As American conservatives struggle to find a new identity, British Conservatives have succeeded in defining theirs. A poll conducted just before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister showed that Conservative leader David Cameron enjoyed a 14 point lead in response to the question of who is “greener.”
By now, the story of Cameron’s green rebranding is familiar on both sides of the Atlantic. He dumped the Conservative’s famous blue torch logo, replacing it with a tree, and routinely ensures that party conventions are bathed in green lighting and imagery. He installed a wind turbine on the roof of his London home, embarked on a widely publicized dog-sled trip to a shrinking glacier in the Arctic, and cycles into work at Parliament. While Republicans were sinking to mid-term disaster in 2006, he led his party to victory in municipal elections that year by urging voters to “Vote Blue, Go Green.”
Some old-line British Conservatives have mocked Cameron for (in the words of Norman Tebbit) “clever marketing.” Caroline Jackson, Conservative Member of the European Parliament, has condemned green rebranding as “cosmetic.” One internal party pressure group, The Taxpayers’ Alliance, has published a warning to American conservatives arguing that the attempt to reposition Thatcher’s tax-cutters into Dave’s tree-huggers had “enormously backfired.”
Has it? Really? Conservatives hold a double-digit poll advantage over Labour, with a 7-point lead on the crucial issue of economic management.
Cameron’s green policies are not the reason for this lead. But with 75% of Britons agreeing that climate change was an important issue, Cameron’s green policies were crucial to his project of “decontaminating” Conservatism after three back-to-back election disasters.
If the Republican Party hopes to attract segments of the electorate from which it has become dangerously disconnected, it needs to present itself as similarly concerned with the environment. A recent Gallup poll revealed that attitudes in this area are highly partisan, with Democrats overwhelmingly more likely to hold a pessimistic view of environmental conditions and to be more receptive to green messages. Crucially for Republicans, it also found that women are “more likely to worry about the environment, to take a dim view of environmental conditions, to be active in or sympathetic to the environmental movement, and to give precedence to the environment over economic and energy concerns.”
David Cameron’s greening of the Tories should not simply be seen as a triumph of style over substance. In this case, the style is actually continuous with the substance, which is a blueprint for an environmental and energy revolution that is at once radical in its ambition and conservative in its conception.
Last month, this plan to “decarbonize” Britain was outlined in a policy paper in which the central idea is to create the conditions for a new “electricity internet,” based on smart grid and smart meter technology. Consumers would be able to use the latter in their homes to interact with the former so that supply and demand can be managed efficiently. For instance, they could enter their electricity needs for a certain appliance (or even an electric car) into the smart meter. The supplier would use this information to offer the cheapest possible rates, which would in turn allow for greater use of renewable energy due to more predictable demand. Just as Web 2.0 technology empowers users to generate content, the electricity internet would offer people the opportunity to make money from their own small-scale low carbon energy production. So power companies could reward anyone who generated energy through wind turbines or solar panels.
In an economic downturn, perhaps it is unwise to dwell on green concerns. On the other hand, it is not as if US Republicans got very far with their 2008 election message, “drill, baby, drill.” Cameron has taken the time to establish his credibility on green issues, to position his party at the forefront of the debate rather than denying its significance, to base his vision of a low carbon Britain on principles of decentralization, localism, private initiative and choice that animate his entire platform, and to understand and act on the insight that the environment, while ostensibly a latent concern, speaks to fundamental issues on immigration, energy independence, quality of life and the safety and security of voters’ families.
The GOP must also speak to those issues in a constructive manner, or discover that time in opposition is one resource that has a habit of renewing itself.
10 responses so far
1 Advocate123 // Mar 9, 2009 at 10:45 pm
What on Earth are you talking about?
The Green movement is going to bankrupt this nation, and every other nation that tries to cap carbon. Green jobs are essentially breaking everyone’s windows and pays the unemployed to clean up the mess. They are worthless.
The only reason why the “Drill Baby Drill” movement didn’t work past the summer was because we hit an economic crisis that tanked the price of oil.
McCain was the worst possible choice because he advocated the, “What if we’re wrong Environmentalism” ideology. If the Green movement is wrong, which they are, the cost of living goes up and it hurts the poor.
