Crystal: [00:00:00] Regenerative farming techniques helps to build up the soil’s ability to retain water sequester carbon, prevent erosion, and grow nutrient dense foods. Interested in trying delicious options from one of these farms. Nutrition for longevity is offering forces for nature listeners, a 15% off discount for first time orders.

Check it out through the link in the show notes. I’m crystal DiMiceli and welcome to the forces for nature show.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you as just one person can’t really make a difference forces for nature cuts through that negativity? In each episode, I interview somebody who’s doing great things for animals and the environment we talked through, the problem they’re addressing the solution.

They have found what keeps them going. And we’ll leave you with practical action tips so that you too can become a forest for nature. Today’s guest is Chris Barnard policy director of the conservation coalition. I was so excited when I first learned about the TCC, because something that has bothered me for so long is that these issues that I’m so passionate about.

Environmental conservation sustainability wildlife they’ve become partisan issues and they shouldn’t be. So I was thrilled to learn about TCC and its sister organization, the American conservation coalition, because they were founded by young conservatives. You heard that, right? These are individuals who have conservative political ideology, but don’t drink the Kool-Aid when it comes to the anti climate change rhetoric.

They have strong environmental protection ideals, but just think differently on what the solutions could be. I’m all for having a diverse set of voices at the table to solve these immense problems we’re facing. And so on that note, let’s take a listen to Chris.

Hi Chris. Thank you so much for joining me on forces for nature. It’s so great to have you. My pleasure. Now environmentalism, hasn’t always been a bipartisan issue. In fact, Nixon, a Republican passed some of the most critical environmental legislation of our time. Ronald Reagan signed the Montreal protocol and most recently in 2008 in Senator John McCain’s presidential run, he promised to be a leader against global warming.

I can spend an entire episode speaking about the history of what caused the pendulum to swing so drastically in the other direction. But I prefer to focus on how we can bridge the two sides. Now, Chris, you’re a conservative who is passionate about conservation and stereotypically. Those two don’t always go together.

Can you help break that stereotype? And tell me a little bit about yourself and how your conservation and conservative values came to be. Yeah,

Chris: [00:02:56] absolutely. And that’s a great question because that gets to the heart of the problem as you identified is it’s become something that’s a blue team, red team issue and, and is become monopolized by one side and many people on the more conservative side of the spectrum have just not been a part of this conversation.

Despite historically, that being a big part of that legacy. I grew up in Belgium actually. And. I always considered myself a conservative, but I’ve always also considered myself, someone that loves the outdoors, loves nature. I grew up near this awesome forest and Belgium, and I’d go with my friends and we build camps and we’d go in the river and play outs is outside and all that.

And I always had this instinctive love for the environment, but as I got more and more involved in politics, I realized that. It’s difficult to reconcile my conservative political worldview with my instinctive love of conservation. And so it was always an interesting dilemma within my own mind on how do I reconcile these two things.

And the way that I did was I said, Oh, I’m conservative on, on everything, except for the environment. That’s where I’m left wing. And that’s because that’s how I saw the debate. And then I found out about an organization called the conservation coalition and. Learned that actually, it’s not at all an oxymoron to be a conservative that cares about conservation and climate change and the planet more broadly.

And so I reached out and I ended up founding the UK sister organization and ran that. And then I was asked to join as policy director in DC. So that’s, that’s where I am now, but it’s really been a journey for myself to reconcile my personal passion for the environment, with this political conservative worldview.

Crystal: [00:04:35] So would you label yourself as an environmentalist? Yeah, absolutely. Now, what kinds of reactions have you received from conservatives and or conservationists anything negative or

Chris: [00:04:47] it makes bag for the most part? Well, so it depends who you talk to. A lot of people that I have brought this up and be like, I’m a conservative and I fight for it.

Solutions to climate change and environmental problems and their, their instant reaction is like, well, isn’t that an oxymoron? How can you reconcile the two? And, and so it’s, so it’s interesting that it’s become so basically so monopolized by the left that only left wing solutions or liberal or progressive solutions can solve our environmental problems.

