Mint/ZUMA
It’s clear that the environmentalism and loving “the great outdoors” are Stuff White People Like. Every year there are articles complaining how few “people of color” went to America’s national parks, and a Green party is represented in most European parliaments. Something appeals to our people about protecting the natural world and keeping it healthy for generations to come.
There’s a catch: The Left has been allowed nearly to monopolize this issue. Except for the occasional conservative who cites Theodore Roosevelt, the Right makes little effort to join forces with environmentalism. This is an unfortunate legacy of how conservatism fought the Cold War. As a “big tent” coalition against communism or anything that smelled of it, the Right stood against the hippies and their Marxist professors, their pacifism, and their flower power. It saw protesting over the environment as the work of left-wing rabble. But that doesn’t mean the issue is one of the Left. No one on the political spectrum can escape questions of energy and environment.
Conservatives oppose environmentalism because protective regulations cut profits and distort markets. They require a bigger, more intrusive government, which makes the capitalist wing of the anti-communist coalition scream. But so too does Trump’s pro-white populism, and without it there could not have been a Republican president.
Conservatism, as expressed through the Republican party, is overwhelmingly a white cause, and this is being recognized more broadly. President Trump won the election largely because he flipped Rust Belt states with above average white populations. Environmentalism should likewise be embraced as a conservative, nationalist, populist cause. ...
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