Think green, Vote Republican

The Media and the Left may say that Republicans aren't for the environment, but reality proves otherwise.

The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed an Act of Congress in 1864 that set aside California's Yosemite Valley for public use, which later became Yosemite National Park. Theodore Roosevelt, another Republican president, was a noted conservationist who set aside millions of acres for public use, as well as created the US Forest Service. Ronald Reagan also believes in caring for the environment, and was never happier than at his humble ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

More recently President George W. Bush created the world's largest marine conservation area in the world around Hawaii. President Bush's ranch in Texas, it should be noted, is a sustainable operation with a smaller footprint than Al Gore's massive mansion that consumes more energy per month than the average US home does in a year.

Today, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a well respected figure in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, is aggressively making the case for "green conservatism." As he correctly points out, not only are there conservative solutions to today's environmental problems, but they are the best solutions.

While Democrats continue to put down the US for not joining the Kyoto protocol, few other signatories actually reduced their emissions anyway. Furthermore, all this has been going on while China has been increasing its emissions at a rapid pace, adding roughly the equivalent of another United Kingdom's worth of emissions per year. Al Gore's alarmist film made it seem like doom and gloom was just around the corner, but the authoritative study by the UN said otherwise. And what was going on while all the eco-pundits and covert socialists were slinging accusations and crying wolf? Real innovators were coming up with solutions to real problems, creating better methods of harnessing wind power, more efficient solar panels, and more.

Blogs like EcoGeek.org show us how technology and development are making a cleaner, more efficient world a very real reality. Companies like Nanosolar, based in California, have developed better methods of making solar panels that are cheaper and faster to produce - all because of science and private industry. One need only look to a Republican's opposition to big government and needless bureaucracy to know that we're for efficiency, and that's a very good thing. In all, our ingenious system of free enterprise, not the heavy hand of bureaucracy, will put our environmental concerns to rest.

Finally, we should remember that, like most things in life, there are costs and benefits to global warming, environmentalism, and the like. As a Russian professor at UCI noted, "there are many in Moscow who wouldn't mind global warming." It may be a little humorous, but is also insightful. Warmer temperatures could also allow more crops to be grown and harvested, reducing global famine and humanitarian crises. For that matter, the increase in temperatures is still debatable, and therefore so is any policy tied to it. The reality is that there are bigger problems in the world, both environmental and otherwise, which are far more important that whether or not the mercury will be a tick higher in a hundred years.

For more information on global warming, environmentalism, and a practical, sensible approach
to environmentalism, check out the work of Bjørn Lomborg, who's two books "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It" take a sober, realistic look at the challenges ahead.

Remember, when you "think green," think Republican.