Eli Lehrer: "Reagan, the Environmentalist: His Administration was Greener than You Think"

(Above: Former presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.)

Introduction: The Public's Historic Perception of the GOP's Weak Policies on the Environment

For years, the Democratic Party has promulgated itself as the party championing, among other agendas, the health and well-being of the environment and the conservation of national resources.  Even though Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican and was the president who created the National Park System, he no doubt was a Progressive in the mold of the modern Democratic Party than that of today's conservative GOP.  With such Democratic lawmakers in the past as Al Gore promoting the necessity to tackle the issues of global warming, pollution, etc., organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have funded untold millions of dollars to hundreds and thousands of campaigns for prospective Democratic candidates during election years.  This is all despite President Richard M. Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency and signing into law both the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.  But as the proprietor of the Richard Milhous Nixon Blog states:

"When Nixon's domestic record is reviewed it is look(ed) upon as neither strongly liberal or conservative but more so as politically practical."

Therefore, any and all prior Republican presidents to the Election of 1980 were "typecast" this way because Nixon, like his mentor Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a big government Republican who believed that the achievement of public policy should result in the further expansion of the federal government.  This would all change, however, upon the election of Ronald Reagan some six years after he Nixon was forced to resign from office. 

As Ronald Reagan has been declared by history as the conservative ideological savior of the Republican Party who came along at a time the party, and the nation, most needed him, so, too, did he draw the ire, scorn, and derision from his liberal counterparts within the Democratic Party.  One of Reagan's greatest perceived weaknesses was his environmental policies.  According to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Reagan used to argue that the greatest source of air pollution originates not from car exhaust fumes or gaseous emissions from factories, but from dead and decaying trees that produce excessive carbon dioxide as the result of their physical state.  While this is no doubt true to a large extent, his critics on the Left were quick to declare the ideologue as "dumb," "stupid," uneducated," and even, "senile" because of his  age and opinions, many of which, of course, are supported with empirical data.

The Reagan Record on the Environmental Conservation

In an article from June 11, 2013 in the conservative-libertarian online journal United Liberty, journalist Eli Lehrer discusses the Reagan record on the issue of conservation, which he termed as being "free market environmentalism."  The article will be posted below in full detail, as well as the link being embedded above within publication titled:

Ronald Reagan was probably the last really great leader to serve as president of the United States. Although disdained and considered a dangerous ideologue by most elites while he was in office, history has given him a pretty good verdict. Reagan restored growth, won the Cold War and, when circumstances forced him to, even stabilized a Social Security system that was on the brink of collapse.

Even among Reagan fans, however, his environmental record rarely gets much credit. Many of my fellow conservative Reagan fans are dismissive of environmental concerns and a roughly equal proportion of environmentalists are disdainful of the conservative goals that Reagan himself emphasized.

This is a shame, because Reagan’s record on the environment, although far from perfect, is a pretty good model for a conservation agenda that just about everyone should embrace. As I describe in the Weekly Standard, the Reagan administration took major steps to end subsidies for environmentally destructive activities, pushed for and negotiated a smartly designed agreement to phase out harmful chlorofluorocarbons and did a good job balancing conservation, recreation, and resource extraction on public land. This agenda saved money while still making very real environmental progress.

This success also shows that command-and-control regulation is not the only way to help the environment.  While it would be inadvisable to suggest repeal of current protections like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the regulatory approach they embody is just one way to improve our common home on Earth. Withdrawing subsidies for environmental destruction and attaching real prices to polluting activities—the approach Reagan favored—can work as well or better in many circumstances. Ronald Reagan proved it.

Eli Lehrer is president and co-founder of the R Street Institute. Posted with permission from the R Street Institute.

___

And the article from The Weekly Standard, dated June 17, 2013, is below, going into further detail.  It, as stated above, was also authored by Lehrer: 

Mention Ronald Reagan to an avowed environmentalist, and you’ll generally elicit a groan. In the conventional telling, the Gipper appointed right-wing extremists to key environmental positions and proceeded to give timber companies and energy interests a free hand to despoil nature. Had Congress not stopped him, the tale goes, all of the environmental progress of the 1970s would have been swept away in the 1980s.

