Republicans are disingenuous. They would only try to claim the environmental mantle for political point, not that they have ever believed in it.. Just like the so called "compassionate conservatism", or "health forests". What they say and what they do can be polar opposites.

"Republican environmentalism"

It's a nice idea.

But it can't be done, or it would have been done.

There are environmentally conscious Republicans. You don't have to believe me. Read Kate Riley's column in the Seattle Times.

Kate Riley / Times editorial columnist/ June 2, 2003.
Teddy would be proud of these 'conservatives'
I'm weary of extremism on environmental issues.
Extremists, whether self-anointed "environmentalists" or self-righteous property-rights advocates, distort arguments and gloss over facts. They trot out snazzily worded but superficial solutions, simple and portable enough to recount at the office water cooler or in public-policy discussions at the highest levels.

The truth and the most plausible solutions to the battles — not to mention the purest intentions in many cases — often lie somewhere in the middle.

Which is why I should not have been surprised recently to find several dozen of my favorite kind of people — moderates regardless of stripe or ideology — spending the better part of a day learning about conservation efforts that seek to avoid regulatory skirmishes and courtroom battles. Meet the Mainstream Republicans, a group itself born of a desire for moderation when the extreme right had seized control of the state party a few years back.

I was at the Chelan convention participating on a panel of journalists talking politics, but I hung around afterward for something far more interesting — a celebration of on-the-ground solutions rather than benign acceptance of political game-playing and lawsuits as the means to conservation.

"We're calling it Green GOP," said organizer Louise Miller, former King County Council member and legislator.

I guess. Two presenters invoked the name of Teddy Roosevelt. Ninety-five years ago last month, the famous Republican president and noted conservationist urged assembled members of Congress, the nation's governors and Supreme Court justices to consider careful stewardship of the nation's resources.

In the White House speech, Roosevelt warned, "The natural resources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them."

That is a concern that weighs heavily on Christopher T. Bayley, chair of Stewardship Partners, with respectable and respective pedigrees in Republicanism, public service and environmentalism.

But he and other noted Republicans are trying to find ways to replace the old wasteful methods of saving natural resources — oppressive regulation and costly litigation.

"It's time to take back the bully pulpit of conservation that Teddy Roosevelt used so well," Bayley told the crowd.

Noted King County Councilman Rob McKenna: "The base of the word conservative is 'conserve.' " He's a "Big Tent" Republican invited to speak about the Evergreen Forest Trust.

Richard Nixon's name came up, too. Remember, he formed the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Endangered Species Act into law. And don't forget former U.S. Sen. and Gov. Dan Evans, the Republican statesman who championed state environmental laws.

Stewardship Partners might as well advertise as a bridge-builder, considering the success it has had finding ways to encourage conservation through incentives rather than regulation or litigation.

The group's latest project is its largest: The Nisqually Glacier to Sound Stewardship Corridor brings together the Nisqually Tribe, foundations, the federal government and landowners, among others, to connect a national park to a national wildlife refuge.

The Stewardship Corridor, says the Web site, "will serve as a model for how landowners and communities can link 'islands of protected habitat' and can conserve watersheds through community developed, voluntary initiatives, rather than through regulation and 'locking up' the land." (Check it out: www.stewardshippartners.org/)

A board member of the Evergreen Forest Trust, McKenna is proud of the organization's innovative efforts to use the productive value of forestland to help the forest essentially conserve itself. Federal legislation is pending to help the group gain authority to enter private capital markets by issuing tax-exempt bonds to raise money for conservation. The trust buys the forestland, conserves part of it and manages the rest to pay off the bonds, using best industry practices that exceed state and federal environmental regulations.

"We have a phenomenal partnership of diverse interests that at one time were really divergent interests," McKenna said. According to the trust's mission statement, it "was created to meet the public's desire to permanently protect forests from development and sprawl while maintaining the economic benefits of forestry."(www.evergreenforesttrust.org)

How refreshing. Find solutions without increasing the need for punitive regulations or costly litigation. And these efforts are hinged, in part, on loyal members of a party that, often unfairly, takes hits for not being on the side of the environment.

Roosevelt would be proud.

Kate Riley's e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com

After Congress bankrupts America, you'll see what a lack of conservation looks like when China cashes in the debt we owe them. They will lay claim to vast tracts of our resources. It will be like a bankruptcy sale in which our assets will go to the highest bidder. I would not be surprised if they don't lay claim to Alaska in payment of debt. China already is dictating rules to Congress.

Progressives think they are helping the environment, when in fact, they are shifting production from the efficient to the inefficient (offshore) through high taxation, irrational rules, legal entanglement, and orneriness.

As an example of the death grip China soon will have over America, read China’s Rare Earth Elements Industry: What Can the West Learn, a report by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS)
http://www.iags.org/rareeartIAGSh0310hurst.pdf.

