• Jonathan Blake is a third year day student.

 The last time I wrote for The Federalists' Paper, I discussed the conservative vantage on racism in the marketplace. Again, I have chosen to write about a topic that is widely, and wholly incorrectly, perceived as belonging to the Left: environmentalism.

 Let me begin by stating that I disagree with the popular Conservative approach to addressing environmental issues. To illustrate, imagine an episode of Crossfire, the topic: the enjoinment of a logging company from mowing down a forest of trees, home to the endangered Spotted Owl. The characteristically Conservative approach would be more closely related to utilitarian principles than conservative ones. The entire issue would be framed around the utility of such a decision; that is, the preservation of a colony of Spotted Owls versus the potential loss of jobs for loggers. Although utility certainly has merit in this discussion, there should be more to the debate than utility alone (further, Conservatives should be unsettled by the notion of sharing a bed with Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer). Absent from the Conservative's analysis would be any discussion of beauty (yes, beauty) or conservation. This is the wrong approach. "It is our capacity for awe, our instinct for reverence, our affinity for beauty, that makes conservation worthwhile and that makes some things worth conserving and others not." Does it surprise you that this latter approach is conservative? Indeed, these are the principles of the father of environmental discourse, Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican), recently re-introduced by Peter Huber in his outstanding book, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists.

 Huber, an MIT and Harvard law school graduate, is currently a columnist for Forbes and a Senior Fellow with the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute. His book, largely in response to Al Gore's Earth in Balance, is essential reading for anyone considering environmental policy: particularly conservatives.

 The starting point for discussing his book would be explaining the title; that is, what Huber means by "Hard Green." In the introduction, entitled "The Rough Rider and the Wonk" (in reference to the underlying protagonist and antagonist, respectively, Theodore Roosevelt and Al Gore), Huber explains that Hard Greens and Soft Greens are two competing camps of thought. "Soft Green is the realm of huge populations (molecules, particles) paired with very weak (low-probability) or slow (long time frame) effects. Soft Green is the invisible, . . . the highly dispersed or the far future. To believe in Soft Green you must either be a savant or put a great deal of trust in one."

 Thus, it follows, Soft Greens rely heavily on complex models to prove their environmentalism. "Only the model can explain why a relentless pursuit of the invisible--halogenated hydrocarbons, heavy metals, or pesticides--will save birds or cut cancer rates." Soft Greens are "a new oligarchy, a priesthood of scientists, regulators, and lawyers."

  Hard Greens, on the other hand, are traditional conservationists. They believe in "[Roosevelt's] environmentalism, the kind that happens in places we can see and draw on a map." Hard Greens "will debate how many Winnebagos to accommodate in Yellowstone or how much logging, hunting, fishing, or drilling for oil to tolerate on federal reserves." Hard Greens are in stark contrast to Soft Greens who would have "[t]he cry of the loon give[] way to the hum of the computer."

 Huber's book culminates in an appendix entitled "A Conservative Environmental Manifesto." Each chapter explores in depth the principles that ultimately comprise the Manifesto. With this article, I will attempt to highlight what I perceive to be the core contentions of the author.

  As I suggested in defining Soft Green, models are essential to their environmentalism. In debunking this reliance, Huber first discusses several predictions of models that never came to be or were determined incorrect. Chief among these was the scare, from a 1980s model, that there would be global cooling. In the 1990s, these same doomsayers admitted that this was incorrect. Rather, they now contended, there would be global warming. So which is it? Recently, I heard a commentary about global warming on a Columbus radio station featuring a representative of the Concerned Scientists of America. The representative stated that the phenomenon of global warming had actually manifested itself; that she indeed had proof-positive that global warming is inevitable. (Drum roll please.) She claimed that global warming has reared its ugly head in the form of an one degree annual average temperature increase viz. one hundred years ago. That was her sole "empirical" evidence supporting her prediction that Alaska is thawing out! Additionally, my admiration for weather scientists has been further diminished by the recent revelation that the wind-chill factor is grossly inflated. How was this scientific blunder exposed? A man--who happened to be a scientist of some sort--residing in (the apparently now thawing out) Alaska heard a weather report claiming that the temperature, taking into account the wind-chill factor, was a staggering fifty degrees below zero. The local weatherman warned that if you were to venture out into the cold, your face would undoubtedly freeze. Zap, frozen! Well, this warning did not phase the man. Despite the weather report, he braved the elements and . . . shoveled his driveway! Guess what? His face did not freeze! A couple of phone calls later and scientists are adjusting the wind-chill factor. So much for our scientists and their models!

 Further, Huber argues that Soft Green models fail to take into account two factors: nature and human innovation. The former is explored in light of two competing metaphors, Earth as Gaia and Earth as a sandpile. Al Gore, in Earth in Balance, sees the environment as a sandpile. "[E]ach additional grain [in a growing sandpile] produces almost no visible effect until the last one kicks off a massive slide." Thus, as the metaphor goes, we pollute our environment until at some point in the future there will be a catastrophe. However, nature has a way of mitigating many of these effects that concern Soft Greens. Consider the following: to grass, beetles and farmers, cow dung is not pollution but a valued gift; carbon dioxide is a poison to us, but food to plants; if global temperatures indeed rise modestly, the planet will just grow very much greener. Earth as Gaia, a term (named after the Greek goddess of the Earth) coined by a British chemist, contemplates the planet as "a kind of living organism, something able to regulate its climate and composition so as always to be comfortable for the organisms that inhabit it." Ultimately, Huber overstates this principle: "[t]o put the matter bluntly, the most efficient way to control many things so tagged is not to worry about them at all. Let them be. Leave them to Gaia."

