Chris Rhodes brings up a subject near and dear to my heart in discussing environmental concern and the major political parties. He argues that environmental issues should be more consensus oriented instead of R vs. D.
Amen, but let me give a bit of history to environmental issues. It isn’t until the late 1960s when environmental issues even show up as an issue in public opinion polling. Before then it wasn’t even asked (I have the exact years in lecture notes and may post a brief graph later). Originally environmental policy was largely a bipartisan concern with consertative Southern Dems and some rural Republicans fighting significant changes in regulation. And if you look at the scores normed for different years, Republicans and Democrats had similar scores for many years. As Reagan gained influence those scores diverged (paper by Bill Lowry I can send to anyone who is really interested is available).
I think part of this is the reallignment of the south and the northeast. In Illinois the tensions have not become as great though there are some signs Republicans are pulling back on some issues.
One issue they aren’t pulling back on is wetlands regulation. Despite the Reader’s ‘environmental’ columnists claims, Dan Rutherford (R-Pontiac and future statewide candidate) isn’t worried about the regulations as much as he felt they regs should apply in Cook County. I tend to agree with Rutherford, though there may be a case for excluding Cook that I don’t fully understand.
But during the 1990s Jim Edgar was decent on most environmental issues. The exceptions being power plant emissions which all Midwest Governors are bad on and hog farm regulation. His Department of Ag head had a brother working for the biggest hog farm owner in Illinois and there were some inconsistencies in that case. I doubt it would be much different with any of the Dems who might have been in his place given rural Dems aren’t much different on those issues.
The key difference between parties should be how to reach good environmental outcomes in Chris’ hopeful world. Republicans traditionally have pushed for market incentive based programs such as effluent fees and permit trading.
Democrats have pushed for command and control regulations such as best available technology which mandates the kind of environmental technology that should be in place.
I tend to be favorable to market incentives. Properly constructed they give business the incentive to be cleaner and reduce costs by reducing pollution and do it in a way that is most efficient. Using best available technology is sometimes needed when talking about especially toxic chemicals or something of that sort and has its place.
I don’t have the same confidence that Chris does that there will be less room over time between the parties because often when effluent charges are mentioned now, many Republicans (not Leader Cross or other moderates in the Illinois Republican caucus) argue now that they are simply taxes. And this leads to Democrats pushing for BAT often to satisfy environmental advocates who are leary of any market friendly solution and little in the way of progress.
But I hope I’m wrong.
That said, many kudos to the Bush administrations implementation of the new diesel rules. It was a good move.
I’d point out that their previous bi-partisan concern has also led to government being the largest polluter in America. Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope often points this out, and I wish I could have heard him speak at our Convention this weekend. He has some great ideas on how private efforts (NGOs) can be included with our pollution solutions. Case in point, who is holding our bi-partisan government accountable for their pollution? Perhaps multi-partisan efforts would be even better.
I think one area that is critical for communities is for the government to be transparent in what is going on–the databases the EPA have give citizens a good understanding of what is going on and allows them to be government watchdogs. Not surprisingly, under the guise of Homeland Security, a lot of that is being shut down. But good point.