And so I come across that misconception a lot, but I do also come across people that. Care more about the environment and they care about their political label. And I would consider myself one of those people. And when you talk to someone that says, I care for the environment and whatever solution works, I am happy with those are the people as very easy to connect with, because then I can say that, look, these are some of the conservative solutions and I believe they work, regardless of whether.

You’re a liberal or conservative Republican or Democrat. They’re just common sense solutions like Ronald Reagan said, protecting the environment. Isn’t a liberal or conservative, cause it’s just common sense. And so talking to those people are the people that I can really resonate with regardless of where they come from on the political spectrum.

Crystal: [00:05:55] How would you say that conservatives at least stereotypically came to be labeled as anti environment or even anti-science

Chris: [00:06:02] that’s a really interesting question that would probably go back to. Around the original earth day in 1970. And that was when, in my view, at least environmental ism shifted from something that was kind of a day-to-day thing that you do, like the farmers and ranchers and hunters across the country that are on the forefront of conservation, because it’s literally their lifestyle and it became something that was more.

Rooted in activism and politics. And so you had all of a sudden millions of young of students and activists across the world that were agitating about environmental protection and they were in the streets and they were making this an activism thing. And in many ways, because of that shift, a lot of these young people weren’t farmers or hunters or ranchers, they were like, Educated people from urban centers.

And so they came at it with a slightly emotional, less romantic view of what environmental ism is. And that’s one of the reasons why I think that, for example, the polar bear is kind of the mascot of the climate movement. And that is because it’s like a cute fuzzy animal and it’s it evokes nice emotions.

And we want to protect that because it’s, it’s cool. Right. But too. Most like environmentalist just in the, in the pure sense of that is their daily lifestyle. A polar bear means nothing to them. What means a lot to them is their local river or their local forests or the animals that they like to hunt or bird migration patterns and things like that.

Rather than this emotional image that has been, become the image of climate change in the environmental movement more broadly. And so I kind of, I think it started falling apart there. It started becoming more of a idealistic. Romantic political movement than it was a hands-on day to day lifestyle. And so.

Because of that increasingly it became kind of fused with left wing politics and, and it was a problem that they latched onto. And then you kind of saw how, how a lot of them use this issue. They identified this issue of the environment as something that they could use as a vehicle for their general political agenda.

And so you had a lot of people, like, like from Al Gore now through to AOC and the green new deal, essentially using environmentalism and the need to tackle climate change as a way to try and address all kinds of other economic. And social and political problems. And I’m not sitting here just to, to say, Oh, that is those problems aren’t worthwhile.

No. They very well are worthwhile, but there’s become this, this thing where environmentalism is a vehicle for all other problems as well. And you see that in the green new deal where it tackles jobs programs at tackles healthcare, tackles, racial justice. Many of these things have nothing to do at least on the face of it with environmental ism and climate action.

And so in my opinion, that’s turned off a lot of conservatives because they saw kind of this. What they perceive as the revolutionary left wing ideology to remake society and climate changes the way that they’re going to achieve that. And sometimes you had people on the extremes of the left that would then come up with these extreme statements.

That would be like, well, the world’s going to die in 12 years. Like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez said, or, or come up with these really extreme scenarios to justify, we need a, a radical remaking of society and conservatives by their nature, don’t want a radical remaking of society. And they saw this and they’re very uncomfortable with this.

And unfortunately, The conservative response to that became denial of the problem it became well, if the problem is so bad and if the only answer is wholesale government control over our lives in the economy, then it’s a lot easier for me as a conservative to just say, there’s no problem at all. And I think that’s where conservatives and kind of the Republican party broadly have to take responsibility and say, no, we were wrong about that.

We, we, it’s not because other people have bad ideas that we need to submit our own bad ideas. We need to be honest about this. And so that’s kind of where organizations like ours, the conservation coalition fit into. The picture where we say, look, there is a problem, but no, the answer is not the green new deal.

