Innovation, personal responsibility, and the “golden rule” have contributed to American’s natural tendency to take care of our environment. Time and again, when confronted with environmental challenges, it’s private industry, citizen volunteers, and the rugged individualism of the American entrepreneur that have led efforts to make America a better steward of our environment. Conservatives understand deeply that our natural resources and green spaces are part of our heritage and national identity. From the sportsman to the rancher to the boatsman, American conservatives both deeply appreciate and have a vested interest in sustaining our natural spaces.
Access to Public Lands for Multiple Use Purposes
America’s patchwork of nearly 700 million acres of public land in the form of national parks, forest, wetlands, marshes, deserts, mountains are treasured by millions of recreationalists, hunters, fisherman, entrepreneurs, farmers, ranchers, and developers. Our nation’s public lands, which account for one quarter of our total land mass and half the American West, are truly one of the iconic characteristics of America.
These national jewels must remain available and accessible for multiple use purposes, as originally imagined by the Federal Land Management Policy Act, for all Americans to enjoy without the heavy hand of government unnecessarily restricting access or limiting activities. America’s vast national forests, parks and public lands should be managed by local experts, not bureaucrats in an office in Washington D.C.
Defending America’s Borders While Protecting Our Environment
Extreme environmental dogma has prevented the common sense modernization of fundamental environmental laws that govern our air, land, and water. Extreme positions have led to the weaponization of environmental law to the detriment of farmers, ranchers, local land owners, and recreationalists. Many would agree that a farmer has a greater interest in, and is a better shepherd, in protecting the vitality of his land than a government bureaucrat.
Worse, certain federal land management laws have created protected corridors along federal lands on the U.S. southern border that have been exploited by drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other illegal border crossers. U.S. Border Patrol agents are significantly hindered from utilizing ATVs or off-road vehicles for patrolling, deploying surveillance equipment, or pursuing illegal border crossers on federal lands. This is due to their requirement to adhere to radicalized interpretations of the National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Wilderness Act, and Endangered Species Act, that in some cases prohibit anything other than foot traffic. Ironically, these laws protect the smugglers and human traffickers who harm our federal lands with trash, drugs and hazardous waste as they move through these unpatrolled passageways while doing little to protect the land itself.
U.S. Border Patrol should not be limited by out of date laws that do more to protect drug smugglers and human traffickers than the wildlife and landscapes they were originally intended to keep pristine. Border Patrol should be able to reasonably traverse federal lands when monitoring, pursuing, surveilling or patrolling for illegal border crossing activities. This action would help reduce illegal border crossings while also better protecting our public lands on the U.S. Southern border.
Only Proper Forest Management Prevents Forest Fires
As population centers expand closer to our forests and public lands, combined with the mismanagement of these forest lands, the risk of catastrophic fire damage continues to increase. The United States should adopt a National Forest management plan to ensure proper forest health in areas identified as high risk. Proper timber harvesting in areas identified by local forest managers as suitable for harvest should be leveraged as part of a comprehensive strategy.
Enhanced forest management strategies should reduce red tape preventing proper forest management practices, provide jobs to rural and gateway communities, and encourage the use of wood biomass – a renewable, sustainable resource. At the same time, we should incentivize the planting and proper maintenance of trees as a natural, renewable carbon sink.
American Innovations Create Emissions Reductions
Fortunately, despite the endless fearmongering, attempts to vastly re-engineer society, and ruin our energy and economic prosperity, the United States hasn’t enacted an economy-wide carbon dioxide reduction scheme. For nearly the last 20 years, the United States carbon emissions have been in a precipitous decline, particularly when compared as an annual share of global carbon emissions. These declines are primarily due to innovations in the marketplace like the transition to more natural gas power plants, reduced energy consumption in industrial processes, more efficient transportation vehicles, a reduction in energy home energy consumption, and an increase in carbon-free energy generation.
The best environmental policy is one that encourages research and development, allows technologies to flourish, and removes government barriers to proper conservation of America’s vast land, air, water, and wildlife resources.
Cutting Red-Tape for Green Energy Development
Renewable and alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal are an integral part of an “all-of-the-above” energy approach, and there is tremendous potential to utilize our public lands and waters to help foster and expand renewable energy development. Unfortunately, bureaucratic delays, lawsuits and burdensome regulations frequently impede or delay our ability to harness renewable and traditional energy development and transmission.
Significant permitting reforms, which include a streamlined environmental review process, certainty in timelines, and limitations of the ability for dilatory legal challenges, are the quickest way to unleash an all-of-the-above American energy renaissance that will also incentivize innovation in renewable energy industries.
America’s burdensome and bureaucratic permitting and environmental review process is the single biggest obstacle standing in the way of new environmental advancements. With proper permitting reform, renewable energy innovation will flourish with reduced costs, improved efficiencies, increased accessibility, and increased innovation.
Cancel China’s Corrupt Critical Mineral Monopoly
Renewable energy technologies, not to mention defense systems and many consumer electronics, are highly dependent on critical minerals and rare earth metals to function. The Chinese Communist Party currently controls 60 to 100 percent of the market, depending on the specific mineral, and has strategically positioned itself as the global leader in the production of these materials. Often they are mined in horrible and environmentally damaging conditions and with child or forced labor. America needs to expedite development of our own projects for these minerals, but now the bureaucracy and environmental review process makes them too risky for meaningful business development.
The United States has a moral, environmental, and societal obligation to extract itself from China’s critical mineral monopoly by making significant and strategic investments in domestic mining and processing capacity. In addition to permitting reform, the United States should significantly expand mineral production and processing at home and develop critical mineral supply chains to move away from China to more environmentally friendly and morally acceptable countries.
Invest in America’s Innovators for Energy and Environmental Technologies
Through research, collaboration, and strategic investments, a wide variety of energy fields are being improved by technology innovations which help reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and boost deployment. Conservatives know that effective policies are needed to support the best ideas from lab to market. Proper innovation needs a consistent business environment into which to invest research and development resources to discover next generation technologies.
American energy companies have put food on the table of millions of Americans for generations. We should not be losing entire sectors and devastating communities because red tape keeps the private sector from modernization. Under current law, the Research and Development Tax Credit requires those utilizing the credit to amortize R&D costs over five years beginning in 2022, which significantly reduces our R&D competitiveness globally. There is strong evidence to suggest that the tax credit is effective at increasing R&D investment, where $1 of R&D tax credit would lead to about $4 of R&D spending.
To spur innovation in the energy and environment sector, the R&D tax credit should be made permanent, allow immediate and full deductibility, and made more accessible for small or start-up businesses that are often found in the energy and environment space.
America must continue to be the shining example of innovation and ingenuity as we lead the world in conservation and sensible environmental policies.
Policy Principles
- Ensure America’s public lands remain available for multiple use purposes and accessible to all Americans.
- Allow U.S. Border Patrol national security exemptions from environmental laws on public lands to combat illegal border crossings and to better protect the environment.
- Prioritize timber production and proper forest management to reduce forest fires and increase natural carbon dioxide reduction capabilities.
- Reform America’s bureaucratic permitting processes to allow for more renewable and traditional energy development and delivery.
- Expand critical mineral mining and processing at home where possible and friend shore mineral supply chains away from China.
- Make the Research and Development tax credit permanent with immediate and full deductibility, and make it more accessible for small or start-up businesses.