Conservatives Hate Conservatism

The nature of political conservatism as I know it with regards to the economy is to expend the least amount of tax dollars for the most gain. If you listen to talk radio you hear this mantra about taxes being too high all of time and the collective wisdom of the talking heads is of course less taxes, less government spending and/or intervention and therefore more cash in the hands of spending Americans. In theory, it isn’t a flawed model. If more Americans can keep more of their money then, as current trends show, they tend to spend more and this cycle should, in theory, create jobs thus expanding the economy.

Conservative voters are also in favor of what they perceive to be the most cost effective solutions to problems, again favoring individual choice over federally regulated programs. In other words, any conservative with his/her salt will say that as a red-blooded, tax paying American, they deserve the right make choices and succeed or fail by themselves without the government sticking its nose into personal life business.

The practicality of the above analysis is subject to debate in possibly a later column but for the time being, take it as read that political conservatives say they stand for expanding the economy, protecting the boarder, the rule of law as it is written, reserved behavior dictated by Judeo-Christian values and of course the ability to make personal choices without government intervention via over taxation.

However, if you bring up the topic of global warming, all of a sudden those same thoughtful and reserved conservatives seem to forget themselves and turn more liberal than Janeane Garofalo on a mochachino inspired Air America rant. This epiphany hit me while I was listening to a typical Michael Savage crotchety-old-man routine on his daily radio program, The Savage Nation. Intermittent with the usual “the-world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-and-I’m-the-only-one-that-knows” bit, he harangued people who conscientiously drove hybrid cars for being wimpy, liberal-minded, shmucks and then called global warming the big lie of our day.

Let’s go over this again…a conservative is yelling at those in his audience for MAKING THE CONSUMER CHOICE to purchase and operate a car that is appealing for its cost effective fuel efficiency. Now I’m used to folks like Rush, Hannity and Savage touting the wonderfulness that is driving a gas-guzzling tank while condemning the mere mention of the possibility that the burning of fossil fuels is ruining our environment. I’m used to this bunch crying crocodile tears about not being able to drill for oil in every free space of land not currently being raped to death or being occupied by the world’s billionth mall. As a matter of fact, the line of logic they usually rely on is that it’s an Americans right to buy a dump truck, as Bill O’Reilly once joked, if that’s what they wish to drive and nuts to the “supposed” environmental damage it causes. But in haranguing people for CHOOSING to buy a hybrid car, that was a first for the personal consumer choice crowd.

Clearly Michael Savage isn’t really a conservative. Neither is Rush, or Hannity, or Coulter or anyone that blindly falls in line and touts the message that there is no such thing as global warming and investing in alternative energy consumer projects is the exercise of wimpy liberal America-hating communists. They are not only betraying the core principles of conservatism but they are also running away from the facts faster than a Baptist from a movie theater showing The DaVinci Code.

First off, anyone that doesn’t believe that burning fossil fuels is changing our environment is clearly a dope, a liar or a finely tuned combination of both. Here are the facts as per bydesign.com:

Almost all fossil fuel use is by burning (or "combustion"). Burning produces waste products due to impurities in the fuel, especially particulates and various gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. These waste products may affect our environment or people, in harmful ways. We have gone to great lengths to minimize the adverse effects of fossil fuel combustion, and continue to make progress.

Then too, there are serious disagreements over whether some effects of fossil fuel use are harmful at all. In some cases the amount of waste is so small that the effect, if any, is difficult to detect. Mercury from coal burning is an example.

At the other extreme, all burning produces carbon dioxide and water vapor as byproducts. This is because carbon is part of what makes fossil fuel useful. But whether these byproducts are harmful, or beneficial, is a matter of intense public debate. Some argue that they are beneficial, because water and carbon dioxide are necessary for plant life on earth, which is the basis for all life. Some people believe, however, that our carbon dioxide emissions contribute to harmful global warming and climate change, either now or in the future. Those who fear climate change have proposed new government policies to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Now the true conservative should look at the issue of global warming and err on the side of caution. The true conservative, naturally reserved in nature and behavior, should purport that conservation of finite resources and an investment in alternative, renewable energy should be the solution to even the possibility that we are causing environmental problems with our current methods of industrialization. Instead, false conservatives like the aforementioned Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, for whatever reason, betray true conservatism and instruct their listeners, where energy is concerned, to act like Roman noblemen at the feast and on the prowl. And much like our historical predecessors, the behavior is disgusting.

What I really don’t understand in these attacks on conservation and the pursuit of alternative energy is that usually conservatives are the ones shilling for various components of a bullish economy. They are the ones telling us to invest and seek out riches far and wide from Wall Street to Beijing. That is what really kills me here. Alternative energy as an investment opportunity in an expanding economy is actually on the rise both here in the US and in various countries around the world (Brazil and Germany being two big ones).

According to an article from June 3rd in the Arizona Daily Star, there are a plethora of great and wonderful alternative energy projects in the works as week speak, which are leading the way in casting oil dependence into the dustbin of history. In addition, the article states that ,” The run-up in gas prices has softened for now the argument that ethanol isn't economically competitive without federal subsidies, and it has accelerated plans for ethanol plants by farmers' cooperatives and Archer Daniels Midland Co., the Decatur, Ill.-based agribusiness, among others.

Still, ethanol's potential is limited by cost and transport problems and the fact that even those seemingly endless fields of corn in the Midwest are finite. Experts say corn-based ethanol is unlikely ever to displace more than 10 percent of the gasoline supply.
"We just don't have enough corn," said Dan Basse, an analyst for Chicago-based AgResource Co. "If you turned every corn plant in the country into ethanol, there still wouldn't be enough."

That's where biomass comes in. By using other crops and forest waste along with the entire corn plant, not just the kernels, the Department of Energy says, enough cellulosic ethanol could be produced by 2030 to lower U.S. gasoline consumption 30 percent.”

There you have it folks. More and more ethanol plants are being built in the US all the time and many more could be built if people felt bullish enough to invest in them. This would be the most cost-effective solution to divorcing ourselves from oil dependence and staving off complete environmental collapse. Adopting green measures and alternative renewable energy consumer products would be the conservative solution, even if global warming weren’t real (which of course it is).

But alas, the patron saints of conservative talk radio hate conservatism and everything it stands for. They are hawking every wasteful solution imaginable including but not limited to wars for resources, environmental degradation due to mass drilling for ever decreasing wells of attainable oil and condemning consumer choices in favor of the worst possible ones. Like I said, it appears that conservatives hate conservatism.