Thanks to some lucky quirks of geology and map-making, my home state of Utah encompasses some of the most varied, unique, and awe-inspiring landscapes in the world. You’ll find everything within our borders, from alpine meadows to the iconic red-rock deserts that countless movies have trained people to imagine whenever they think of “The West.” Hollywood location scouts love Utah, because pretty much any environment they need — including alien-planet weirdness — is within a day’s drive of Salt Lake City. As it happens, many of these same landscapes also contain vast mineral wealth, but due to another quirk — this one relating to history and politics — something like 60% of the state is tied up by the federal government in the form of national parks, military reserves, and designated wilderness areas. Given that Utah is culturally very pro-business and pro-development, as well as very anti-federal government, that doesn’t sit too well with a lot of people in these parts. Let’s just say residents of Utah tend to experience debates over environmental issues at a level of intensity that people who live in other places possibly do not.
For the record, I tend to lean more toward the environmentalist side of these debates, although I hasten to note that I don’t sympathize very much with the stereotypical treehuggers, i.e., the starry-eyed, misanthropic Edward Abbey fans who fantasize about dynamiting Glen Canyon Dam. Personally, I like driving a car and living in a fully plumbed, electrified, temperature-controlled, more-or-less permanent structure. I accept that such modernity comes with a price, and I’m also compassionate enough toward my fellow man to grok that the vast majority of ranchers, miners, loggers, and oil-rig workers are decent, hardworking people who are not out to rape and despoil Mother Earth, but simply want to make a living, often in locations where there aren’t many other career options.
That said, though, I’m utterly mystified by the other side of the political spectrum, whose attitude so often seems to be nothing short of unalloyed contempt for even the most mildest talk of conservation. You’d think the idea of restraining ourselves and setting aside something for the future, if for no other reason than to keep the family business going for the next generation, would appeal to conservatives. After all, the words “conservative” and “conservation” share the same root word, but no. What I hear coming from the right during Utah’s frequent environmental dust-ups is a defiant, almost gleefully lusty insistence that businesses be allowed to do whatever they want, wherever they want, to whatever extent they want. Or, to put it more bluntly, they seem to want to dig it all up, cut it all down, drive over every square inch of it in their giant SUVs, and burn everything as fast they can, maximizing their profits today for tomorrow we all die. The right’s response to the left’s environmental concerns — even such common-sense measures as the Clean Air Act, which seem as if they ought to be above partisan bickering in their obvious necessity — often strikes me as short-sighted greed. Or at the very least petty partisanship, i.e., if the liberals think its a good idea, we need to object to it. Never mind that it actually might be a good idea.
Perhaps I’m being unfair… but for what it’s worth, I’m not the only one who has that perception. Here’s what political blogger Andrew Sullivan — ostensibly a conservative himself, although he’s alienated himself from many on the right in recent years — had to say on the subject the other day:
When you feel no grief over a forest cut down or an old tree uprooted or a beloved beach eroded, you have ceased to be a conservative. When your response to the environment is solely instrumental – when you conceive it solely as something to be exploited rather than conserved – you are merely a capitalist. There are those who believe that conservatism is indistinguishable from capitalism. I am not one of them.
Hear, hear.
