In Search of a New Environmentalism -- Hayward Replies

Steven Hayward has the final word in the recent Law & Liberty Forum on the future of environmental policy.

Last month, over at Law & Liberty, Steven Hayward initiated a conversation on the need for a "new environmentalism" and what it should look like. To close out the conversation, Hayward has responded to comments on his initial essay offered by Richard Morrison, Allan C. Carlson, and yours truly.

Hayward's whole responsive essay is worth a read, but I though I would highlight the portion that responds to my comments (and not just because it is flattering).

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.

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.

As Hayward notes, there are occasional signs that some within the Republican Party recognize this problem, but there has yet been no sustained effort to provide a meaningful (let alone principled) alternative approach to environmental protection, and this a problem.

Comments

[ScottK]

Professor Hayward must have a staggering wealth of knowledge of the natural sciences to conclude that each of the environmental issues that he identifies has been blown out of proportion by the mythical left.

There’s another possibility also.

[Drewski]

Indeed. Only you have the requisite background to judge the field, obviously.

[ScottK]

You seem to have changed the subject, Ivan.

[Social Justice is neither]

So in search of a new skin suit or messaging for the rotten commie ideology at the core of modern environmentalism, got it.

[thesafesurfer]

You would think that environmental science or a related science would be a requisite for environmental policy. Apparently not.

Environmental science is now the purview of bureaucrats who studied to be bureaucrats and work in the ivory tower.

Buckley was right, choosing names out of the phone book is a better option.

Professor Hayward has a B.S. in business from Lewis and Clark College, an M.A. in government, and a Ph.D. in American studies from Claremont Graduate School. He has been a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, and is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. He writes extensively on political, environmental, legal, and economic topics for major publications such as National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Just think of the possibilities of unelected judges increasing their control of society and legislating from the bench on the "new environmental law."

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The politics of x is always much different than the science of x, unfortunately. Profs. Hayward and Adler are writing about the politics of environmentalism, not the science.

As for judges, people like you only complain about their "unelectedness" when you disagree with their rulings. Just more bad faith.

[thesafesurfer]

You embrace posting out of ignorance. Bravo! You know nothing at all about me.

I reject "unelected" judges making political decisions. Politics is EXCLUSIVELY the realm of elected representatives.

The good professors are writing about environmental policy without a shred of scientific background.

You have an amazing grasp of virtually nothing at all. BRAVO!

[ScottK]

If a state attorney general sues the federal government for withholding funds previously allocated by Congress, which way does the court have to rule in order for the decision not to be a political one?

Take all the time you need.

[Martinned]

The environment for Republicans is like national defense for Democrats—an issue they don't like, study, or make a policy priority.

It's much worse than that. Not only are the Trumpists dismantling what little environmental law the US has, they are also bullying other countries into not adopting environmental laws and dismantling things.

For example, a new treaty on combating shipping pollution, which at one point was nearly agreed, is dead in the water after the US Regime took out its big stick and started intimidating everyone from small Carribean nations to the actual fucking EU.

https://www.politico.eu/article/us-accused-threats-eu-diplomats-bid-to-kill-green-shipping-rules-negotiations-personal-intimidation/

I am at a loss to understand why they would even do that, other than out of a principled hatred against everything that's wholesome. It's not like the US has a serious shipping (or ship building) industry.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Not only are the Trumpists dismantling what little environmental law the US has,"

The US is suffocating under environmental law. Despite having a comprehensive set of natural resources, such as rare earths, we find we have to import many vital materials from other, less stifled countries, because we're not allowed to use our own natural resources.

[Sarcastr0]

I actually agree environmental law has become needlessly costly.

That you go straight to ending it shows that you're not really critiquing in good faith, though.

[Brett Bellmore]

Where did I say to end it?

Your basic problem here is that, once you think you've identified somebody's ideology or group, you stop responding to what they actually write. Instead you respond to your internal model of that group, and what they actually said hardly matters at all.

