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A CONSERVATIVE CONSERVATIONIST
PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER
The Greening of Conservative America, by John R. E. Bliese, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001. x + 339 pp.
THE FIRST THING TO SAY about this fine book is that it is much better than its misleading title. Professor John R. E. Bliese does not really argue that conservatives should join the Green Party or Greenpeace. While true conservatives have always been conservationists, their concerns for the environment are not properly "biocentric" or "ecocentric," but theocentric-born of the Biblical command that humans exercise stewardship over the earth. Conservatives may join "deep ecologists" and other real Greens in opposing the excesses of the anthropocentric conquest of nature, but they nevertheless part with the Greens in their insistence on the fundamental distinctions that separate man, the rest of nature, and God. As Bliese observes, there can never be even an ounce of pantheism in conservatism rightly understood. Natural piety must be for what God has given us. Still, while Bliese usually bases his judgments about scientific evidence and public policy on anti-ideological conservative prudence, occasionally his enthusiasm leads him to overreach: he himself becomes light Green.
Most of Bliese's opinions concerning environmental policy, polls show, are shared by most Americans, and much of his purpose is to reconcile conservatives with mainstream American conservationist opinion. Citizens in all prosperous democracies have become increasingly concerned with the quality of life, which includes, of course, the quality of their natural surroundings. Bliese seems to have been provoked to write this book by the near-disastrous attempt to repeal environmental legislation by the new Republican Congress of 1995. "Conservatives" in Congress appeared on the verge of allowing polluters to evade their responsibilities to their fellow citizens and to future generations. The fact that Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" did not mention the environment was even atactical error; it would have helped his party simply to have shown some concern.
Principled conservatives, for the most part, ought to work to replace inefficient and ineffective command and control legislation with more effective marketbased incentives for reducing environmental degradation. They should provide alternatives to meddlesome and litigious liberal schemes. But Bliese goes further. He insists that conservatives sometimes ought to find the free market alternative unacceptable. Not infrequently it...