Do the Conservatives believe in protecting the environment at all?

To judge by their rhetoric, and actions. Clearly they do not.

I expect only in a very limited and parochial way—like looking after their gardens or some nearby parks and forests.

Anything structural that harms the environment probably doesn’t compute.

Anything that feels distant or remote, either temporally or geographically, doesn’t compute.

Not if there is a dollar to be made.

Only if a dollar can be made in the process.

It seems to me that when talking about actual people whose views might tend to be labelled “conservative” in US politics, there are people with some environmental concerns. However the current US spin on things certainly has the current Republicans in office abolishing as many environmental protections (and creating as many corporate giveaways of natural resources) as they can get away with.

However I tend to mainly associate that activity with corporate corruption of those representatives, and remember that while it was massively better with the (also corporate-compromised, but not nearly as blatantly showing it) Democrats, we were still having to constantly catch and resist corporate giveaways and threats to the environment during the Obama administration, and Obama himself wasn’t as pro-environment as he could have been (e.g. the slow / weak responses to the atrocious Keystone XL and Standing Rock situations).

And I rather think that environmental issues, along with most social issues are mostly being used as distractions, diversions, decoys and general suppressive barrage tactics to threaten things that many people care a lot about and will invent much time, energy, attention, and resources in protecting, but which are not really the central interests of the corporate string-pullers. Certainly they care more about environmental giveaways (e.g. getting to mine the Arctic and the Tar Sands and being allowed to pollute rivers), than they do about bathroom rules or abortions or LGBTQ issues or Social Security, but even if they didn’t get their way on all of those, they’d still be laughing all the way to the bank if we spend all our effort on that while doing nothing about larger issues more important to them such as Citizen’s United, new trade treaties surrendering rights to corporations, massive tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-rich, filling the Judicial Branch with unprincipled pro-corporate appointments, etc.

Yes, the area around Mar a Lago is very well looked after.

Jesus will be back next month so fuck it. Rape and pillage for dollars while you can.

You smart alack libral fellers kin stuff it. When me ‘n Daisey Sue done went to Sunday go to Meeting last Sabbath, Pastor Cletus done learned us that Trump were chosen by Jaysus himself and that accordin’ to the Good Book he says always have proper repects for rich folk what’s better than us. And that come straight outta the Gospel of Saint Ronald of Reagan. (Cue Republican Taberbacle Chior).

< conservative here. And yes, I care very much!

I have not read other responses, but I believe it all depends on the individual. I could ask the same question about another demographic:

Do cigarette smokers care about the environment?

When I lived in Indiana, I found myself walking behind a smoker on our way into a store. He chose to toss his cigarette butt out into the road rather than put it in the ashtray a few steps away, which apparently is what most smokers in that town did. The gutter and parking lot was also strewn with thousands of cigarette butts, most of which were filtered. Filter cigarette butts (the kind he was smoking) don’t biodegrade. They just stay that way.

So my first thought was that almost all smokers are lowlifes who don’t care about their environment. Since then, I moved to Texas. In comparison, few smokers here behave that way, but we still have more than there should be!

Then I ask @snowberry are you concerned when your Government runs a pipe line through a fragile aquifer? or wants to explore getting back into coal power? or mining a wilderness park?
And personally I think most smokers are low life regardless of their political choice because MOST (not all) have little regard to the nonsmokers around them.

Isn’t it ironic that the root of the word conservative is conserve? Not too many conservative conservationists.

@SQUEEKY2 Mankind is screwing itself in the behind anyway, and with not too much time left (250 years MAX, my estimate) so does the environment really matter?? I care but one can’t stop the whole world… (And I dig where you’re coming from about us previous and those current smokers…)

Well @kritiper if it doesn’t matter and they keep at it, that 250years is going to be drastically reduced.

Seems to me that having a mindset that “the world is going to end so let’s not do anything about it, and/or make things worse” (which BTW includes crazy “Christian” literalist apocalypse-welcomers) is about the worst and most destructive possible philosophy it’s possible to have.