This tale fits certain historical narratives, and Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, arguably helped promote it by allowing his own appointees, some of them drawn from the ranks of professional environmentalists, to criticize the Reagan administration and its policies.

Reagan’s actual environmental record is quite a bit more nuanced. It’s true he did not follow the command-and-control regulatory approach favored by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, or even fellow California Republican Richard Nixon, who created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed both the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. But the approach Reagan did take​—​endeavoring to protect nature without expanding government or hurting the economy​—​may offer a blueprint, particularly in these times of sharp partisan division, for a conservation agenda that small government conservatives, libertarians, and conservationists alike can embrace.

The enduring legacy of Reagan’s conservation agenda is a set of approaches that flowed directly out of, rather than in spite of, his free-market ideology and were implemented, in part, by those people derided as dangerous “ideologues.” They include limiting government subsidies to all manner of environmental destruction; ensuring that costs are attached to environmentally harmful activities; and opening public lands for multiple uses.

Contrary to the myth of the Reagan era as one of environmental depredation, objective metrics demonstrate how well these approaches worked. Under Reagan’s leadership, new lead production was virtually eliminated. Carbon monoxide emissions fell by roughly a quarter, and particulate pollution was reduced 40 percent. Reagan pushed for and signed the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-layer-depleting, climate change-promoting chlorofluorocarbons. His administration did the initial work on a “cap and trade” system to control acid rain that ultimately was implemented during the George H. W. Bush administration.

A classic example of Reagan’s approach can be found in the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which the president signed in 1982. The law established the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), a zone that today encompasses 273 million acres of land (an area larger than all but one national park in the lower 48 states) in which federal subsidies to new development​—​notably, subsidies for roads, housing, and flood insurance​—​are forbidden. Private interests may still develop the land but must do so without a penny of federal money. It is estimated the law has saved taxpayers $1 billion since its enactment.

A similar approach was applied in the 1985 farm bill, which required farmers receiving federal subsidies to comply with various conservation standards before they could cultivate erosion-prone soils and forbade the use of federal money to drain wetlands. These standards, currently under fire as Congress considers a huge new farm bill, have saved money while avoiding hundreds of millions of tons of soil erosion and protecting millions of acres of wetlands.

While the acid rain efforts made polluters pay their own costs, the 1986 Water Resources Development Act included the administration’s proposal to begin charging user fees for the inland waterway system in the form of an excise tax on diesel fuel sold in marine terminals.

While the fees haven’t kept up with inflation, they clearly played a role in discouraging wasteful and destructive lock, dam, and canal projects.

“Everybody was playing pork barrel before the fees,” explains David Conrad, a longtime water policy consultant who has worked with just about every major environmental organization. “Reagan and his people were gutsy. They drew the line.”

In addition to creating the CBRS, Reagan signed bills designating more than 10 million acres of wilderness, the highest level of protection available. But he and his appointees embraced a “multi-use” strategy for public lands that balanced conservation with other uses. Rather than continue the trend of creating more national parks than the government could effectively maintain, significant resources were focused on improving facilities and access in the existing parks.

“He understood how public lands impacted the individual soul and spirit,” says Rob Sisson, the president of ConservAmerica, previously known as Republicans for Environmental Protection. “He would never lock up enough land to satisfy the League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club. But he certainly believed in it.”

At the same time, he liberalized hunting and fishing on federal land and opened previously protected land​—​especially areas with no particular inherent beauty​—​to mineral exploration.

By no means was Reagan’s environmental record spotless. Indeed, among the biggest blemishes on that record are leases that sold natural resources on public land at hard-to-justify bargain basement prices. He also vetoed Clean Water Act enhancements that, when later implemented over his veto, resulted in enormous pollution reductions in streams and rivers.

