The New York Times
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When the G.O.P. Was Green

By WILLIAM CRONON

January 8, 2001

The past week has seen stark reminders of just how much the Democratic and Republican parties differ on environmental policy.

As President-elect George W. Bush nominated cabinet secretaries committed to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and promoting development on public lands, President Clinton issued an order last Friday putting nearly one-third of national forest land off limits to road building and logging and preserving millions of acres in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

What is odd about this stark contrast is that no one seems surprised by it. Yet Republican hostility to environmental protection is quite a recent development. Indeed, until the 1980's, Republicans could claim with considerable justification that their party's environmental record was no less distinguished than that of the Democrats.

After all, Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest Republican presidents, launched conservation as a national political movement. Roosevelt set aside the first national monuments and wildlife refuges. In 1906, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which has enabled Mr. Clinton to protect wild lands as national monuments (and which Republican congressmen would like to radically weaken for that reason). Among the places Teddy Roosevelt protected by the Antiquities Act was no less a national treasure than the Grand Canyon.

Roosevelt was by no means the only Republican president eager to protect America's lands and resources. Although this is not the way we remember him, Herbert Hoover was a dedicated conservationist. And we should not forget that Dwight Eisenhower set aside lands on the North Slope of Alaska, protecting one of the last great caribou herds on earth. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a Republican creation, which makes the Republican eagerness to drill it all the more distressing.

Perhaps the most surprising Republican environmental legacy is that left by Richard Nixon. Nixon's personal commitment to conservation was not especially strong, and his policies can be mainly ascribed to his intense competition with two Democratic presidential contenders in the Senate — Henry Jackson and Edmund Muskie — who were both strongly pro-environment.

Nonetheless, many of the laws that have defined modern American environmental policy — the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the National Environmental Policy Act, even the Endangered Species Act — were signed by Nixon with strong bipartisan support. And we owe the existence of the Environmental Protection Agency to Nixon's genuine enthusiasm for government reorganization.

History's lesson is that for most of the 20th century, conservation enjoyed the support of both parties. Although they often approached the issue in different ways and with different emphases, Democrats and Republicans agreed that conserving natural resources, reducing pollution and preserving wild lands were clearly in the national interest. Strange as it may seem today, the parties even competed over which was more committed to environmental protection.

The great sea change in Republican policies toward the environment did not come until the election of Ronald Reagan. By 1980, conservatives in the party had begun their attack on big government as way to reduce the scope of federal power.

Environmental protection during the 1960's and 1970's had become associated with federal regulation — in no small measure because of bipartisan legislation passed during the Nixon years. And so environmental protection was demonized as a symbol of government usurpation of liberty and property, especially among those in the West who had long chafed at federal ownership of western land.

Although opposition to environmental protection seemed to make good sense as part of the conservative assault on government regulations, this stance has been a political loser for the Republican party. Few features of Republican politics have provoked more backlash, or lost more potential votes, than the party's anti-environmental stance. James Watt and Anne Burford were disasters for the first Reagan administration. And Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" came to grief in good measure because most Americans continue to believe that protecting the environment is a good thing.

There are two distinct Republican traditions regarding environmental protection. The more recent one is that people should be able to do pretty much what they please with natural resources and wild lands without government interference. Although this tradition plays well in certain western states — which opposed even Teddy Roosevelt's policies — anti-environmentalism does not represent the broad center of American popular opinion.

It is in fact the second, older, Republican tradition that is more in tune with public sentiment. Even conservatives who favor limited state power understand that government has an appropriate role to play in domains that the private sector does not handle well on its own. One of these is national defense. Another is conservation. Honoring our heritage by preserving public lands, remembering the deep spiritual ties to the land that led the United States to be the first nation in the world to create wilderness parks — what actions could more conservative than these?

George W. Bush has the opportunity to reinvigorate the Republican legacy of conservation. His party's support for environmental protection would surely be good for the environment — and good politics for the Republicans as well.

William Cronon is an environmental historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.