| |
|
|
|
Search
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact
Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2010
Archive / 2009
Archive / 2008
Archive / 2007
Archive / 2006
Archive / 2005
Archive
Lynn Scarlett's Pointed Advice
for Conservatives
April 16, 2010
A decade ago, Lynn Scarlett was
a policy maven at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based
in Los Angeles. She was hired away by the Bush administration to help
Gale Norton and then Norton’s successor Dirk Kempthorne run the
Interior Department.
Given the ideology and attitude that permeated Interior then,
especially during the early Bush years, Scarlett was never much of a
favorite with conservationists. They ought to give her a second look.
In a recent interview with the Los
Angeles Times, Scarlett looked back on her Interior
tenure. She said that Bush himself cared about conservation, but the
issue wasn’t a high priority in the administration. Few of the
administration’s leading lights cared about environmental stewardship
and more than a few were hostile to the cause.
For all the wrong reasons, Scarlett recalls. Here is her take-home
insight, in Scarlett’s own words, as quoted by the Times.
"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 (Capitol) 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."
That must change. Thanks, Lynn Scarlett, for those words of wisdom.
|
|