2 danbmil99 // Mar 9, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Advocate123: that ship has sailed. The public thinks climate and environment are issues, so they are issues. The GOP has dissipated any credibility it ever had in the area of scientific opinion with its idiotic attraction to creationist science and its constant politicization of hard science. This is yet another issue where the GOP is seriously out of step, and needs to change course. If Obama’s cap/trade policies are wrong, suggest another way to curb carbon emissions. “Drill Baby Drill” and “Who cares about baby seals?” is really not the way to go right now. Certainly we can argue timing wrt the economic crisis, but flat-out denialism is what got us here, and it ain’t getting us out
3 Stewardship // Mar 10, 2009 at 5:25 am
Jamie, welcome! Something Dittoheads inconveniently forget is that George H. W. Bush institued cap and trade to stop acid rain…our economy went on a twenty year run unlike any we’ve ever seen. Ronald Reagan negotiated the elimination of chemicals that were decimating the ozone. No harm to the economy. Republicans can’t win without reversing the 2-to1 margin the Dems enjoyed last November among young adults (one third of our population). The environment is a major issue and priority in the demographic group. The argument that cap and trade will raise costs to consumers might be true…but that is short term…by switching to clean and renewable energy now, we all but guarantee that our children and grandchildre will enjoy lower costs in the future…lower energy costs, lower costs of remediation of climate change impacts (we are spending $400 million right now to relocate a tiny Alaskan village that is sinking into the ocean as the permafrost melts). Good stewardship, whether it be from a conservative or Biblical perspective, works to insure future generations do not suffer do to our own excesses.
4 gibberish // Mar 10, 2009 at 8:17 am
The jury is out on whether UK Conservative enviromentalism is mere greenwash but at least they look like they are aware of the issues and have purged the denialist loons from public awareness.
5 sinz54 // Mar 10, 2009 at 8:55 am
Stewardship: We cannot just “switch to clean and renewable energy now.” Over half of our energy needs are in transportation. I can’t run a car or truck or airplane on solar power. Retooling our personal transportation system away from gasoline is going to be enormously expensive–and it’s going to take a very long time.
6 Stewardship // Mar 10, 2009 at 11:32 am
Sinz54: Point well taken and correct. I used a broad brush stroke. Obviously, even switching over to clean and renewables just to send electricity to our homes can’t be accomplished overnight. It is going to take years…and yet our society still can’t agree on a target or goal. Thanks!
7 Tom B // Mar 10, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Just alittle tech info on the electrical grid. It currently operates instantaneously to load requirements. Always has, even without the so called smart grid. You turn on a lite, a power plant somewhere increases output power. That power was priced the hour before or the day before, the expected demand factored in based on previous load patterns based on weather, day of the week, time of day.
You logging into a computer is tell someone you are plugging in a car will provide no benefit.
I don’t want to rain on your parade, that is just the way it works.
8 JG // Mar 11, 2009 at 12:34 pm
We can’t just throw up our hands and say “oh well, the argument that CO2 is bad has won the day, let’s just get on board with taxing carbon emissions.” My party is not a party that taxes me when I buy my gas and then taxes me again when I burn it. Or taxes my electric company when it buys coal and taxes it again when it burns it.
What we need to do is distinguish between sensible environmentalism, and, for lack of a better term, extreme, anti progress and anti capitalist environmentalism. Limits on where you can dump waste and how you can dump it, drinking water standards, maintaining compliance with current non California auto emissions standards, elements of the Boone Pickens plan, things of that nature? That’s sensible environmentalism that the party can support.
Taxing C02 (Cap & Trade = Tax), bans on offshore but out of sightdrilling, closing Yucca Mountain before it opens and stifling the nuclear energy industry, increasing CAFE standards for automakers forcing them to make cars consumers have no incentive to buy, saving the snail darter at the expense of farmers – that’s extreme environmentalism that the party should not support.
9 danbmil99 // Mar 12, 2009 at 5:23 am
What exactly distinguishes a CO2 tax from other environmental regulation? It seems much more flexible than strict limits, which will require a huge bureaucracy to handle all the exceptions and special cases and permits and so on. Either we think C02 is a pollutant, or we don’t.
10 JG // Mar 13, 2009 at 8:41 am
Taxing or regulating C02 is distinguishable because of w essential it is to emit C02. We breath it out, plants consume it. Arguably, it’s not a pollutant, and certainly not in the way radioactive waste or particulate emissions are. Nearly every form of industry, production, transporation, even food preparation, requires C02 emissions in one way or another. Taxing or regulating C02 is exerting government control over every American entity and individual on a scale not often seen – the ultimate left wing power grab. It has the potential to hamstring our economy and our way of life.
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