You read into instead of reading. It makes discussing anything with you almost impossible.

[apedad]

So a little "suffocating" is OK and now we're just arguing where to draw the line.

Got it.

[Sarcastr0]

Did you read the OP?
It’s not about regulations at all!

Or Prof. Adlers original post, which was about market based solutions, not regulations.

You are embodying the OP’s point about knee jerk anti-ism on the right.

[Michael P]

Oh, the irony.

[MaddogEngineer]

This, a thousand percent!

He'll probably accuse you of more BrettLaw, to avoid the substance of anything you say. One can disagree without resorting to such tactics. But apparently not him. Because if he's decided you are guilty of wrong-think, you are arguing in bad faith and only deserve ridicule.

This is what happened to me recently when I expressed skepticism about immigration enforcement from both sides, but was unwilling to reflexively condemn the administration. It seems the same thing is true about the environment. One can be theoretically supportive of environmental regulation, but if you do not accept any/all Democrat/environmental advocate enforcement schemes, no matter how onerous, you are the enemy.

[Martinned]

The US is certainly suffocating under something.

https://www.lung.org/research/sota/key-findings

Apart from that, it's not my fault that your politics is so toxic and so captured by special interests that you're unable to deliver a functioning regulatory system.

[Joe_dallas]

typical activist report.

Martin fails to notice the inconsistencies in the report. Air quality has improved dramatically since the 1970's yet somehow the improved air quality leads to greater health problems.

[Martinned]

Better than the 1970s isn't much of an accomplishment...

[Joe_dallas]

perhaps you should brush up on actual history and actual factual science .

you arguing from a point of view with a lot of distorted facts.

[NvEric]

And, the special interests in the UK is open borders for hoards of Muslims to rape women ?

[Incunabulum]

>what little environmental law the US has

Lol

[Incunabulum]

Because maybe what they were doing would not and was not intended to combat shipping pollution (which is not a serious problem compared to, say, Chinese coal power plants) but to increase the power of UN bureaucrats?

[Martinned]

Even if that were true, what business is that of the US, if the US doesn't ratify the treaty?

[Incunabulum]

The costs will need to be paid for shipping into and from foreign ports.

[thesafesurfer]

You specialize in completely preposterous claims, "what little environmental law the US has."

Wipe the egg off your face at the earliest possible opportunity!

[Martinned]

I guess one might fairly argue that the US has lots of environmental law, as in words on the page. Bureaucracy has never been the problem in the US. I meant to measure the amount of law in terms of its impact, not word count. I apologise if that was not clear.

[Joe_dallas]

if you are going to measure in terms of its impact , then you should measure on actual impact instead of your typical distorted leftist talking points.

[dwb68]

So far every environmental problem has been overestimated. We are going on 27 years of hockey stick climate hysteria, the polar ice caps are still there. There is less starvation and 3x the number of people on the planet than when Population Bomb was written.

Radiation too. Bring on the nukes.

The developed worlds "baby crisis" is probably the next non-crisis. People will figure out how to have kids, later. technology will help them. Evolution is undefeated.

Environmentalism needs to be grounded in solid peer reviewed repeatable science, or its junk.

[apedad]

"So far every environmental problem has been overestimated."

Maybe but isn't that a good strategy to ensure at least some real issues are addressed.

We live in a 24/7 internet/media/politics society and one has to get above the noise level somehow.

[dwb68]

isn't that a good strategy to ensure at least some real issues are addressed.

Absolutely not. 10,000 mg of aspirin is toxic. 85 mg is beneficial.

When everything is an apocalyptic catastrophe, nothing is an apocalyptic catastrophe.

By exaggerating the harms and dismissing any benefits or trade-offs, environmentalists force regulators into a net-zero policy. Sierra club used to be pro-natural gas because natural gas was cleaner than coal. Now they are anti-everything. The fact is: solar panels are made with caustic acids and coal fired power in china so that's ok... I guess?