We believe there are better solutions that don’t sacrifice our economy for the environment that actually show that environmental prosperity and economic prosperity can go hand in hand. And that’s how you get conservatives on board. And that’s why we seeing a shift in the narrative. These last few years of conservatives actually becoming a part of this conversation because they realize it’s not either or.

Crystal: [00:10:19] You mentioned the green new deal and how it includes things such as jobs and social justice, but these are good things. Why would there be an opposition

Chris: [00:10:29] to them? Yeah, absolutely. And, and one of the things that we have to pitch to conservatives is that yes, moving away from fossil fuels will lose fossil fuel jobs, but the opportunity of jobs in the clean energy sector is enormous as well.

And so there is this really good. Potential for jobs there, but the problem with the green new deal and the way it frames that is, it basically has a job guarantee for pretty much everyone. And it’s so vague that it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be just a clean energy job. And to us, it seems that that’s kind of reverting to a Roosevelt FDR era of just jobs for everyone, for the sake of the government, giving jobs, everyone.

But that’s not how. In our eyes, at least as conservative Destino, how jobs are created, jobs are created by demand in the market. And so we should try and stimulate that demand for there to be a sustainable creation of jobs in the sectors where they would be most productive. And the government artificially doing that is not actually job creation is diverting resources from somewhere to somewhere else and losing a lot of efficiency in the meantime.

Now

Crystal: [00:11:29] I want to circle back to the polar bear that you mentioned and how it became the mascot of the left wing romanticized utopia. I’m not sure if you said utopia, but this romanticized vision in the environmental movement using charismatic animals and campaigns has worked before. But you feel not so much this time, what else would you recommend using to tug at the heartstrings of people?

Chris: [00:11:57] Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the problems of the climate debate and the rhetoric within that debate has been. That, the examples that they bring up have not related to people’s individual lives. And that’s starting to change a little bit, but I mean, if you say polar bears are going to die in the ice caps are going to melt, like, okay, that’s like unfortunate for the polar bears in the ice caps, but how does that affect me or, or talking about like, there’s going to be climate refugees again, how does, how does that affect me here in America?

There’s going to be sea level rise. Okay. Well, I live in the Midwest. How does that affect me? And I think the, the, the main problem is that there’s been a lack of connection between. What the problem is and how that impacts your average person. And so a lot of the campaigns that we do at, at TCC is with these traditional communities that are going to be most impacted by climate change that have also been left out of the conversation the most.

And so, for example, you’re talking about a really good example is farmers as like. The way to get a farmer to realize that this is a problem that they need to be a part of the solution for is by showing that with climate change, you get, you get very inconsistent weather patterns. You’re going to have more extreme weather.

You might have droughts or extreme precipitation, and that’s going to impact their crops. That’s going to impact their. Daily economic livelihood is going to make it a lot harder for them to be a farmer. It’s going to reduce their crop yield, et cetera, et cetera. It’s going to have a direct impact on their lives.

And, and that’s how you communicate that with these people, when it comes to sportsman, you, you tell them that climate change is going to have a very large impact on migratory bird patterns. And so the birds that they want to hunt might simply not come anymore because if the temperature’s wrong or the climate doesn’t suit them anymore, or fishers rivers are going to become warmer.

And so cold water fish like trout. Will be effected by that and might not be as, as present anymore for these fishermen to fish. And so it’s, it’s tying these problems directly to their lives. That is really important. Ensuring coastal communities like Florida and Florida has been, has been pretty conservative in recent elections that because of its situation, it’s also one of the more climate savvy conservative States.

And you do see Florida members of Congress and senators like Matt Gates and Marco Rubio and whatnot. That take this issue seriously, because they know that in Florida, they are at risk from rising sea levels. And so it’s tying these issues directly to your specific situation and making sure that people understand that it’s just something that impacts them personally, rather than random polar bears, thousands of miles away.

