For those of us who haven’t already, don’t miss out on the paper this was based off of. It’s a serious banger for anyone interested in the situation on the ground and probably one of the most interesting and relevant papers this year.
It’s not something to miss just because you don’t find environmentalism itself very valuable; if you think about it for a while, it’s pretty easy to see the reasons why they’re a fantastic case study for a wide variety of purposes.
Here’s a snapshot of the table of contents:
(the link to the report seems to be broken; are the 4 blog posts roughly the same piece?)
Newt Gingrich started out as an environmentalist (and a former member of the Sierra Club), but later turned away from it.
Even after he left congress, he still had some sympathy for environmental issues, as he wrote the book “Contract with Earth” (with an EO Wilson forward).
Newt can be surprisingly high openness—a person oriented towards novelty can be pro-drilling (accel), pro-geoengineering, and pro-environment (which can be decel), and maybe not reconcile the two together in the most consistent way. He has been critical of both parties on climate change/environment issues (just as Mitt Romney has been, who scores low on the LCV but who really does care about addressing climate change, just not in the “punitive” way that the Democrats want to see it addressed). Free-market environmentalists who do care have different approaches that might on the surface be seen as riskier (just as making use of more energy gives you more resources to address the problem faster even while pumping more entropy into the system).
But his high openness (for a Republican) seems to have also made him more stochastic, or inconsistent.
The book generated a storm of media attention in late 2007 and early 2008 as the U.S. presidential campaign began to heat up. Gingrich in particular made numerous media appearances arguing that the Republican Party was losing popular support because their response to environmental policy was simply, as he put it, “NO!” Maple toured the country as Gingrich’s stand-in, most notably before the Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP, www.repamerica.org) during their annual meeting (at which John McCain was endorsed as the most “green” of the Republican presidential candidates). In 2008 Gingrich published another book that advocated oil drilling, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, and many pundits called his environmental commitment into question. However, this book’s fifth chapter provided an argument for environmental protection. Like many aspects of Gingrich’s career, his interest in environmental issues has generated controversy.
Ronald Reagan was surprisingly pro-environment as governor of California (Gavin Newsom even spoke about it when he visited China), but later was seen as anti-environmental by environmental groups as president (esp due to his choices of Secretary of the Interior) and his generally pro-industry choices. George H.W. Bush was surprisingly pro-environment in his first 2 years (ozone, acid rain..), but was advised to no longer be pro-environment b/c it would not sit well with his base..
the LCV seems to take the view that all drilling/resource extraction (or industry) is bad, but it still is done somewhere, and if not done in America, is just outsourced elsewhere. This still has the effect of reducing pollution in the US (as outsourcing manufacturing has done), which has made America’s PM2.5 values lower than those of all but a few countries.
====
Now that CA appears likely to pass SB-1047, it seems more probable that Republican states will go against it (simply because they, esp Desantis [who valorizes not being CA], want to “own the libs”—esp as @BasedBeffJezos notices).
For those of us who haven’t already, don’t miss out on the paper this was based off of. It’s a serious banger for anyone interested in the situation on the ground and probably one of the most interesting and relevant papers this year.
It’s not something to miss just because you don’t find environmentalism itself very valuable; if you think about it for a while, it’s pretty easy to see the reasons why they’re a fantastic case study for a wide variety of purposes.
Here’s a snapshot of the table of contents:
(the link to the report seems to be broken; are the 4 blog posts roughly the same piece?)
Thank you !
The links to the report are now fixed.
The 4 blog posts cover most of the same ground as the report. The report goes into more detail, especially in sections 5 & 6.
Do you have a link to this paper? It would be great to read, thanks!
http://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Why-Did-Environmentalism-Become-Partisan-1.pdf
Newt Gingrich started out as an environmentalist (and a former member of the Sierra Club), but later turned away from it.
Even after he left congress, he still had some sympathy for environmental issues, as he wrote the book “Contract with Earth” (with an EO Wilson forward).
Newt can be surprisingly high openness—a person oriented towards novelty can be pro-drilling (accel), pro-geoengineering, and pro-environment (which can be decel), and maybe not reconcile the two together in the most consistent way. He has been critical of both parties on climate change/environment issues (just as Mitt Romney has been, who scores low on the LCV but who really does care about addressing climate change, just not in the “punitive” way that the Democrats want to see it addressed). Free-market environmentalists who do care have different approaches that might on the surface be seen as riskier (just as making use of more energy gives you more resources to address the problem faster even while pumping more entropy into the system).
But his high openness (for a Republican) seems to have also made him more stochastic, or inconsistent.
https://archive.ph/LsZeh
Ronald Reagan was surprisingly pro-environment as governor of California (Gavin Newsom even spoke about it when he visited China), but later was seen as anti-environmental by environmental groups as president (esp due to his choices of Secretary of the Interior) and his generally pro-industry choices. George H.W. Bush was surprisingly pro-environment in his first 2 years (ozone, acid rain..), but was advised to no longer be pro-environment b/c it would not sit well with his base..
worth reading: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/blog/2021/10/13/when-democrats-and-republicans-united-to-repair-the-earth/
===
the LCV seems to take the view that all drilling/resource extraction (or industry) is bad, but it still is done somewhere, and if not done in America, is just outsourced elsewhere. This still has the effect of reducing pollution in the US (as outsourcing manufacturing has done), which has made America’s PM2.5 values lower than those of all but a few countries.
====
Now that CA appears likely to pass SB-1047, it seems more probable that Republican states will go against it (simply because they, esp Desantis [who valorizes not being CA], want to “own the libs”—esp as @BasedBeffJezos notices).