So as a result of being anti-natural gas, the electricity grid has become unreliable when the wind blows, and electricity prices have skyrocketed in the northeast. Some of the high prices can also be blamed on the cost of transmission... and heaven forbid we build some power lines across someones property to transmit cheap power to New Jersey,

The harms/risks of nuclear power have been exaggerated for years, due to a few high-profile accidents (fortunately, now, the tide seems to be turning on that, too).

Once the apocalyptic harms prove to be unfounded, no one listens anymore. Environmentalists maybe should read a western classic about a boy who cried wolf.

[apedad]

"When everything is an apocalyptic catastrophe, nothing is an apocalyptic catastrophe."

Apparently you don't watch Fox News.

(Hey, how do you guys get the italic writing?)

[Sarcastr0]

italics is via open and close tags.

So "[i]" to start italics and then "[/i]" to end them.

But use the greater-than less-than signs instead of the square brackets.

Yes, dwb68 is doing both a confirmation bias and a double standard.

[Brett Bellmore]

Same with "b" to bold text, and "s" for strike-over.

[apedad]

[MaddogEngineer]

You're right, I don't watch Fox News, for this very reason. Yet I agree with dwb68's observation here.

Next question!

[Sarcastr0]

EVERY environmental problem has been overestimated?

London Fog? Rivers lighting on fire? Silent Spring? Hole in the Ozone Layer?

All of those were predicted, occurred, and then we had to scramble to address them.

[Incunabulum]

No. It's a strategy to waste money and creat an ossified bureaucracy *that can not* respond to a real problem.

[Martinned]

We are going on 27 years of hockey stick climate hysteria, the polar ice caps are still there.

I think what you meant to say is that *some* polar ice caps are still there.

https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/ice-sheets/

[Joe_dallas]

you should know by now that using truncated data sets is not very scientific

[MaddogEngineer]

Your problem here is that the United States could cut our emissions to zero tomorrow, yet this would still happen because of China and India.

You have no reasonable answer to this. Beyond claiming we can "negotiate" something with them.

Germany had to shut down its nuclear plants because the Green's hate nuclear energy. Environmentalists here hate fracking, even though natural gas replacing coal has lowered US emissions slightly despite energy consumption growth. But it's not zero. It's difficult to find a solution with such people. Especially when they, just like the German Greens, are hostile to nuclear power. And going all in on renewables doesn't completely supply existing energy needs.

No one is going to care how steep the hockey stick is if you're advocating for a lower future standard of living. But it's much more satisfying to demagogue.

[Sarcastr0]

China is cutting emissions already. Their air quality was one of those environmental crises you seem to think are invariably exaggerated.

Some greens hate nuclear energy, some do not. Some environmentalists hate fracking, some do not. You're lumping a group of varying views together, and nutpicking it into a monolith of things you disagree with.

No one is going to care how steep the hockey stick is if you're advocating for a lower future standard of living.
We already do this with plenty of resources, from recycling to solar subsidies. Not even Americans are locked into profligate living as a personal entitlement.

[Martinned]

Not to mention that climate change doesn't exactly help maintain/improve standards of living. FEMA costs. (Unless you do it Trump-style, of course.)

[Brett Bellmore]

"Not to mention that climate change doesn't exactly help maintain/improve standards of living."

Magically, the climate is already ideal everywhere, so that any possible change has to everywhere be for the worse. [/sarc]

Reminder: By a very large margin, more people still die of cold than heat.

[Poxigah146]

Many conservatives are environmentalists. The reason we don't listen to the left on these matters is the left uses so called environmentalism to try to transfer wealth to the third world. That's the only explanation for the cap and trade and exceptions for developing nations.

[Joe_dallas]

minor correction - the transfer of wealth is to leftists

[thesafesurfer]

CORRECT!