His environmental appointees were also hit and miss, particularly the earlier ones. EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch mismanaged the agency. Interior secretary James Watt (who did help push for the CBRS) turned out to be a political liability and ended up having to resign after noting in public that a coal-leasing panel was made up of “a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.” 

On those few matters where environmentalists do sometimes give Reagan credit, they often learn the wrong lessons. The Montreal Protocol wasn’t successful because it was an international agreement negotiated partly under United Nations auspices. It was successful because it relied on technology, gradualism, and smart policies, rather than heavy-handed regulation, to deal with a problem. And while cap and trade was a near-perfect system for fighting acid rain​—​a problem that resulted from fewer than 100 easy-to-identify industrial facilities​—​experience in the European Union has proven that it’s unworkably complex as a means of dealing with vastly more prevalent sources of carbon.

But taken as a whole, Reagan’s environmental legacy includes millions of acres of protected land and significant cuts in pollution. In part because of his ideology, he compiled a generally admirable environmental record that offers important lessons for those who seek to protect the environment while containing the size and scope of government.

Eli Lehrer is president of R Street. 

___

 Conclusion: Reagan's Conservative Environmentalism vs. the Libertarian Party's Environmental Platform

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." 

- Ronald Reagan 

It is clear that Reagan did more the propagate the cause of environmentalism than he did to hinder it.  While not perfect, as evidenced by leases that sold natural resources on public land at hard-to-justify bargain basement prices and his vetoing the Clean Water Act enhancements that when later implemented over his veto would result in enormous pollution reductions in streams and rivers, Reagan did endeavor in implementing several policies geared towards the end of mitigating these issues.  They will be listed below:

• Reagan pushed for and signed the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-layer-depleting, climate change-promoting chlorofluorocarbons. His administration did the initial work on a “cap and trade” system to control acid rain that ultimately was implemented during the George H. W. Bush administration. As a result, carbon monoxide emissions fell by roughly a quarter, and particulate pollution was reduced 40 percent under his leadership.
• In 1982, Reagan signed into law the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which established the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), a zone that today encompasses 273 million acres of land (an area larger than all but one national park in the lower 48 states) in which federal subsidies to new development​—​notably, subsidies for roads, housing, and flood insurance​—​are forbidden. Private interests may still develop the land but must do so without a penny of federal money. It is estimated the law has saved taxpayers $1 billion since its enactment.
• The 1985 farm bill required farmers receiving federal subsidies to comply with various conservation standards before they could cultivate erosion-prone soils and forbade the use of federal money to drain wetlands. These standards, currently under fire as Congress just defeated a huge new farm bill along party lines in recent weeks, have saved money while avoiding hundreds of millions of tons of soil erosion and protecting millions of acres of wetlands.
• Reagan signed into law the Water Resources Development Act in 1986, which included the administration’s proposal to begin charging user fees for the inland waterway system in the form of an excise tax on diesel fuel sold in marine terminals. While the fees haven’t kept up with inflation, they clearly played a role in discouraging wasteful and destructive lock, dam, and canal projects.  

As I identified myself as a member of the Republican Party when I first registered to vote at the age of 18 while still in high school during the spring semester in 2000, today I do not consider myself as a mere conservative, but a Republican in the mold of Ron and Rand Paul. Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky who was elected with the support of the Tea Party during the 2010 midterm congressional elections, describes himself as a "libertarian conservative."  He believes in strict adherence in the interpretation of the Constitution.  Though he is far different than his colleagues within the GOP in Washington, he is more flexible as a result of following that definition than his father, who was a former U.S. representative from Texas for 26 years.  

Libertarians are principled in the ideal that government should maintain a "hands-off" approach when passing legislation and when the executive office figure signs them into law.  This is no different with regards to their platform on the environment, which will be provided below (Courtesy of the Libertarian Party):

2.2 Environment

We support a clean and healthy environment and sensible use of our natural resources. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources.  Pollution and misuse of resources cause damage to our ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for such damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection. Protecting the environment requires a clear definition and enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems. We realize that our planet's climate is constantly changing, but environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior.

