
the right incentives to encourage entrepreneurs, conservatism can
provide a better solution for the health of our planet than can
liberalism.

So what is Green Conservatism? Here are its basic values:

Green Conservatism favors clean air and clean water.

Green Conservatism understands biodiversity as a positive good.

Green Conservatism favors minimizing carbon loading in the atmosphere
as a positive public value.

Green Conservatism is pro-science, pro-technology and pro-innovation.

Green Conservatism believes that green prosperity and green
development are integral to the successful future of the human race.

Green Conservatism believes that economic growth and environmental
health are compatible in both the developed and developing world.

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.

We Can Have Green Conservatism -- And We Should
by Newt Gingrich
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20393
Posted: 04/23/2007

I had a debate a couple weeks ago with Sen. John Kerry -- followed by
a speech last week -- about something called "green conservatism."
Some of my old friends have approached me to ask why I'm spending so
much time talking about the environment -- and with a former
Democratic nominee for President no less.

The answer is simple: For the last 36 years, I have watched the
pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation liberals label themselves
as the only Americans who care about the environment.