[Joe_dallas]

minor correction - the transfer of wealth is to leftists

[Krayt]

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.

It was also editorialized back in the 1970s that, as class warfare started to falter at the polls, those who sought to control business moved on to environmentalism, also then called ecology.

There's been plenty of progress on cleaning things up. But we're way beyond that with extra, needless (and faddish) costs. It took longer to fight the legal battles to dredge some South Carolina harbor 5 feet deeper to handle new "Superpanamax" ships than it took to build the original Panama canal.

This is an empire in collapse. An economic empire, whose leaders have turned to lording over the people and their trade, rather than keep the trade routes open. That's precisely why dictatorships and nominal democracies lousy with corruption have terrible economies.

We still do a good job on the high seas, but internally, yeesh. Build green dams? Forget it. But China's 3 Gorges dam is 70x the size of the vaunted Hoover dam. And they're building another 3x as large as that.

You can't just brazenly get in the way, you need a good cover story. This is a sickening evolutionary process, with hyperbolated issues to line pockets one way or the other.

De-plague us, murderous plagues.

[Drewski]

There really isn't anywhere left in North America for a really big dam. And Three Gorges was built for flood control - if it had been built for power generation it would be a financial disaster. The electricity is a side benefit. It's 70 times the size of the Hoover Dam, cost hundreds of times more, costs thousands of times more in maintenance, and produces 10 times the energy.

[thesafesurfer]

What CCP fund paid for your post?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, he's right, there really isn't a good location for a large hydroelectric dam; Everywhere you might still build one, you'd be flooding too much already inhabited territory. (People LIKE living near water!)

[bernard11]

As Hayward notes, there are occasional signs that some within the Republican Party recognize this problem, but there has yet been no sustained effort to provide a meaningful (let alone principled) alternative approach to environmental protection, and this a problem.env

The problem, as I see it, is that even those Republicans who are willing to admit that we have environmental problems are always eager to point out why they think proposed solutions are useless, and are unwilling to suggest solutions of their own.

[Incunabulum]

Because the proposed solutions are always useless and often there just isn't a practical solution available.

It's no use proposing a solution that people won't let you implement. It's no use proposing a solution that impoverishes. Unless you are willing to start shooting people that sort of solution - which are the only ones the Left has - people won't let you do it.

[Sarcastr0]

You can tell someone who isn't serious by their use of superlatives.

'the proposed solutions are always useless' is just you not thinking hard enough.

We solved the hole in the ozone layer with environmental policy.

And the idea that the left only has solutions that involve shooting people is plumb loco.

[Poxigah146]

Exactly. When they say that their proposed CO2 emissions will help by 10-15% in 100 years, it makes you realize their goal is BS.

[Incunabulum]

>To be sure

And then bro lists a dozen things that turned out to actually be insignificant, if not outright hoaxes.

[gVOR08]

“ but there has yet been no sustained effort to provide a meaningful (let alone principled) alternative approach to environmental protection, and this a problem.” As with healthcare, they have “concepts” of solutions. And like healthcare they’ll never move on to action. That would piss off too many lobbyists.

[ScottK]

Exactly right, the beneficiaries of negative externalities spend just enough of their wealth to ensure a compliant Congress. A senescent Russian stooge addicted to disaster porn is just the cherry on top.

[Incunabulum]

>A senescent Russian stooge addicted to disaster porn is just the cherry on top.

Yeah, well Biden got voted out so that problem is done.

[NvEric]

Political parties are like people except more stupid.

[anahelen882]

This discussion on the future of environmental policy is both insightful and necessary. Hayward and Adler highlight an important truth—environmental stewardship should not be a partisan issue. A balanced, principled approach can align conservative values with sustainable progress, ensuring responsible governance without excessive bureaucracy. Just as thoughtful regulation is essential for public safety, clarity and consistency in laws like https://thegunlaws.com/texas-constitutional-carry/ are crucial for building trust and accountability.