Republican environmentalism As the vote on a cap and trade measure to reduce greenhouse gases looms in the Senate, we can ask, “Why is it that so few Republicans are committed to reducing the threat of the most serious environmental issue\u00a0facing civilization?”\u00a0It is not because there is a lack of environmentalism in Republican ranks.\u00a0Indeed, the 20th century started and ended with Republican environmentalism and those\u00a0actions sandwiched the greatest decade of environmental laws the world has ever seen, a decade led by, yes, you guessed it, a Republican. A new book out called “The Wilderness Warrior” gives a thorough account of President Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s effort to, among other things, establish a national park system.\u00a0He was eminently successful. The decades of the \u201970s saw more environmental laws enacted and signed into law than we are likely to see ever again.\u00a0President Nixon signed those laws.\u00a0And, finally, in the first use of a cap and trade program to achieve environmental benefits, the passage of the Clean Air Act amendments in 1991 ushered in a new form of environmentalism to cope with acid rain. That law was signed by President Bush, also a Republican. With this kind of legacy, why are Republicans not living up to their traditions? And, now a conservative joins the ranks of environmentalism. Elisabeth Rosenthal notes in\u00a0an article,\u00a0“Connie Hedegaard, Denmark\u2019s minister of climate and energy, feels little kinship with the green end of the political spectrum \u2014 people who stage sit-ins at power plants or vote for the Green parties in elections.\u00a0\u2018I\u2019ve never understood why the environment should be a left-wing issue,\u2019 said Ms. Hedegaard, with an exasperated sigh. \u2018In my view, there is nothing as core to conservative beliefs \u2014 that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation.\u2019” With a long Republican tradition in environmentalism and a plea from a conservative, why is climate legislation so difficult?\u00a0If we really were interested in the next generation as Roosevelt, Nixon, Bush and Hedegaard were and are, we should see a resounding vote in the Senate to confront the threats of global warming. Art Cooley, La Jolla<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republican environmentalism As the vote on a cap and trade measure to reduce greenhouse gases looms in the Senate, we can ask, “Why is it that so few Republicans are committed to reducing the threat of the most serious environmental issue\u00a0facing civilization?”\u00a0It is not because there is a lack of environmentalism in Republican ranks.\u00a0Indeed, the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Letter to the editor","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11593,11552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-no-images","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}