Environmentalists who are conservative or Republican?

[SunWuKong]

are there any environmentalists who are conservative or who are Republicans? do people like these exist?

[snailpoo]

Yes. Me.

And judging from the votes in the Senate and the House, a lot of others too.

[CBC guy]

well, there are many Christians I know who are deeply concerned about the environment in the name of "caring for God's creation". So yeah they do exist but no one ever talks about them.

[pikachupacabra]

Pretty much the entire Sierra Club.

[mizhi]

My father is a conservative republican. For the past 10 years or so, he's been running companies that specialize in producing consumer and industrial chemicals that are environmentally friendly using processes that are non-polluting.

Mom is a shotgun shooting republican too. She's pretty damn environmentally conscious.

They exist.

Whether or not there are any in power is another question.

I often thought that what separated conservative and liberal environmentalists was that conservatives tend to take a more pragmatic approach to environmentalism that tries to strike a balance between caring for the environment and caring about human needs/wants. I don't know if that's entirely accurate though.

There are, ofcourse, people on both sides that give less than half-a-shit about the environment.

[Yeahman]

I'm fairly enviromentally conscious. But for me it has more to do with economics (waste is economically wasteful) and my desire to slow global warming than any desire to preserve wildlife. Honestly, when I see trees, I see potential parking lots.
I think most conservatives are the opposite. They don't care about global warming so much as they just love nature.

Enviromentalists tend to be liberal but the conservative ones usually come up with the best ideas. Emissions trading, for example. Or out-sourcing preservation management to environmental groups.

[Hiroshi2]

They would probably people who look at the issue with a little bit more common sense and logic, and not with an agenda, for example, the people who dare consider the possibility that maybe global warming is caused by natural cycles that man did not create nor prevent.


People like Al Gore would never talk about the fact that there is solid evidence supporting that idea, and that many scientists believe it.

[Russ]

In NY Times columnist Tom Friedman's recent Discovery Channel documentary "Addicted to Oil" he profiled a new political organization called the Set America Free Coalition. It is dedicated to reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and includes prominent conservatives as well as traditional enviromentalists.

Here is a video clip from the show about it:
http://dsc.discovery.com/beyond/play...bclid=82224665

And the group's website:
http://www.setamericafree.org/

[Yeahman]

Originally Posted by Russ

In NY Times columnist Tom Friedman's recent Discovery Channel documentary "Addicted to Oil" he profiled a new political organization called the Set America Free Coalition. It is dedicated to reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and includes prominent conservatives as well as traditional enviromentalists.

Here is a video clip from the show about it:
http://dsc.discovery.com/beyond/play...bclid=82224665

And the group's website:
http://www.setamericafree.org/

It was mostly a "Intro to Oil" documentary but I did learn one thing; We are placing tariffs on Brazilian ethanol while paying almost $4/gallon for our own!

[Faithless]

Is a "Spare the Air Day" a conservative or a liberal invention?

[Russ]

Originally Posted by ye110man

It was mostly a "Intro to Oil" documentary but I did learn one thing; We are placing tariffs on Brazilian ethanol while paying almost $4/gallon for our own!

Yeah, we're really shooting ourselves in the foot with that protectionist policy.
Not only that, the oil companies are putting up a lot of resistance to adding ethanol pumps at existing gasoline stations. At least I was glad to see Wal-Mart announce recently that it would be offering E85 at its stations.

[Yeahman]

Well you would need modifications to your car to use E85. Not too difficult if the car manufacturers see a demand. But ethanol is still more expensive than gasoline. It'd be nice if we could import Brazil's subsidized ethanol. In effect, the Brazilian taxpayers would be paying for our fuel.

[SunWuKong]

it's a lot easier for Brazil to use ethanol because they basically turn all that sugar cane into ethanol. the US has corn, but Brazil's fuel market is also a tiny tiny percentage of that of the US. basically i doubt we can produce or import enough ethanol for it to make a difference with today's technology. there is talk that what we need is to produce "third generation" ethanol, ethanol that's made from things like sawdust.

Originally Posted by ye110man

Well you would need modifications to your car to use E85. Not too difficult if the car manufacturers see a demand. But ethanol is still more expensive than gasoline. It'd be nice if we could import Brazil's subsidized ethanol. In effect, the Brazilian taxpayers would be paying for our fuel.

hah! we'll see how much longer Brazil's ethanol production keeps getting subsidised if the US starts buying it.

[shane]

On the first question, yes, there are plenty of conservatives who care about the environment. There are the hunting/fishing types who care greatly about wildlife conservation. There are the religious types who care about preserving God's creation. There are even neocons who want to reduce our dependency on foreign energy. But it doesn't matter. The current Republican party cares most about is certain large corporations, which is the main reason why our current administration has had such an abysmal environmental track record.

After all, the Union of Concerned Scientists did honor Texas for its efforts in pursuing green energy - link

As far as ethanol, there's too many political forces preventing us from importing Brazilian ethanol. The corn and oil lobbies make it pretty much a political impossibility.

[haplesshobo]

Originally Posted by shane

As far as ethanol, there's too many political forces preventing us from importing Brazilian ethanol. The corn and oil lobbies make it pretty much a political impossibility.

Exactly. As others have pointed out, there are enough problems with american made ethanol that third parties have labeled the support of it to be pork barrel politics. Some have even argued that it takes more total energy goes into making ethanol than you can extract from it. But, this product is important to corn growers and politicians need to appease that constituency, especially around the Iowa primaries.

The problem is that you could use different sources to get better energy extraction for ethanol than the corn based ethanol americans use such as sugar cane the brazilians use.