An Excuse for Doing Nothing

SC Governor Mark Sanford's plea for a conservative environmentalism only proves how vacuous that notion is. I have no doubt that Sanford muses on the value of conservation when strolling around his beach-front property, and that puts him squarely in the camp of the early environmentalists who focused on preserving the grand vistas. But times have changed, and it's no longer enough to talk in such narrow terms.

Sanford's limited horizon is on full display when he says what conservatives should do to promote a clean environment. Here's his rather non-specific list:

• Replace the "left's scare tactics" with the principles of "responsibility and stewardship."
• Emphasize the economic benefits of conservation.
• "[R]espond to climate change with innovation, not regulation."

The left is bad, government is worse, and the free market will solve all of our problems. Where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah — every time conservatives "address" a social problem. I'm almost surprised Sanford didn't include a plea for lower taxes — that would have made the picture complete.

But all snarking aside, there is absolutely no reason to believe that following Sanford's advice would do anything other than make our environmental problems worse. The basic problem is that waste and pollution are cheap — the costs are externalized and not borne directly by the polluter. If you want to encourage innovation and provide incentives to the free market to pollute less, there is no substitute for government action. For example, laws like the Clean Water Act have been very effective in reducing pollution — left to the market's own devices, the Cuyahoga River might still be burning. And when mandates put the cost of pollution back on the polluter, you might even say that encourages "responsibility," one of Sanford's environmental virtues.

In the end, Sanford's conservative environmentalism is nothing else but the hope that our problems will solve themselves through the invisible hand of the marketplace. As such, it's just another excuse for doing nothing.