And yet some of these people are the anti-choice supposedly self-proclaimed “pro-life” supposedly “humble” worshippers of a God that “is love”? Yeah, those unformed foetuses are really more important than life on Earth… what?

If ever there was a philosophy whose adherents should be banned from any position of government or corporate authority, that seems like the logical one to eradicate from any decision-making authority whatsoever.

Let’s see, in terms of how long primates have lived on Earth without destroying it or dying off:

orangutans – about 2,000,000 years (currently critically endangered by humans)
chimpanzees – about 8,000,000 years (currently endangered by humans)
modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens – about 130,00 years
* agricultural behavior – 10,500 years
* industrial behavior – about 450 years
* time left before we may destroy our own world thinking we are SO smart and superior – talking about 250 years?

How foolish can we get?

<Conservative here as well. Of course I care about the environment. There are many things that I think can be done more efficiently and with less damage to the environment. And the funniest part about most of them is that they end up costing me, the consumer, less in the long run. However, I tend to get a little leery when it comes to the “big name” items in the news. You spoke of running a pipeline near a “fragile” aquifer. What is that? I know what an aquifer is…an area, usually of porous rock or scree or sand that allows the flow of water. I’ve never in my life heard of a “fragile” aquifer. I did a search for it and cannot find anything either. I actually work in a field where I have to worry about aquifers because they can be used to supply drinking water to people. Aquifers, even when not being used for drinking water, can supply water for plants in an area. But before I get all wound up about running a pipeline near one, I would have to understand the full story, not just the sensationalized part of it. The uranium mining in a wilderness park is another big story that people forget to ask for the whole story. The mine in the Grand Canyon, for instance, has been in place since the late 1940’s. 60 years later, the Obama administration stopped production to do a 20 year analysis of the impact on the environment. That sounds really odd to me. Generally, there is some indicator that shows it is a problem and you do an investigation to determine the full impact. A long term evaluation is then done to ensure the pollution is going away (which is almost immediate) and nature is returning to normal in that area. In this case, there was no initial claim against it. So I’m not sure what the driver was. Also, the 20 year ban had no real parameters to meet other than time. So it sounds suspect to me. But I find out all this not because it was on the news, but because I did a lot of research.
So while I fully support growing my own food, finding new ways to make my home more efficient, working on developing more energy efficient ways of producing power and making the world better for the next generation, that doesn’t mean that I blindly support every “claim” of environmental threat.

^Most efforts to save/help/preserve the environment, are well backed by science. They are not efforts to maliciously undermine corporate profit.

And kudos @seawulf575 . All aquifers are fragile. There shouldn’t be pipelines anywhere close to them.

If someone told you about possible threats to your house, I suspect that you would at least give them some attention. The world is a home to all of us, and all potential threats should be taken with the utmost seriousness.

20 years of no mining. I can only see environmental benefit, in that area. Research not required. Another great Obama decision!

@SQUEEKY2 Yeah, that’s what I meant. Overfishing the oceans to the point of no edible fish left in 50 years, all of the plastic and other shit in the oceans, doubling of the population occurring about every 25 years, MRSA and other antibacterial resistant superbugs becoming more and more rampant, etc., etc.

@seawulf575 The purpose of the temporary ban was to allow scientists time to better understand the complex geology and groundwater flow around the Grand Canyon and to determine if uranium mining could be done safely in the region.

Without this improved understanding, allowing any new mines to go forward would be gambling that they won’t contaminate the land and water resources critical to life and culture both within the canyon and beyond.

I guess he needs to do better research.^

Aquifers are extremely hard to clean once polluted by fracking, or oil spills, guess that makes them fragile.
And sorry I was referring to a wilderness park in Alaska, but if I can remember I think that was for oil drilling and exploration.
And they have stated they want to look at getting back into coal power, and yet you believe they truly care about the environment?
Environment regulations are not in place to hinder big corporations ,but rather to make sure they just don’t run amuck and do environmental damage, sorta like Chevron did in South America a few years back, but go ahead and deny that to.
Trump has cut, or gutted environment branches of the Government, and yet you say you care about the environment sorry I totally do not believe you, but go ahead pick at a spelling mistake or a punctuation error that will make it all better,but isn’t that the conservative way, deflect attention away from the topic for any reason?

