In 2000, Lynn Scarlett left the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, to serve eight years in the Bush administration as assistant secretary of the Interior, steward for 500 million acres in public land. She later led the department after the resignation of Secretary Gale Norton, amid tumult over land policy and science's role. Scarlett, 60, recently sat down in a Santa Barbara office to discuss her transformation from conservative conservationist to enthusiastic environmentalist. On President George W. Bush's interest in environmental issues. . . .All my interaction with the president was seeing a person who really cared about conservation. The public image is very different from my personal perception. Now, having said that, I don't want to be making the comment -- because I think it would be . . . foolish -- to say that conservation was a priority for the administration. There certainly were many players for whom environmental matters and conservation were somewhere lower along the totem pole. Or not just low on the totem pole, but even antithetical to their interests. This gets to an observation I have about modern conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives -- with four decades of relentless critique of environmental laws, what they call "command and control" -- have come to conflate a critique of the tools for a critique of the value set. And so I had people on the Hill say to me, "I don't do environment." I think it's something that conservatives have not grappled with and must grapple with to be relevant in the 21st century. . . . Environment is about human health as much as it's about ecological health, it's about spiritual well-being, it's about physical well-being. And right now very few -- not all -- but very few conservatives have much constructive to say on that topic...read more
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Bush Interior secretary discusses transformation to enthusiastic environmentalist
In 2000, Lynn Scarlett left the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, to serve eight years in the Bush administration as assistant secretary of the Interior, steward for 500 million acres in public land. She later led the department after the resignation of Secretary Gale Norton, amid tumult over land policy and science's role. Scarlett, 60, recently sat down in a Santa Barbara office to discuss her transformation from conservative conservationist to enthusiastic environmentalist. On President George W. Bush's interest in environmental issues. . . .All my interaction with the president was seeing a person who really cared about conservation. The public image is very different from my personal perception. Now, having said that, I don't want to be making the comment -- because I think it would be . . . foolish -- to say that conservation was a priority for the administration. There certainly were many players for whom environmental matters and conservation were somewhere lower along the totem pole. Or not just low on the totem pole, but even antithetical to their interests. This gets to an observation I have about modern conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives -- with four decades of relentless critique of environmental laws, what they call "command and control" -- have come to conflate a critique of the tools for a critique of the value set. And so I had people on the Hill say to me, "I don't do environment." I think it's something that conservatives have not grappled with and must grapple with to be relevant in the 21st century. . . . Environment is about human health as much as it's about ecological health, it's about spiritual well-being, it's about physical well-being. And right now very few -- not all -- but very few conservatives have much constructive to say on that topic...read more
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Yeah, yeah, and Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Ayn Rand and we all saw how that worked out. Give a small boy a hammer and he will soon discover that everything needs hammering. Give a libertarian a government position and he/she will soon discover more government is good idea.
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