"The climate has changed and is still changing. It has changed even within the last half century."It did not take long after the onset of the Industrial Revolution for people to begin to notice that it was possible for human activity to have a deleterious effect on the environment. This week, President Donald Trump signed two new executive orders focused on the issue of Climate Change an Environmental Protection, mostly rolling back regulations put into place by executive orders enacted by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Having read the new Executive Orders, I felt it was necessary to elucidate a Republican's view of Climate Change. In the following, I quote a prominent Republican's comments on the topic.
"There are of course two kinds of natural resources. One is the kind which can only be used as a process of exhaustion; this is true of mines, natural oil and gas wells, and the like. The other, and of course ultimately by far the most important, includes the resources which can be improved in the process of wise use; the soil, the rivers, and the forests come under this head. Any really civilized nation will so use all of these great national assets that the nation will have their benefit in the future.... So we should leave our national domain to our children, increased in value and not worn out."One can readily see that the speaker is referring to renewable resources, and from the description given, it is clear that the speaker would agree that the term "the environment" would suitably describe the phrase, "the soil, the rivers, and the forests" quite tidily. So, in the subsequent quotes, I make a substitution of the more general word "environment" whenever the word "forest," or "river," or "waterway" is used in the original.
"Shortsighted persons, or persons blinded to the future by desire to make money in every way out of the present, sometimes speak as if no great damage would be done by the reckless destruction of our [environment]. It is difficult to have patience with the arguments of these persons. Thanks to our own recklessness in the use of our splendid [environment] ... no measures that we now take can, at least for many years, undo the mischief that has already been done. But we can prevent further mischief being done; and it would be in the highest degree reprehensible to let any consideration of temporary convenience or temporary cost interfere with such action."It was already abundantly clear in the heart of the Industrial Age that any effort at preserving the environment and its resources must necessarily require a curtailment of economic output. Similarly, any increase in economic activity must necessarily put a strain on the environment and its resources. It was clear that balancing these two forces was essential to maintaining progress as a nation both in moral and ethical terms as well as in the form of an emerging world economic power. The opening (Section 1) of the recent Executive Order acknowledges this:
"It is in the national interest to promote clean and safe development of our Nation's vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production, constrain economic growth, and prevent job creation. Moreover, the prudent development of these natural resources is essential to ensuring the Nation's geopolitical security.
It is further in the national interest to ensure that the Nation's electricity is affordable, reliable, safe, secure, and clean, and that it can be produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear material, flowing water, and other domestic sources, including renewable sources.This opening succinctly describes this balance that must be achieved between resource preservation, the use or resources, and the regulatory activity that does the balancing. The Executive Order then goes on to rescind a number of recent Climate Change Executive Orders that were written to perform such regulation. However, there is no instruction of a new regulation to leave in place of what was removed.
Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that executive departments and agencies (agencies) immediately review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources and appropriately suspend, revise, or rescind those that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources beyond the degree necessary to protect the public interest or otherwise comply with the law.
It further is the policy of the United States that, to the extent permitted by law, all agencies should take appropriate actions to promote clean air and clean water for the American people, while also respecting the proper roles of the Congress and the States concerning these matters in our constitutional republic.
It is also the policy of the United States that necessary and appropriate environmental regulations comply with the law, are of greater benefit than cost, when permissible, achieve environmental improvements for the American people, and are developed through transparent processes that employ the best available peer-reviewed science and economics."
"In the total absence of regulation of the matter in the interest of the whole people, each small group is inevitably pushed into a policy of destruction which can not afford to take thought for the morrow. This is just one of those matters which it is fatal to leave to unsupervised individual control. The [environment] can only be protected by the State, by the Nation; and even the liberty of action of individuals must be conditioned upon what the State or Nation determines to be necessary for the common safety.... Nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of the preservation of the [environment], and it is criminal to permit individuals to purchase a little gain for themselves though the destruction of [the environment] when its destruction is fatal to the well-being of the whole country in the future."But, as I mentioned above, a balance must be achieved. Just as it is criminal to allow unregulated exploitation of our national treasure of resources and the environment, so it is equally criminal to, in the name of environmentalism, so restrict the access and consumption of these resources as to throttle the technological and economical progress of the nation. At the time that the speaker from whom I am drawing was alive, one of the primary corporations exploiting the country's reservoir of natural resources was the railroad industry. Today, we might envision the various fossil fuel distributors.
"It is hard to say whether most damage to the country at large would come from entire failure on the part of the public to supervise and control the actions of the great corporations, or from the exercise of necessary governmental power in a way which would do injustice and wrong to the corporations.... The opposition to Government control of these great corporations makes its most effective effort in the shape of an appeal to the old doctrine of State's rights. Of course, there are many sincere [people] who now believe in unrestricted individualism in business, just as there were formerly many sincere [people] who believed in slavery -- that is, in the unrestricted right of an individual to own another individual.... The truth is that we who believe in this movement of asserting and exercising a genuine control, in the public interest, over these great corporations have to contend against two sets of enemies, who, though nominally opposed to one another, are really allies in preventing a proper solution of the problem. There are first the big corporation[s], and the extreme individualists... who genuinely believe in utterly unregulated business...; and, second, [those] who, being blind to the economic movements of the day, believe in a movement of repression rather than of regulation of corporations."Who is the Republican from whom I have been drawing these quotes? None other than the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. This, once upon a time, was the Republican stance on the environment, corporations, and governmental regulation. I believe there are still today conservatives from this mold who recognize that the ideal path forward lies in the balancing of resource utilization, environmental protection, and governmental regulation. Whether they can be found in the Republican Party, or among moderate Democrats, or elsewhere, I do not know. But Roosevelt's vision as he helped lay the groundwork for the founding of the National Parks Service, and for the regulation of corporations that had individually failed to act in the interest of the public, included the understanding that the demands of progress must be balanced against the need to preserve our environment.
In Roosevelt's day, the scientific evidence showed clearly that deforestation was having severe deleterious effects on the environment, and that allowing current trends to continue would be disastrous for both the country and the world. The magnitude of the damage was debated, but for the scientists studying the problem, it was clear that something had to be done in order to ensure a more equitable and moral use of the world's resources. The situation is identical today with regard to climate change. That increased carbon emissions lead to increases in global average temperature and can lead to significant deviations from "normal" climate behavior is established as clearly in the scientific data record as any such statement can be. Because the climate is such a complicated system there remains significant uncertainty in the magnitude and the manner of the changes that can be expected in each region; but that changes are occurring and that these changes are due to human influence can no longer be denied. Except perhaps for those who, like the slave owners of a sesquicentennial ago, could not see beyond the horizon of reason imposed by their world view. We as a society are too intelligent for the question of today to be "should we respond to climate change," but rather "how do we respond to climate change?" I'll close with a final quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
"We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized [people] is foresight; we have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future! We should exercise foresight now."100 years later, and we are still hoping to exercise such foresight.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cited articles:
- President Theodore Roosevelt, "Eighth Annual Message," December 8, 1908. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29549.
- All quotes except for the Executive order and the final quote are from this speech, essentially a State of the Union speech.
- President Theodore Roosevelt, "Conservation as a National Duty." (1908 May 13), Online at Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project.
- The final quote is from this speech, given at the opening of Yellowstone National Park.
- Executive Order—Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth
- Signed 2017 March 28
