Missed opportunity

Abstract

This midterm evaluation leaves President Bush two years to improve. He gets low marks for his environmental policy because his administration has stayed the traditional Republican course: "The environment is important, but...." It is time to move forward, forming a conservative-conservationist alliance built on "the environment is important, and ...." The Bush administration has the ideas and the people to build this alliance and more effectively improve environmental quality. The president should develop allies in environmental groups such as the Grand Canyon Trust, which negotiated the grazing permit trade, and Environmental Defense, which has promoted ITQs and water marketing. A letter to the editor in the January /February 2003 issue of Sierra magazine suggests the potential for even more unlikely allies: "We should change our focus from ruling with a stick to using the carrot.... It may give us more voice with the president and create jobs in an ailing economy." President Bush can improve environmental quality without impairing traditional conservative goals such as maintaining a strong economy and reining in government regulation. The only way to accomplish this is to replace the "old environmentalism" that has brought us command-and-control and acrinomy with a "free market environmentalism" that gets the incentives right through private enterprise.