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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Media: Insane Honesty (May 31, 2001) The other morning, a New York Times critic did what most critics try hard not to do—he let his guard down, fell for something he thought was terrific, and unashamedly praised it. It was great. By William Powers Legal Affairs: Does the Death Penalty Save Innocent Lives? (May 31, 2001) Abolishing capital punishment could lead to an unknown number of murders. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: War of the Sun Belt Giants (May 31, 2001) White voters' social values send Texas, California in opposite directions. By William Schneider Social Studies: The Widening Marriage Gap: America's New Class Divide (May 23, 2001) What afflicts America is no longer mainly a poverty problem or a race problem, but a marriage problem. By Jonathan Rauch Media: This Year's Model (May 23, 2001) Maybe C-SPAN's approach suggests how the quality news media can avoid being left in the dust. By William Powers Legal Affairs: Medical Marijuana and the Folly of the Drug War (May 23, 2001) The most obvious proof that marijuana alleviates some patients' pain is that so many of them say so. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: Government by Gender Gap (May 23, 2001) The elements of competition and risk in Bush's policies appeal to men. By William Schneider More from National Journal. |
On Books 
Gift Wrap It for a BushieA review of John R.E. Bliese's The Greening of Conservative America. by Margaret Kriz ..... John R.E. Bliese completed The Greening of Conservative America well before the November presidential election (and the somewhat later verdict on who had won), and so his book obviously can't take into account George W. Bush's recent actions on the environment—which, so far, haven't at all followed Bliese's tenets. But because his book wasn't intended to be a campaign tract—indeed, it's remarkably free of partisan blather—it doesn't seem dated. Bliese sets out to answer a rhetorical question: Is "conservative environmentalism" an oxymoron? His answer, of course, is no. Just what constitutes a "conservative," however, is open to question. According to Bliese, who is an associate professor of communication studies at Texas Tech University, many politicians who campaign under the conservative banner are using the word in vain. Bliese argues that true conservatives believe that they have a personal responsibility to protect the environment, and they don't tie their views to cost-benefit analyses. He equates conservative politicians who neglect the air and the water with liberals who are soft on crime. "All forms of pollution are violations of the conservative principle of freedom," he writes. The author also shrugs off property-rights advocates, who argue that the proper way for environmental activists or the government to preserve land that is somehow special or to save an endangered species's home turf is to lease or buy the land, outbidding businesses that want to somehow turn a profit on the property. Bliese's cure for America's environmental ailments is the free market, which he contends is "usually friendly to the environment, if it is allowed to work properly." The author contends that environmental tiffs could be minimized if companies were forced to take responsibility for their products' impact on society, from inception to disposal. He envisions requiring coal companies, say, to foot the bill for a solution to the nation's acid-rain and global-warming challenges and charging car drivers for building roads and alleviating the health problems created by the pollution spewing from their gas-guzzlers. As a result, products that pollute would cost more, spurring development of more environmentally friendly technologies, according to Bliese. He also argues for a dramatic reduction of governmental interference in the marketplace. Not only should environmental regulators stop micromanaging business, Bliese says, but Congress should also stop subsidizing individual industries. When government intervention to reduce pollution or preserve environmentally sensitive land is unavoidable, Bliese offers a variety of market-based incentives to replace liberal "command-and-control" regulatory dictates. He details the steps needed to protect and rehab the environment, using such conservative tools as pollution taxes and marketable permits. For example, under a marketable pollution-permit system, regulators set a ceiling on industry's total emissions of a pollutant, and companies decide whether to buy or sell pollution permits, depending on the costs of cutting their emissions. That type of system, established by former President George H.W. Bush, has been successful in curbing U.S. emissions of sulfur dioxide. Bliese's book reads all too often like an academic treatise, which is to say it can be pretty hard going. It builds on the works of such contemporary conservative writers as Gordon K. Durnil, an Indiana Republican who in the 1980s was U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission, the American-Canadian agency that monitors water quality in the Great Lakes. Durnil's 1995 book, The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist, described his personal awakening to the nation's environmental problems. But where Durnil wrote about his own experiences, Bliese primarily assembles the thinking of others into a compendium of environmental ills and conservative solutions. What about global warming? The author describes a path not taken by the current President Bush. Bliese's remedy includes a tax on carbon-based fuels to encourage the use of cleaner alternatives, and the creation of a broader emissions-trading program requiring companies to ratchet down their discharges of several chemicals, and gases, primarily carbon dioxide. That's a far cry from George W. Bush's blithe flip-flop from a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, to his recent call for construction of new coal-fired power plants. For the long term, the author asserts that energy efficiency and cleaner energy sources are the nation's best bet for sharply reducing America's emissions of global-warming pollutants. Although those technologies are now too expensive to compete with coal and oil, Bliese argues: "If the prices of fossil fuels included the costs of the damages they cause—as both economic theory and conservative principles say they should—then renewable energy sources would already be competitive or very close to it." The result, however, would be much higher electricity and gasoline prices—not a politically popular notion. Bliese's book provides an interesting overview of the often-neglected conservative policies that have worked, in some places and under some circumstances, to clean the water and scrub the air. But he notes at the end that even President Reagan, the conservatives' icon, didn't offer market-based solutions to replace the environmental regs he rolled back during his term. And it's questionable whether Bliese's book will win any converts in this Administration.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. Staff Correspondent Margaret Kriz covers environmental matters for National Journal. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. |
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