Crystal: [00:14:25] Yeah, and you bring up something that can be an overlooked point is that fishers and hunters can be some of the greatest conservationists out there. I mean, for me personally, I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, but I recognize that having them on board can be some of your greatest allies. So it’s just, it’s just sometimes hard to bridge that disconnect.

But it’s a really good point for people to start to realize and recognize

Chris: [00:14:50] well that that’s, that’s part of the problem of this emotionalism nation and idealism of the environmental debate is because the same people that make the polar bear, the mascot of the climate movement will also look at hunters as people that just go out to kill animals for joy.

And they’re just bloodthirsty and whatnot, but that’s not the truth at all. It’s a lifestyle and it’s about a responsibility to in the world that we live in and, and. It’s providing for your family, for example, or there’s an important conservation aspect to hunting. And they don’t realize that they just have this kind of myopic idealistic view of you’re killing an animal that is by definition bad, but that’s because they live in an idealistic utopian world.

Like you say, rather than a world where you take into account costs and benefits and different aspects of that.

Crystal: [00:15:34] I mean, I personally understand that emotional. Oh, what about the animal? I don’t want you to hunt it, but I respect and I recognize the point that you’re making now, what do you say to people who feel that it’s either the environment or development because it’s often labeled as one or the other?

You can’t have both.

Chris: [00:15:55] Yeah, I think that’s the kind of central argument. When it comes to the environmental debate, obviously you’d be stupid to deny that humans have an impact on the planet and on the environment and on ecosystems. I mean, we are simply a part of it and we, we use. Water and air and natural resources to live.

And that’s a really important part of it. And we sometimes do exploit that. But if you look at the statistics and the available evidence, you see, for example, that’s the countries with the most amount of economic freedom in the world directly correlate with the countries that have the best environmental outcomes in the world.

And why is that? There are several reasons. The first is that actually, if you are living in poverty, that the thing that is. The top of your mind that you worry about the most is where’s your next meal gonna come from? What about the roof above your head? And so you don’t take into account those environmental factors like pollution or whatever, because you just worry about providing for yourself and your family.

And, and you see in a lot of places, especially still in Africa, where they, they burned down where they burn wood, which is actually extremely bad for the environment, but also for your lungs and, and human wellbeing generally. But it’s the only alternative to them because. They’re not rich enough to go and buy natural gas or to have solar panels or whatever it is.

And interestingly, with economic development, sure. At the beginning, you will have a rise in pollution and horizon degradation because you kind of, you use more resources and whatnot, but you reach a certain level of prosperity. And this is called the environmental Kuznets curve. That when you reach a certain level of prosperity, As your economy grows, your environmental impact, actually declines.

And as, because you can become more efficient, you can come up with technologies like nuclear or renewables that are better for the environment. You’re able to be more efficient in the way that you use resources. And that’s really interesting because economic development is actually not about just continuing to explore as much as you can.

It’s about getting to a point where you can create more with less, because. Economic development in capitalism directly incentivize using fewer inputs to make a profit. Because if you have many inputs and your profit, won’t be as big as you have to spend more money on resources on labor, on input and whatever the countries that have the highest economic development end up having the highest environmental protection because of this efficiency.

And one final point on that is when people reach a certain level of individual prosperity. Two things happen. The first one is that they’re not worrying about where their next meal is going to come from. So they have other things they can worry about one of those being the environment that they live in.

And that’s why you see in a, all these environmental movements are almost predominantly in rich Western countries because. You have a level of prosperity where we have the luxury to be able to care about the environment. And so that’s why you also see that there’s enormous conservation projects in all these developing countries that are currently happening because of pressure from citizens, because they care about it so much to the extent that there is now more forest cover in Europe.

Today than there was in the middle ages. And I mentioned the second aspect of that is just simply also when you yourself are personally richer, you have more disposable income to be able to spend money on a conservation project, or to make sure that your garden is well taken care of, or to even buy products like an electric car or biodegradable plastic or whatever it is, you have that money to be able to buy those products that are better for the environment, rather than just worrying about being able to buy anything at all.

