Stewardship of the Environment

Common-Good Values, Part 6

Normally caring for the environment is seen as a Left-wing value. You rarely hear Conservatives talking about the environment, and when you do, it’s usually to criticize or ridicule the extremes of Leftist environmental policies. The result is that public discourse on environmental issues becomes increasingly polarized, as the Left veers further and further towards mystical New-Age worship of nature and the Right increasingly embraces a mentality of economic growth and profit at all costs regardless of the environmental destruction it causes.

But lurking behind the environmentalism debate is a common value that both Right and Left agree on: the importance of not being wasteful. This common value provides a meeting place where all sides of the political spectrum can find common ground to move forward with constructive environmental policies.

Finding Common Ground

Regardless of worldview, religion, ideology, or philosophy, most people can agree that being wasteful is a bad thing. Even those who live very wasteful lives in practice are unlikely to publicly praise wastefulness. For example, Conservative criticisms of Democrat environmental policies tend to focus on the economic impact or extremism of the policies rather than defending the wastefulness and destructiveness that those policies were designed to counteract.

What this means is that talking about wastefulness can be a helpful way to maximize the number of people who can see the problem and be motivated to solve it. A big business exec is unlikely to be moved by arguments about “nature” in the abstract, but talking about the need to reduce wastefulness is something even a businessman can understand.

A good example of an area that could benefit from this type of discussion is the current debate over recycling. Recently, Right-wing sources have increasingly been promoting the idea that recycling is an inefficient waste of resources rather than the means of avoiding wastefulness that it should be. The Left has (as far as this author has seen) been largely unable to respond to Conservative charges, likely due to their inability or unwillingness to discuss these issues in terms that most people can understand and relate to. Until the Left is able to make the case that recycling is a means of avoiding wastefulness rather than creating it, Democrats will find it extremely difficult to make progress on the environmental issues they care about.

By shifting the discussion towards avoiding wastefulness, the entire conversation will become more productive. Conservatives will be more likely to see the value in policies designed to counteract wastefulness, while the onus is put on Progressives to find workable solutions that are truly more efficient and less wasteful, rather than merely grasping for any policy that promises to be “environmentally friendly.” Progressives need to be able to prove in a practical way that their policies really can avoid wastefulness and increase efficiency in the long run, rather than passing policies by blind appeals to ideology. Unfortunately, in the recent past the latter phenomenon has been more common than the former.

Of course, merely talking about avoiding waste is not enough; people need something positive to aspire to, not merely a negative to avoid. Yet even here the concept of wastefulness is valuable, as it points the way forward to positive values that large numbers of people will find persuasive. For example, avoiding wastefulness implies that there is a positive and valuable resource to avoid squandering. Thus more positive ideas such as responsibility, stewardship, and the need to pass on a heritage to our children start coming into play.

How NOT to Talk About the Environment

Of course, the environmentalism debate in the recent past has for the most part not been framed in these terms. One of the main problems with how the Left generally talks about environmental issues is that the problems are often framed in terms that are only understandable or convincing to a relatively small subset of the overall population.

For example, Left-wing arguments about the need to care for the environment are often overly-reliant on a certain romantic view of nature that most people do not hold. Arguments involving the sanctity of “Mother Nature” may be persuasive for pantheists, Buddhists, some atheists, and neo-pagans, but are not likely to be particularly convincing for anyone else. Mere appeals to the need to reverence nature, or philosophical comments about the need to live in harmony with nature, are not likely to convince anyone who comes from a background that doesn’t emphasize these values. The result is that the Left has spent their time pouring large amounts of resources into finding ways to change peoples’ values rather than harnessing the values they already have to push through positive environmental policies.

Another poor strategy to motivate people is alarmism. Fear of impending environmental disaster can be a powerful motive for some people, but it is only likely to be effective in the short term. Over-reliance on fear tactics to push though environmentally-friendly policies eventually leads to the “boy who cried wolf” phenomenon—sooner or later, people will simply tune you out and stop listening to you. Long-term, this strategy will turn off neutral people and burn out even passionate supporters. This phenomenon is particularly evident with regards to Left-wing discourse around climate change, which bears much in common with the end-of-the-world alarmism that characterizes certain religious sects. Eventually alarmism breeds exhaustion, skepticism, and even contempt.

It’s a shame that the Left has put so much stake in appeals that large portions of the population are likely to find uncompelling at best or off-putting at worst. Such strategies are likely to cause more harm than good for environmental stewardship long term. What is particularly tragic is that this partisanship is completely unnecessary. Beginning with the importance of avoiding wastefulness, a whole host of related positive values could be used to make an appeal for better care of the natural environment. Related values such as responsibility, efficiency, good stewardship, and leaving a good heritage for future generations are all more likely to appeal to the population-at-large than nature-worship and alarmism.

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While it is highly unlikely that Republicans and Democrats will come to a consensus about climate change, conservation, or recycling any time soon, that doesn’t mean that there’s no path forward towards building one. Here Solidarians have an opportunity to avoid the past mistakes of Leftist environmentalism and promote a positive vision of a society that eschews wastefulness in favor of a responsible stewardship that will leave a beautiful world as a heritage for future generations.