Hostility to Environment Concern is Betrayal of Conservative Tradition

As conservative commentator Rod Dreher wrote recently in the Dallas Morning News: “The GOP's knee-jerk hostility to environmental concerns is not only a betrayal of conservative tradition but also costs Republicans credibility with young voters.”

The tradition about which Dreher wrote is the philosophical rootstock of conservatism, which in many ways has been forgotten or, worse, twisted into a grotesque caricature.

Conservatism as it is widely defined today is not your father's conservatism. It is your grandfather's. As first articulated by British statesman Edmund Burke and further refined by Kirk and other 20th century writers, traditional conservatism is an ethic of moral responsibility to the society of which free individuals are a part, including unborn generations whose prospects are in our hands.

Decades before environmental stewardship emerged as a public policy issue, Burke laid the philosophical groundwork for the conservative ethic of stewardship by likening society to an intergenerational contract. The present generation is obligated to take good care of what has been inherited from past generations. It is a trust responsibility to future generations.