Morning Wire - Finding Common Ground on Environmental Issues | 4.20.24

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

For Earth Day we speak to Benji Baker about his new book “The Conservative Environmentalist” about how Democrats and Republicans can put aside differences to improve the environment. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earth Day is April 22nd, a day that has largely been the focus of left-leaning activists, but a new book makes the case for why truly effective and sustainable environmental protection can only really be achieved by embracing conservative values and common sense solutions. In this episode, we talk with the author of the book, The Conservative Environmentalist, about why he thinks conservatives and liberals should be able to find common ground on energy and environmental gains. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. April 21st, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Benji Backer, author of The Conservative Environmentalist, Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future.

Benji, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. First, as to the title of your book, What is a Conservative Environmentalist? Well, we think back to the days of the 1980s and 1990s when environmental progress was actually championed by conservatives. and almost every conservative thought of themselves as an environmentalist. That today has not been the case as it's become overly polarized and taken over as an issue by the left. But to me, a conservative is an environmentalist. A conservative environmentalist does have alternative viewpoints to that of those on the left.

But conservatives inherently do care deeply about these issues. We live in nature. We recreate in nature. We rely on nature for a lot of our livelihoods. and we've ceded this ground to the other side that has allowed the policy discussion to go away from where we need it to go. And so conservative environmentalist sounds like something that's hypocritical or against what we all know in today's political narrative. But it didn't always use to be that way and it doesn't need to be that way. So in your view, what's wrong with the current approach to environmentalism?

Well, it's obvious that the approach taken on by the far left has included the top-down, approach that's biased towards resource-rich urbanite communities and it left out a lot of real-life American communities in the middle and lower class and in rural areas and all over the country that are not in that resource-rich area. It's a mindset that really is encapsulated in the Green New Deal. It's mandates, it's regulation, it's shoving ideas down people's throats. It's picking winners and losers. And it's actually not as much about the environment as it is about economic overhaul. That's where that side has gone wrong, but that doesn't mean that there aren't approaches that work within conservative values that we just aren't pursuing.

How can conservative values drive environmental progress without sacrificing things that are so important to conservatives' economic interests, first and foremost? How can you do that? How can you balance those interests? It's actually pretty easy. There's a really amazing environmental agenda that I outline in my book, the conservative environmentalist, that outlines a pro-American, pro-people, pro-community, and pro-economy environmental plan. And it's one that includes all sources of energy. We need natural gas. We need coal. We need nuclear. We need solar, wind, geothermal. We need all these different things. And how can we work to make them all more efficient, all more environmentally effective while doing more of it here in the United States that we're not ceding the ground to Russia,

China and other adversaries. That's one example. Another example is onshoreing more mining production and manufacturing in the United States so that we can bring those jobs back home and take it away from those countries that pose a national security risk for us. Another example is equipping farmers and ranchers and rural communities with the resources they need to be as efficient and as effective as they can be because similar to energy and mining are communities that are doing the farming, ranching, forestry, do it more effectively and more environmentally friendly than other countries. It's really an America-first agenda in a lot of ways that also protects the environment simultaneously. But it also importantly relies on the local know-how and the community know-how

instead of having the government dictate what we can and can't do. The reality is we have different geographies in the United States that pose different environmental challenges and do expect a wind turbine to be successful in Arizona where it's not very windy or a solar panel to be effective in Washington State where it's very rainy isn't very smart. We need to be playing on the local community know-how that our different people across the spectrum and across geographies know. And instead of having the government try to force things down our throats, allow the decisions to come from the ground up. You mentioned the Green New Deal. How does your vision for solutions to environmentalism and economic interests differ from the Green New Deal?

The Green New Deal is a policy proposal that's basically just a platform that says we need to spend $93 trillion to mitigate carbon emissions in this country. There's no talk about continuing American oil and gas production. There's no talk about conservation. There's no talk about farming and forestry. There's no talk about most of the important areas that our country needs to turn to when it comes to environmental protection. And instead of saying that we are going to have a balanced approach, it says that the government needs to get bigger, that mandates and regulations need to be the center of everything, and that technology, innovation, and capitalism are against the environment. I believe wholeheartedly that all those things are not true. We need to unleash the forces of

entrepreneurship and innovation in the American marketplace. We need America to lead the world in those good ideas. And it's not going to be the government that's going to solve this, our environmental challenges. It's going to be individual leaders who are dedicated to finding innovative solutions. You look at Tesla and Elon Musk or even the Prius, which was the first successful hybrid car, those were born out of free market, market-minded mechanisms in Japan with the Prius and the United States with Tesla. And there's a reason that they've worked. It's because they're not relying on the government for support. They're relying on innovation and entrepreneurs. And if we can't prioritize the marketplace and prioritize innovation, we won't get anywhere. And that's something that the Green