 Soft Greens also consistently fail to consider human innovation in their models (indeed, it would be impossible; and that is exactly the point). That is, no matter how complex the models of the Soft Green are, they cannot take into account the landscape of ten, twenty, three hundred years from now; innovation throws off the predictions of these models. For example, Huber devoted much space in his book to debunking the many ways in which Soft Greens fear scarcity: scarcity of wood pulp, corn, aluminum, oil, et cetera. "But all experience teaches that before the doom arrives, human ingenuity comes up with something different. Uranium alone would serve as a complete substitute for such a long time to come that when that distant day arrives we might easily be gathering energy from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri" (Thus, Huber suggests, Hard Greens should concern themselves only with discernible scarcities: scarcity of wilderness, forest, lake, river, and ocean.). Soft Green models simply cannot take into account human ingenuity; people have the incredible knack for reacting to problems by innovation. It is impossible to foretell the landscape of tomorrow and, particularly, how the environment will react to it.

 Huber again turns to Theodore Roosevelt: he advocates a return to the principles of the former-president's environmentalism (though, as I mentioned earlier, he ultimately expands them into the Manifesto). In so doing, he gleaned three tenets from Roosevelt's administration: conserve land (1) so animals may flourish (in part, of course, so Roosevelt would always have animals to hunt); (2) for economic reasons, to continue to produce agricultural products; and (3) for aesthetic purposes. It is the last that might seem most surprising. However, it makes perfect sense to Huber: "[valuing resources for aesthetic reasons] saves you the enormous expense and inconvenience of digging up New Jersey and conserving your own trash. It lets you spend your energy and dollars on places that are awesome, fascinating, or simply beautiful. It lets you oppose destruction of a forest for no fancier reason than that the destruction is ugly."

 Perhaps surprisingly too, Huber sees the federal government playing an essential role in perpetuating Roosevelt's environmentalism. "[C]onservation may be a mission that government can learn to perform reasonably well. The one thing that big government is capable of doing well is doing nothing, which happens to be the paramount objective of conservation." That is not to say that conservation is the sole province of government. "Private interests can conserve, too, and do it very well, and most conservation initiatives will remain in private hands where they properly belong."

 Huber sees the essence of conservative environmentalism to be efficiency. This notion is best explained in light of the Soft Green preoccupation with recycling. Recycling often causes more pollution and/or a greater expenditure of natural resources, energy (especially), and money than does throwing away the old and starting from scratch. "Recycling brings more pollution to the city to collect sorted trash, pollutes more water to remove ink from newsprint, but cuts down fewer trees, which may hardly matter when the trees are farmed . . ." Recycling diapers, ceramic mugs, newspapers, and glass causes a greater expenditure of net energy than not recycling at all. Another example Huber mentions is the debate surrounding electric cars (or any proposal for redirecting fuel consumption from a small burner to a larger one). Soft Greens are against such automobiles because, they argue, "the electricity still has to be generated somewhere." But this does not take into account efficiency: "[c]ontrary to all small-is-beautiful intuition, it's better to burn fuel in the external-combustion engine of an electric power plant that in the internal-combustion engine of your average car." Thus, a centralized expenditure of energy is simply cleaner and more efficient.

 Ultimately, Huber codifies the above discussed principles and tenets into a concise--but nonetheless too lengthy for this article--presentation he aptly labels "A Conservative Environmental Manifesto" (I must say that, though I think I have conveyed the essence of his book, there is much Huber addressed that I did not cover in this article. Perhaps this goes without saying, but I do not want to do disservice to his work.). A particularly noteworthy example (and representing a portion of the book I did not discuss, but is best summarized in this passage) from the Manifesto is the section entitled "Living in Three Dimensions": "Hard technology saves the Earth because it enables us to live in three dimensions rather than two. We do not favor gathering more fuel from the surface, or traveling more on the surface, or spreading out unnecessarily over the surface, as Soft policies encourage. We promote the conservation of wilderness and the preservation of species by scraping less from the living surface and living more off the sterile depths and heights. We believe in digging up our energy, burying our wastes, flying high, tunneling deep, and thus leaving more of the surface undisturbed by man."

 I would anticipate critics dismissing the book as overly simple (by the way, synonyms for "simple" are "clear," "lucid," and "intelligible"). But that is the idea, is it not? Consider Occam's razor, "[it] exhorts us to favor theories that explain the most with the least, the single equation that explains both falling apples and falling planets. Modern environmentalism operates on the opposite principle: ever-increasing complexity and opacity." To believe in Hard Green "we merely have to love the outdoors, the unspoiled wilderness, forest, river, and shore. It takes no special expertise, no extraordinary discernment, and not much science. It requires no big model of the far future. All it takes is an eye for natural beauty, reverence for life, a sense of awe for the boundless grandeur of creation. . . . We revere life on Earth not for the speculative value in the far future but for tangible value in the present. . . . We conserve because it is there and because we find it magnificent--today." Indeed, it is a simple theory: a sound, thoughtful, conservative theory of environmentalism. After all, a conservative founded environmentalism. However, as the title of the book suggests, environmental discourse needs to be reclaimed from the Soft Greens. [Webmaster note: For more information Jonathan Blake provided the following link. ]