In an interview with the late journalist Mike Wallace on the popular, long-running CBS news magazine program 60 Minutes, Ronald Reagan stated his opinion about libertarianisn -- one that was not only favorable, but that he actually identified with:  

As Reagan was formerly a New Deal member of the Democratic Party prior to his conversion to the GOP in 1962, it makes sense that he shared virtues of both parties in his political philosophy.  In fact, the popular slogan for the Libertarian Party is "Minimum Government, Maximum Freedom." But there were key differences between the ideals of the nation's 40th president as the leading ideologue of the conservative movement within the Republican Party during the final decades of the 20th Century from those of the Libertarian Party's such as the issue of abortion and the diametrically-opposite foreign policy of the Reagan administration that advocated "peace through strength" while the latter's platform calls on an end to foreign interventionism.  As a result of these two differences, I cannot completely define myself as a 100%-pure libertarian.  This is why I classify myself as Sen. Paul does.

As this article comes to an end on this, the waning hours of Independence Day 2013, we have so much for which we should be thankful despite the terrible condition President Obama has manifested for our nation. In light of the copious scandals whose list seems to grow larger by the week to the point where not only is Congress having trouble conducting committee hearings to investigate each and everyone of them, but that they are becoming the laughing stock of not just the Republican and a large percentage of the undecided voters, but of people around the world.  In fact, just last week in a concert performed by The Rolling Stones in Washington, D.C., the band's legendary front man Mick Jaggar joked with the audience (Courtesy of Politico): 

"I don't think President Obama is here tonight. But I'm sure he's listening in.”

While the president prepares to sign a series executive orders to create more federal regulatory agencies to regulate and implement his measures meant to reduce greenhouses and pollution in what he said in his best ode to the traditional liberal "doom-and-gloom" political card during his speech in Berlin at the site of Reagan's legendary speech on June 12, 1987, America is bracing for yet another hit in the pockets of its taxpayers and in the impediment of economic growth and capability.  This, of course, coincides with the two tax hikes implemented by the president this year in the Fiscal Cliff agreement he strong-armed the congressional Republicans into accepting, as well as what he mapped out in his 2014 budget proposal, the first such plan in his four and a half years in office.  Yet, as a result of the more-than 14 GOP senators voting in favor of the recent immigration bill in the U.S. Senate that will take away jobs from already-legal citizens as well as widespread-amnesty that will create as many as 30 million new foreign-born American citizens who will vote overwhelming as a block for Democratic political candidates, Rush Limbaugh has stated his rather strong opinion that the GOP may lose the House of Representatives in 2014.  If so, it is because as I have said dozens of times before on this blog: Republicans are nowhere near the savvy politicians as are Democrat, who over the course of more than 80 years since it created the welfare state and the system of socialism upon the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.  While Ronald Reagan is reviled mostly because of his strict adherence to his principles and strong anti-Left policies, his policies at least never destroyed the economic infrastructure first through the passage and signing into law of the Affordable Health Care Act (aka. "Obama Care"), and then the raising of taxes across the board on all levels of income rather than submitting pro-economic health plans before Congress that are so absurd that they are almost immediate shelved all economic growth in the United States, resulting in the rate of unemployment decreasing only slightly from 7.9% upon entering office in 2009 to today's total of 7.6%, up one-tenth a percent from the previous month.

And Reagan, ever the ideological sage of modern American history, made this statement in 1961:

"Back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said that the American people would never vote for socialism but he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program."

Ironically, this was when he spoke out against the implementation of socialized health care as part of the "Operation Coffee Cup" campaign against the program that would later become known as Medicare.

And finally, in his Farewell Address on January 11, 1989, he spoke the following lines:

"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

Thus we know now why Reagan the Ideologue will always be remembered more favorably by the pages of history than Obama the Socialist Bureaucrat.