@SQUEEKY2 your hair is on fire again! Might want to watch that, it could be polluting the air!

You seem to purposely miss a whole lot of points I make. I have stated that that I would need to know the whole story on something and not just the sensationalized portion. Here are some questions for you: What does the aquifer you are referring to supply? How big is it? How close is the oil line being proposed to the aquifer? What is the geology between the aquifer and the oil pipeline? Is the line supposed to be double walled? The list goes on and on. These are all questions I feel need to be asked and answered before I can make an informed decision. Otherwise I look like my hair is on fire. By your own words, you really aren’t sure even what the pipeline was for.
Environmental regulations are sometimes put in place to protect the environment. Other times they are put in place to expand federal power and size. Trump cut many bogus regulations that Obama put in place, that is true. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of Obama’s rules were illegal to start with. Go ahead, try to deny it even though the facts are the facts. The Clean Power rule was based on the Clean Air Act, section 111. However this section doesn’t allow the Federal Government to demand that states regulate pollutants from existing sources when those sources are already being regulated under section 112. The Clean Water Rule was an extreme overreach by the Obama EPA to gain control of all waters in the US. Even though the SCOTUS, three times, ruled on what the definition of “Waters of the United States” are, and that includes that they must have a direct tie to navigable waters, the CWR wants to include all waters they deem applicable.
You bring up coal power, but you really don’t seem to have a real idea of how that is an environmental threat. I strongly suspect that my concerns with it and your concerns with it are two entirely different things. So before I tell you my concerns, I’d LOVE to hear what your concerns are. Please…be specific.
Here’s the problem we have on our understanding of environmental issues: You seem to believe that undoing illegal rules, or rules that make no sense other than to expand the power of the federal government is somehow a threat to the environment. I don’t. You seem to believe that anyone that doesn’t drink the kool-aid like you do is somehow hating the environment. I don’t. You seem to take all the sensationalism you hear and regurgitate it ad naseum. I question things I hear.

@flutherother that is exactly what I am saying. There really isn’t a complaint or a worry with how the mining was being done, but the Obama rule banned it anyway to see if there is a worry or complaint. ??? By that rationale, let’s ban all oil usage in this country, let’s ban heating and air conditioning (since the production of both can add pollutants to the air), let’s stop population growth, and let’s ban industrial meat production for 20 years to see if there is a positive impact on the environment. After all, I’m pretty sure all those things are polluting the environment so it only makes sense to ban them for 20 years so we can see the full impact, right?
Mining already has a ton of regulations on it to protect the environment. I personally think they are good regulations. They involve not only the mined materials, but the methodologies of mining, the equipment used, the decommissioning methods, etc. All those regulations are in place to do exactly what you are suggesting…protect the environment. As for the cultural aspect, I have a mixed feeling on that. The mine hasn’t changed location and the Navajo didn’t have a problem before. The problem I have with the cultural aspect is that when the mine was first put in, the Navajo were all for it since it was a boon to their economy. They got jobs they needed and it was a good thing. HOWEVER, that was so much hooey. The people putting the mines in knew of hazards and risks and didn’t tell the workers about them. That impacted the Navajo horribly. I feel that the people putting the mines in should have been arrested and thrown under the prison, not into it. Since that time, many of the rules concerning mining safety and environmental impact have been enacted and cleaned up a lot of the hazards.
So if there was a specific concern that drove the 20 year ban, I would be more than happy to evaluate that concern. But there wasn’t, so the ban makes no sense and was only sold on a sensationalized tone…We want to SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!!! But it doesn’t say how, it doesn’t say what they are trying to correct, it doesn’t say anything other than it is banning the mining.