Interesting column by Kate Riley -- 7 years ago. These are the kind of Republicans I remember when I started voting in the 1970's, and I often voted for Republicans like she writes about.

But what's happened since then? and since she wrote in 2003? The GOP has lurched even farther to the right, under sway of tea partiers and talk-show crazies, leaving Rooseveltian Republicans but a fond and distant memory. And occasional also-rans in Republican primary contests.

Let's ask Chris Vance for comment and follow up on this topic.

Jackson unquestionably did some terrific things for the environment. But in his balancing act ("“Jackson was not an ecology freak who considered industry a villain or development an anathema. He was a balancer who believed in the possibility and necessity of reconciling environmental protection with robust economic growth”) he did some wretched things, perhaps the worst of which was his unrelenting promotion of dams on the lower Snake River. These were not dams needed for power production, flood control, or water storage. They were essentially subsidized transportation corridors for wheat growers, and a huge construction (jobs) program for E WA. And as predicted since the 1940s, the dams have not turned Clarkston/Lewiston into an economic powerhouse, but have destroyed an economically vital fishing industry.
Perhaps political balancing acts always leave people on both sides a little disappointed. In any case, I wish we weren't spending $700 million year on ineffective salmon "recovery" measures for the lower Snake dams.

I recently received a solicitation to donate to the Republican National Committee. One of the reasons that they wanted me to contribute was to combat the "environmentalists".

What does that mean? It doesn't mean that Republicans are anti-environment. It does mean though that they are very much an advocate of individual property rights trumping communal/societal rights. For example, we see the same issues here in King County over stream set backs for farms.

The time though is past for Scoop Jackson style environmentalism. For unlike in his time, we are facing real limits to growth. During Scoop's time, we could still increase the size of our fisheries, we could increase our timber harvest, we could increase our population and manage it through more freeways and suburban development.

In our time though, individual actions inevitably now have implications on the communal good. The Republicans just can't fathom that there are any limits to growth and that rights of community take precedent. Until they do, there can be no Republican environmentalist. Just try to imagine a Washington State Republican Party without support of the Building Industry Association of Washington who still espouse these views. Can't do it, can you?

The RNC in its fundraising solicitation appeals to those react emotionally and irrationally to the concept of limits. And that is why they are successful.

The article makes many good points. While Jackson could be considered a conservationist by the standards of his day, it's worth remembering that:

The Park and Wilderness areas he is credited with were invariably drawn to exclude trees and dammable rivers. "Wilderness On The Rocks" is something we are trying to fix today. He introduced bills to remove forested lowlands from Olympic National Park (est'd 1938.)

He was responsible for Forest Service roadbuilding budgets that ran into hundreds of millions of dollars per year (when that was real money,)and left the legacy of tens of thousands of miles of fish killing, collapsing roads, not to mention the millions of acres of old growth forest on public lands logged at public expense for private profit. Jackson deserves more credit for the destruction of Northwest public lands old growth forest than any other single individual.

NEPA: Yes, it has turned out to be a powerful tool for good. Had Jackson foreseen the use that would be made of it, it never would have happened.

The reason this story is not about Dan Evans?

In the early 60s there was only one ecology freak in need of balancing — Rachel Carson. Thank you for pointing out how BOTH parties fell all over themselves to adopt the still current practice of floating the appearance of high standards while continuing to finance robust economic growth.

Ecology freaks persevered to the point of crashing the mid 1980s stock market with the release of a UN sponsored report called "Our Common Future." The 'conservative' float that defanged that one was 'interpretation of 'sustainable development' as techno-optimism, i.e., robust economic growth offers the only hope of eliminating third world poverty. Both parties are still very happy with that one. The only argument being over who gets to bet and how much on what technology. Ecology freaks having persevered to the point of distracting the public with the notion that the planet can not consume at the U.S. standard of living think. The float now balancing that? Long lists of inconsequential ways to contribute without having to give up the good life,, e.g. jetting multiple times a year to eco-vacations and climate change conferences.

Both current parties are hopeless, and even if they were not figuring out a 'mature' economy is not going to be easy:

"Only in a more egalitarian society is it possible to develop policies that are truly in the public interest, for only in such a society do enough citizens share enough interests so that these can be considered public interests." Herb Gans http://www.c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/your_columbians/herbert_gans.html

"Professor Gans has never been afraid to tweak orthodoxy. His book on Levittown and his study of popular culture were rebuttals against common middle-class leftist intellectuals' depictions of these topics."

Snoqualman: So you think we're managing our National forests better today? You continue to push this logging at public expense BS. Tell me how this works, I never saw it while logging forests service sales myself.

I think this article has merit, but the devil is in the details. The forest trust model has serious problems because there is insufficient revenue generated to actually repay the bonds.

It would have been much better had we had a sensible forest policy all along instead of GMA and Fish and Forest, which has hastened forest land conversion when that option has been available to landowners.

It would have been better to completely deregulate private forest land owners with the promise they remain in forestry, than what we have today.