Last year, in a futile attempt to demonstrate their Green bona fides, the Congressional Republicans issued a report highlighting new environmental initiatives. To curry favor with suburban voters and soccer moms, Republicans sought to prove that they could spend just as much on failed regulatory programs as the Democrats. Indeed, during the last Congress, funding for the Environmental Protection Agency reached an all-time high. But does anyone believe Republicans got any credit for this on election day?
Most Americans are certainly pro-environment. Poll after poll shows that the American people care about the quality of the water they drink and the air they breathe. Americans want to conserve scarce resources and protect threatened species. But this does not mean Americans want more federal programs and expanded regulations. Nor does it provide any evidence that Republicans make political gains by "me-tooing" the likes of Henry Waxman or Al Gore.
Americans are unquestionably pro-environment. But they are also suspicious of the an extensive, command-and-control environmental bureaucracy headquartered in Washington, D.C. Indeed, many of the same polls that show widespread public support of environmental goals, show equally strong support for substantial changes in the way our environment is protected. Indeed, most Americans are both pro-environment and anti-federal regulation.
This point was demonstrated in a National Survey of Environmental Attitudes commissioned from the polling company by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1996. The survey of 1,000 registered voters nationwide found strong support for returning substantial regulatory authority over environmental matters to state and local governments. The survey also found that a majority of voters support the protection of property rights and conservation strategies that do not impose uncompensated regulatory takings on private landowners.
A lot has changed politically since 1996, even if most environmental policies have not. So, in December 1998, CEI commissioned a follow-up survey to see if Americans still felt the same way about environmental protection in 1998 as they did in 1996. As before, the survey was a nationwide poll of 1,000 registered voters. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent. While the answers to some specific questions may have changed, the bottom line did not. Americans still support the protection of property rights and a greater role for state and local governments in environmental policy. As demonstrated in the accompanying table, in both 1996 and 1998, a clear majority of respondents want greater state and local control of environmental concerns. Even when addressing the potential threat of chemical releases in a local community, respondents placed more faith in state and local officials than the federal government.
The emergence of new environmental issues, such as "urban sprawl" – the pejorative characterization of suburban growth dominant in environmental discussions today – has not dampened the public’s preference for dealing with the matter close to home. For starters, it is worth noting that only 23 percent of respondents identified suburban development or "urban sprawl" as a major concern in the community in which they live. For 44 percent of respondents, such development is a minor concern, and for 30 percent, it is not a concern at all.
Suburban development is undoubtedly a concern in some places, but this does not mean that Americans want Uncle Sam (or Vice President Al) to get involved. Indeed, more registered voters would prefer that government not get involved and that "sprawl" concerns get handled by private groups than would like to see the federal government address the issue. In those communities where "urban sprawl" is a concern, two-thirds of respondents said that state or local governments should take the lead.
This is consistent with the public’s strong support of property rights. If the government restricts the use of private land with environmental regulations, 63 percent of respondents said that the government should compensate the landowners for the resulting loss in land value. This is consistent with the majority of polls done on the subject. A substantial minority (approximately 30 percent) also would like to see land-use regulations under the Endangered Species Act replaced with voluntary incentive programs. More intriguing, a majority (59 percent) said that they support the private ownership, management, and breeding of threatened wildlife species. These results suggest that latent support for true free-market policies could be much stronger than most politicians believe.
In recent years, conservative politicians and policy makers have sought to burnish their environmental image by adopting "pro-environment" positions. Typically this has entailed echoing the calls for greater regulation and more government spending. This strategy is a mistake, particularly for political leaders who otherwise endorse a limited government agenda. Americans are pro-environment, but they believe that environmental protection does not require sending more power to Washington, D.C. They want policies that are both pro-environment and anti-federal regulation. The challenge for conservative and free-market politicians is to embrace and articulate that message. No amount of throwing money at the EPA will do the trick.
Jonathan H. Adler (jadler@cei.org) is CEI’s Senior Director of Environmental Policy.
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