ABSTRACT
Any consideration of conservative environmental policies must begin, unfortunately, with a survey of several widespread misconceptions about environmentalism and environmentalists. There seems to be a general belief that conservatives are the natural enemies of environmentalists and that conservatism is opposed to all but the most insignificant measures to preserve nature or to protect the environment. This chapter outlines what an affirmative conservative environmental agenda would look like, an agenda that would attempt to solve major environmental problems rather than merely deny their existence or deflect public attention from them. In the environmental area, what businesses usually want is to avoid paying for as many of the costs of production as possible, to "externalize" their costs, typically in the form of pollution. Both environmentalists and conservatives need to realize that it is a violation of conservative principles to let businesses get away with whatever they want to do.