If they knew all the answers there would not need to be a study.

@seawulf575 . Your blind hatred of Obama is practically palpable.

You would clearly rather trade the well being of our planet, than admit one positive thing Obama accomplished. Your party is the same.

I’ll use your house as an analogy again. If someone told you it was on fire, would you investigate, or would you stubbornly declare that there need to be more studies, and details before you “overreact” by grabbing a fire extinguisher?

In this case, it’s OK to have your head up your ass. The air is safer to breathe there…

Your ridiculous analogies about A/C, livestock etc mean that you do have some comprehension of what the problems are. Yet you shut your eyes to it. And by the way, if we stopped all the things you mentioned, it would be inconvenient, but it would obviously help the environment.

Your only argument seems to be that the government wanted more power over these large corporations. That’s a foolish premise at best, but wouldn’t that be better than the impact that these corporations would have on our planet, if left unchecked?

Here is just one link I found about coal power….
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/coal-air-pollution#.WkKLi

It’s amazing you seem to think regulations are put in place just to expand Government.
Remember the Kalamazoo River,that pipe line was badly ruptured and instead of investigating they simply tried to restart the oil flow no less than 19 times, no sensationalizing there.
My hair isn’t on fire, but I trust the Trump administration even less than you trusted the Obama one.

As others have pointed out, these regulations are put in place to make sure safe guide lines are met not chew into corporate profits.
But nothing I say is going to convince you, you just claim it’s a bleeding heart libral with their hair on fire.
So go on and rape the earth, everything will be great, profits will go through the roof, and who gives a shit if the earth isn’t livable for future generations at least the big boys of today made their money.
And your luke warm belief of the (oh you care about the envirnment) is rather sickening.

@MrGrimm888 You continue to amaze me. I have a hard time admitting one positive thing Obama accomplished because I haven’t found one yet. The things you see as positives I see as devious or negatives, depending on what it is. And apparently the Independent party (?) is the same.
Let’s take your house analogy and compare it. If someone told me my house was on fire, I could see the flames of smell the smoke, hear the fire alarm. Those are specific things that need to be addressed. First order of business is get the family out safe, then work on putting out the fire. If there is no flame or smoke or fire alarm, wouldn’t it seem like “overreacting” to grab the fire extinguisher and start spraying it? Now let’s compare that to the business of mining in the GC. What was the specific thing that caused the reaction? What was the flame or the smoke or the fire alarm? That is what I’ve been saying. There was none of that. To tie it to the house fire analogy, he just ordered someone out of their house for 20 years to see if it would catch fire or not. The 20 year closure of the mining was not based on any incident or evidence. It was bogus from the start. Even the 20 year “study” doesn’t have any set guidelines. This is not a scientific study…it is political smoke. It was done so the weak-minded fools, such as yourself, would think he was doing something for the environment. But you can’t really tell me what the problem was that is being fixed. If there is an industry that is polluting, they standard order of things when dealing with it is for there to be evidence of the polluting, followed by an investigation into where that pollution is coming from, followed by an order to stop the polluting and pay for the clean-up. All sorts of regulators step in to ensure things are safe before allowing the business to re-commence their operation. And I support that sort of thing whole-heartedly. In the case of the mining, there was none of that. It was an order to close the mining for no apparent reason. And they want 20 years to see if there was a reason. Yeah…I have a hard time seeing that as a positive.
I absolutely understand what the problems are. I understand how most of these things impact us. I also understand they are needed for our society. Let’s say Trump did like Obama and ordered all electrical production to cease immediately because in one way or another it is polluting or harming the environment. Let’s say he ordered all oil purchasing and processing to cease immediately. Let’s say he closed all industrial meat producers. After all, isn’t that what Obama did with the uranium mines…just closed them because they could be polluting the environment? So let’s say Trump did that. Imagine what our country would be like in one month. It would be more than inconvenient. No electricity. No gasoline. No food. No water. No nothing. There would be rioting in the streets, upheaval the likes of which you cannot imagine. But we would be saving the environment, right?
Until one of you can actually tell me what the environmental threat was that caused Obama to close the uranium mining for 20 years, it remains a bogus thing to do. It is governmental overreach…use of the EPA to control manufacturing. Your blind support of Obama is practically palpable.