New Deal doesn't talk about. In addition, it's trying to pick whether or not we can use different sources of energy. We need energy reliability and affordability and environmental protection simultaneously. But we cannot do that without nuclear. We cannot do that without oil and gas. And we cannot do that without geothermal and hydropower, other sources of energy that were not ever included in the Green New Deal. So the Green New Deal couldn't be more different than this approach. And the approach I've outlined in the book basically makes the case that the Green New Deal actually harms the environment more than it does good. And that if we really truly want to prioritize our communities and our nature and the places that we love, we need to move away

from that mindset and come up with our own, which is outlined throughout the book as well. You've made the point of how unnecessary government regulations can actually hinder renewable energy projects. Could you elaborate on how you believe government intervention actually creates bottlenecks and not results? Yeah, it's very clear to most people who are following the clean energy and energy landscape at this point that the government is the biggest barrier when it comes to deploying American energy. And you can take a look at something like a nuclear plant or an offshore wind farm or any energy project that needs to go through a permitting process with the federal government that's taking 10 to 12 years just to get a permit approved. Where the only comes

country in the world that's having these unnecessary, rigorous standards that are ending up bottlenecking all sorts of projects. And of course, over 10 or 12 years, technology changes, finances change, the national security landscapes change, all sorts of things change. And so by the time you have a permit approved, that project might not even be helpful in the way that it would have been if you could have started it a decade earlier. So we need to be getting government out of the way. And that doesn't mean that the government doesn't have a role in this. But instead of restricting progress and instead of inhibiting progress, it should be encouraging progress by allowing people to do what they do best. And that is to build and create and do things in their community and have the government

only step in as necessary. Another argument you make is that climate solutions should be additive to people's lives rather than revolutionary. What do you mean by that? There is no way that someone is going to prioritize environmental protection over putting food on their table or having enough money in their bank account to pay their mortgage. We need to come up with environmental solutions. We have an obligation to come up with environmental solutions that make people's lives easier, that lower the cost of living their life, that make their lives more efficient. And instead of asking them to pay more, do more, and be more, we should be allowing technology to come in and say, hey, actually, if you drive this fuel-efficient hybrid, which is something that a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle have embraced, it will save you money at the gas pump. Those are the sorts of things that even though a hybrid has been used as a political tool in some ways, it isn't seen as political for people who are trying to buy a vehicle because they want to save money at the gas pump. We need more solutions like that. If energy can be cheaper, if conservation can be cheaper, if more efficient farming practices can be cheaper, people will adopt them. But pretending,

that we should just ask somebody to pay more for an electric vehicle or pay more for solar panels on their roofs, we can't afford that as Americans, and we can't expect that from Americans. The environment has to come at an economic opportunity for the average American. It can't be against their livelihoods. This sort of begs a question, and I think overarches this discussion. There's tension points where you have competing priorities at times. It sounds like to me what you're arguing is that you have to take into account this psychological reality that people will often choose the more economical or beneficial choice for themselves rather than what might be good in the long term hypothetically in decades to come. How do you navigate these tension

points between what's good for the environment and what's good for the individual? We have to make environmental protection benefit the individual because short-term priorities will always trump long-term priorities. Just look at our national debt. Our national debt continues to skyrocket, and it's never the most important issue because you can always kick the can down the road. Thankfully, with environmental protection, you don't have to keep kicking the can down the road and keep degrading our environment. There are ways to implement environmental protection into daily lives without hindering our ability to live those daily lives. And in fact, protect the ability to have food on our tables and pay our mortgages and do the things that we need to do, environmental

protection doesn't have to be at odds of that. But if it is, if the policies that we pursue, are at the odds of individual liberty and individual economics and, you know, families, we will never be adopted long term. So the most sustainable, no pun intended, long-term environmental solution is actually the one that is short-term, the most helpful as well, because people will actually adopt something that makes their lives better. And the political left has largely focused on solutions that don't make people's lives better right now for the sake of people's lives being better in the long term. But I know firsthand, and there's so many solutions out there that prove that discourse wrong. Final question. Do you see hope in a more bipartisan

approach to this issue, to environmentalism and renewable energies, more efficient energy sources? Are you seeing signs that there's progress there? Absolutely. There's an opportunity for bipartisan progress on this. And the reality is most people on the political left don't buy into the AOC, Bernie Sanders Green New Deal mindset. It's just the only thing they've ever heard of. Most Americans care about this issue deeply, but don't want the solutions to come at the expense of their pocket books. And in this era of toxic political narrative and partisanship and tribalism, the environment should be a way for Americans to connect with each other, respect with each other, despite those differences, because it was before. We used to have this cross-partisan collaboration, this cross-ideological

collaboration. And we can do that again. We just need to extract it from the culture wars and find solutions that work for most people. But the political divide will never let us actually solve critical problems like this. And I think that's where this could be kind of that first issue that brings us back towards sanity in the political world. And it will actually be conservative solutions, people who have been the most hesitant, understandably. As a conservative, I totally understand why. We can get back into this conversation and build that bridge. And Really what it all comes down to, and the reason that that's probably the most possible issue to do it on, is because we all share a stake in protecting the environment equally. And we're better off working together because this is about protecting our communities, our quality of life, our neighborhoods, our economy, our country, and our environment.

It's not just about the environment. Well, a fascinating and obviously important debate going on now about these issues. Benji, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you guys having me on. That was Benji Backer, author of The Conservative Environmentalist, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.