Conservatives need to take back control of environmental politics

It is a great pleasure to be asked by Sam Hall, the Director of Conservative Environment Network (CEN), to join their advisory council. I intend, as asked, to bring my knowledge and expertise to the role to support CEN in grounding their approach to policy development in a philosophy of conservative environmentalism. Indeed, Kemi Badenoch’s focus on rethinking of the Conservative Party’s principles and policies makes it an apt time for us to do so for conservative environmentalism too. Conservatives must make the environment a key priority, but we have to ensure that we use the language of conservatism when we talk about and debate environmental issues. 

Dr Daniel Pitt | CEN Advisory Council Member and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham

Conservatives need to take back control of environmental politics. The environment needs saving from the so-called ‘environmentalists’, who do more harm than good. We cannot allow the scare mongers to take further control of the narrative around climate change, because conserving and enhancing our environment, the fields, the rivers, our houses is deeply Tory.

Yet, some conservatives seem to have accepted that they cannot be environmentalists. The late Sir Roger Scruton remarked that some ‘Conservatives then wrongly dismiss the whole environmental movement as a socially divisive one’. Scruton added that they then ‘try to pretend that the environment is an exclusively left-wing concern, and one that has no place in conservative political thinking.”

There is, however, a conservative perspective upon the politics of the environment that is differentiated from a liberal or ‘woke’ views. Environmental protection and enhancement run deeply through the conservative tradition from Edmund Burke to Wendall Berry. Berry argued that ‘the care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, [and our] most pleasing responsibility.’ The Tory perspective is coherent, persuasive and also popular.

Environmentalism of the Heart

According to you YouGov, the environment is important to many British people. Environmentalism is only second to Conservatism itself amongst Conservative voters. Conservatives are environmentalists and Badenoch must lean into it. Conservatives do have a proud history to draw on from, such as The Board of Agriculture Act 1889, when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minster, Sir Anthony Eden’s Clean Air Act, to the creation of ‘Blue Belt’ in 2017.

Richard Weaver, an American conservative scholar, perceived that “the attitude toward nature […] is a matter so basic to one’s outlook or philosophy of life that we often tend to overlook it”. We could call the overlooked parts of this philosophy of life as ‘Environmentalism of the Heart’, because it is an instinctive one. The Conservative way of thinking about the environment is much wider and deeper than environmental policy or politics as it draws from philosophy, poets, scientists and politicians both historical and contemporary. Odes to the British countryside can pull on the environmental heart.

Conservative attitude Towards the Landscape

The conservative attitude towards the landscape emphasises the traditional, the natural, and the Christian architecture that dwells within the British boarders. T. S. Eliot provided a typology for us between using and exploiting nature. Not everything that we love can (or should) be given a monetary value, including in nature. Weaver writes that:

Man has a duty of veneration toward nature and the natural. Nature is not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man should seek in regard to nature is not a complete dominion but a modus vivendi – that is, a manner of living together, a coming to terms with something that was here before our time and will be here after it.

This orientation leads to stewardship over nature and of husbanding resources rather than exploiting nature. This orientation requires self-restraint and humility. Why would anyone apply this restraint? Scruton believed that “nobody seems to have identified a motive more likely to serve the environmentalist cause than this one, of the shared love for our home”. Indeed, he was right. So, environmental protection is also a moral question. The American, R. V. Young, Jr wrote that ‘conservative must insist that the only answer to our current ecologic crisis is to recognize it as a moral crisis and return to traditional virtues.’ Thus, connecting environmental policy with social as well as cultural policy. Environmental policy must not be ripped out of its context. 

Trust, Beauty and History Matters

A positive environmentalism requires popular consent or “buy-in”.  The Scottish philosopher, David Hume taught us that without promises there can be no long-term relations, and that the institution of promise-making depends upon trust. That is why ‘woke’ groups, such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, do more harm to environmental causes than good. A conservative perspective recognises that environmental sustainability depends upon trust.

The academic, Mark Mitchell notes that ‘each place has a unique history embodied in the land, the people, the human artifacts and the stories’. Our landscape, countryside and urban dwellings are meaningful and irreplaceable, and understandably many people feel a moral duty to our environment and also an emotional desire to work to conserve them. It is a long-standing position that beauty is an intrinsic value. To look on a thing as beautiful is to value it for what it is, not for what it does, or for the external end it serves. The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury argued that we are naturally designed to have a positive response to beauty, and it makes us happy.

We need to enhance the beautiful and overcome uglification of our landscape. Doing so will protect, enhance, and safeguard the place where we live and our environment. Conserving one’s local culture and one’s environment are two sides of the same coin. Politicians putting conservative environmentalism into practice should do so with prudence as well as keeping in mind the environmental conservatism of the heart. As love of home is a powerful motivation to protect and enhance our environment. 

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