@SQUEEKY2 The fact that you cite the Union of Concerned Scientists is disturbing. This is the group that, while protesting the building of a nuclear power plant, put forth the demand that the company attach a smell to radiation, just like they do to natural gas, so that people living near the plant could tell when there was a leak. That effectively is like saying they want someone to attach a smell to light. They are dolts. And the fact that you couldn’t actually tell me any of the concerns of coal plants yourself without researching tells me that I was 100% correct about you. You have no thoughts of your own, you cannot think for yourself or make your own opinions, you can only regurgitate what someone said somewhere.
I have worked in an industry that is strictly regulated by the state and federal government. I fully understand and fully support the regulations and the penalties for violating them. What I don’t understand or support is the random regulations, such as closing the uranium mining for 20 years, that have no basis in science at all. They have no basis at all, other than as a political tool so that the foolish in our society will think it was a great idea and fully supporting the environment. I don’t see rolling these acts back as a threat to the environment since they were based on no threat to the environment to start with that wasn’t already being controlled through regulations.
Now, my personal feeling is that I don’t like coal plants. I think they are dirty and have too many ugly by-products such as the sulfur dioxide and the coal ash. But we are approaching an electricity crunch in this nation. Wind and solar only account for about 6% of our total production. Hydro power is about 7%. Nuclear accounts for about 20%. The rest is coal (30%), petroleum (1%) and natural gas (35%). Coal plants have been closing and not restarting. That will slowly phase out 30% of our available electricity. Nuclear plants are likewise closing with no new plants being built. That will slowly knock out 20% of our production. Between the two, you are looking at losing 50% of the available electricity in this country, with nothing to make up the difference. And the rest that is left isn’t equally distributed across the country. Hydroelectric depends on where the dams are. Hoover by Las Vegas, Grand Coulee on the Columbia river in Washington State, and TVA with a lot of small dams throughout TN. The wind is used mainly in the middle of the country…IA, SD, etc. So, unfortunately, the reality is that our society is not ready to get rid of the big players in electrical production. If I were king for a day, I would lay out a plan for making wind and solar more efficient. I would look at tidal energy to see if it could be tapped. I would spend the money on solid research into these fields. I would make the renewables less damaging to the environment and more efficient so that I could phase out the non-renewables. But I would lay it out so that society didn’t collapse in the process.
Please note in all my comments I have not once supported the evil, greedy industrialists. I don’t go for corruption, as I have stated numerous times on this site. But what you forget is that industries are more than just a few greedy bastards at the top. They are the people working on the front lines. These are the people that are actually working to make sure things are done safely for themselves and the environment. Go to any industry and start asking around. It won’t take long to find someone way down in the organization that knows what the regulations are and can probably tell you how they are meeting them. It is in their best interests to meet these regs because they and their friends and families live in the area. I would lay good money that these people want the environment safe for generations to come. And I would suggest that many of these people are like me…conservatives.

And you cry personal attack?
WOW just wow!
And citing scientists is wrong?
Or scientists you don’t agree with is wrong?
They have put a smell with natural gas so people can detect a leak, I am not a scientist but if a smell could be put with radiation would that be a bad thing?
As for my own thoughts why bother you would just dismiss them as some liberals bleeding heart hair on fire nonsense.

@seawulf575 The ban on uranium mining is on new uranium mines in the Grand Canyon. We are more aware of the dangers of radioactivity than before so it makes sense to thoroughly evaluate the environmental consequences before going ahead. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past and millions of people depend on water from the Colorado River.

@seawulf575 actually compared a uranium mining stop, to national cataclysm. No false analogy there…..

Nuff said…