But there's also some truth in them. But no principled conservative could advocate letting polluters get away with fouling our air or water or land. Another fundamental principle is based on the free market concept that governmental subsidies are undesirable. For our concern here, government should stop subsidizing environmental destruction. In all sorts of ways government takes our tax money and uses it to subsidize waste of natural resources and damage to the environment.
Taxpayers lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Many forests are clear cut, with all the destruction that causes, that would never have been profitable to log without the subsidies. Without those subsidies, our forests and grazing lands would be in much better condition, and we taxpayers would not be losing billions a year for the privilege of seeing our natural areas destroyed. Finally, these days we need to beware of insidious attempts to deceive the public by denying the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence about some very serious environmental problems. Some popular commentators are doing just that, but there is nothing conservative about it. In sum, the principles of conservatism clearly support environmental protection.