During Senate consideration of legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline an important milestone was reached on climate change. Five Republican senators voted for an amendment sponsored by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) stating that “climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.” While five is not a huge number, it hopefully signals that stewardship-minded Republicans are starting to finally assert themselves on climate. These five, Lamar Alexander (TN), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Susan Collins (ME), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Mark Kirk (IL), deserve our gratitude and encouragement for taking a genuinely conservative, fact-based stand on climate change. They need to hear thanks and kudos from stewardship-minded conservative and center-right constituents. Please contact them today. A similar amendment by Republican Senator Hoeven from North Dakota, which acknowledged human contribution to climate change but omitted the word “significantly,” came only one vote short of the 60 votes needed for passage. It garnered the support of 15 Republicans, that–in addition to the five above and Hoeven–also included Senators John McCain (AZ), Bob Corker (TN), Rob Portman (OH), John Thune (SD), Jeff Flake (AZ), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Orin Hatch (UT), Mike Rounds (SD), and Rand Paul (KY). These senators also merit encouragement from their constituents. And it is worth noting that these Republican Senators are not alone. Three likely Republican presidential candidates also acknowledge the basic facts of climate change. Jeb Bush and Chris Christie have been clear on this point, and just recently they were joined by Mitt Romney, who told those gathered at a conference in Salt Lake City that he is “one of those Republicans” who thinks...
With gasoline prices at their lowest in years, odds are that we will soon be seeing reports about gas guzzler sales on the rise, people traveling more, and maybe even a comeback of the Hummer. Such short-sighted responses might reflect human nature, but they are not conservative. Edmund Burke, widely regarded as the father of modern conservatism, considered prudence the key virtue in both personal and political decision-making. Given the historic volatility of gasoline prices, decisions that assume low prices going forward are certainly not prudent. Gas prices are lower, in part, because greater automobile fuel efficiency and driving habits are helping hold down demand. Reducing demand keeps downward pressure on pricing. If efficiency goes down and demand goes up, prices will respond in the opposite direction. The other reason gas prices are lower is increased supply. This is due to oil production coming from Bakken shale in North Dakota and the recent decision by OPEC to keep supply up. Producing oil from Bakken shale is more expensive than producing oil from the Middle East fields, and OPEC is trying to drive down prices to the point that Bakken production is no longer profitable. If OPEC’s gambit is successful, prices will go up due to decreased U.S. production. If it fails, OPEC will eventually have to cut production to bring prices back up. Either way, low prices are not here to stay. Furthermore, oil is a finite resource. We have already tapped much of world’s easily accessible and cheap to produce oil. Occasional price dips are the exception, not the rule. The prudent, and therefore conservative, response to low...
After multiple efforts in Congress–Republican and Democrat–to protect the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles have been stymied by a few public land opponents in the House Natural Resources Committee, the President used his authority under the Antiquities Act last month to grant the area extra protection as a national monument. It was the right move. The San Gabriel Mountains are an essential asset, providing LA County with most of its remaining open space for recreation and supplying a third of its drinking water. Still, there are those who–looking through partisan shaded lenses–were quick to criticize the designation. In an op-ed appearing in the Riverside/San Bernardino Press Enterprise, Bridgett Luther reminds everyone that protecting the San Gabriels has always been a bi-partisan endeavor and that Antiquities Act authority is a Republican tool. Luther served as Director of the California Department of Conservation in the Schwarzenegger Administration, is president of Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, and a former staff member of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. Click the link below to check it out: BRIDGETT LUTHER: Protecting San Gabriel Mountains is a bipartisan...
The world’s climate scientists have spoken and it would be prudent for our elected leaders to listen–especially those whose standard response to media and voter questions about climate change has been “I am not a scientist.” You don’t have to be a scientist to understand what is happening to our climate and recognize the need for action. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its Fifth Assessment Report. This is its first full IPCC report since 2007 and represents the culmination of five years of work by 2000 scientists combing through 30,000 studies. The Report concludes with a 95 percent certainty that man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are responsible for most, if not all, global warming since the 1950s and that those emissions have pushed atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to levels “unprecedented” in the past 800,000 years. It also concludes that the adverse impacts of this climate change are being felt now, and include massive forest die-offs, more frequent and severe heat waves, melting of land ice, changes in precipitation patterns and acidification of the oceans. The report calls for urgent action to reduce global GHG emissions and says failure to do so will inevitably lead to a drastically altered climate, along with mass extinction of plants and animals, extreme precipitation events, flooding of major cities, island nations lost to sea level rise, extreme heat, and drought–all leading to food shortages, displaced populations and tremendous economic loss. Decision makers have a moral responsibility to take these dire warnings seriously and work constructively towards solutions. In 1988 President Reagan, when faced with warnings...
Fifty years ago–September 3rd, 1964–the Wilderness Act was signed into law. This might not have happened if it was not for a staunchly conservative Congressman from Pennsylvania named John Saylor. Saylor, whose nickname was “Mr. Conservation,” was perhaps the most pivotal champion of the legislation in the House and deserves much credit for its bi-partisan appeal and almost unanimous passage. In the decades since, the Wilderness Act has been used to protect over 100 million acres of our nation’s remaining wild lands. This great accomplishment should be celebrated by all Americans, especially those who care about the future of conservatism. It was the vast American wilderness that greeted our forefathers which helped to forge our American identity and promote the traditional conservative values that we hold dear, such as personal responsibility, hard work, humility and faith. Today wilderness still reinforces those values for anyone who wants to explore them. For that we owe a debt of gratitude to all who helped make the Wilderness Act a reality, and to those who have since used it to protect these spectacular landscapes–which includes John Saylor and the president responsible for signing more wilderness bills into law than any other…Ronald Reagan. To read more about why conservatives should care about protecting wilderness, check out our Huffington Post piece Why Conservatism Needs...