Now I’m

Crystal: [00:19:23] going to play the devil’s advocate here. So if you look at statistics regarding, let’s say emissions from developed countries, they’re the ones that have the highest emissions, not those African countries or other developing countries that you had mentioned. Now, if we’re just speaking about the us.

We’re one of the richest countries in the world. So we in theory have the means to take those eco actions. And yet still, I feel like. In the U S and in other countries, other developed countries, it’s like pulling teeth to get those eco actions to take place. What

Chris: [00:20:02] would you say to that? Yeah, I mean, and, and you’re absolutely right.

And part of what I said, the environmental Couzens curve is that these developed countries have had more emissions and so emit more than poor countries. But if you overlay that with how much prosperity there is for families and individuals within that country, You see that, that there’s actually the trade-off there is probably worth it because we don’t have widespread famine and poverty and things like that because of this.

And, and that’s the question is we were able to industrialize using fossil fuels and. We were able to get rich off that, and that’s what we owe our prosperity to nowadays. And then we realize that that’s a problem now with the climate. So we’re trying to move away from that and come up with clean energy technologies.

And that’s absolutely what we should be doing. But for these other developing countries where fossil fuels are still their primary source of, of energy, it’s very difficult for us to go in and say, you can’t use those fossil fuels anymore because it’s bad for the climate when we’ve used it for.

Centuries and we’ve become rich off of it. And, and so I would say that we should help them get to a level of prosperity where they’re also able to come up with the technologies that are currently emerging in, for example, America, like electric cars, like. Carbon capture like battery storage, renewables, and whatnot, that can reduce our emissions.

But the only way we can do that is by incentivizing that innovation. And by scaling that up, and one of the interesting things is actually governments around the world are still very much actually standing in the way. Of that innovation every minute, you still have $10 million in fossil fuel subsidies around the world.

And that is governments actively giving money to the very things that we want to wean ourselves off of. And so, so kind of the interesting conservative response there is, well, Where possible we should take government out of this. So we shouldn’t have subsidies that prop up polluting industries, and often it’s being governments that have created re regulations that make it harder for clean energy projects as well.

So, one example in the U S is there’s a protectionist act called the Jones act, which says that only us made ships with us personnel or us products on board can travel between ports in America. But then obviously if we want to create offshore wind farms, you need to have the ships that are able to do that in the U S but we don’t.

And so what’s happened is that we’ve essentially stemmed the entire offshore wind industry. Because of regulation saying that we cannot use foreign ships to do that. So what we would need is to work with another country, to have them bring their ship, to be able to build these offshore wind turbines in the U S but right now they’re just simply not allowed to do that.

And there’s many regulations like that that make it a lot more costly and have a lot more red tape for clean energy projects to emerge. For example, with nuclear, which is one of the best forms of carbon free energy, but it’s just very difficult to build this. And the reason why is because they’re arbitrary.

Government regulations there that we should be revisiting. And so I’m not just going to say here that, Oh, it’s a matter of getting rid of regulations and everything will solve itself, but it is a huge part of the puzzle that we should be looking at. How can we make it easier to build these projects and to accelerate this innovation?

Crystal: [00:23:05] So it sounds like you would be for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, which is not something you hear all the time. Well,

Chris: [00:23:13] conservatives would not want that government intrusion in the market or that distortion of what the market looks like. And so I would argue that they’re not staying true to those conservative principles, if they would want to have continued fossil fuel subsidies, that we should have a fair playing field for all energy.

Industries. So the I’m sure there are conservatives that are against it because it suits their electoral needs in whatever County they are at that proudly speaking it’s antithetical to, to the values.

Crystal: [00:23:39] Now, tell me a little bit more about the conservation coalition and, and there’s also the American conservation coalition.

How are they related or different

Chris: [00:23:48] ACC? The American conservation coalition was founded in 2017 explicitly to give young conservatives and. Generally people in the center rise that could also include libertarians and also even centrists to really have a voice on these environmental issues. And to say that, yes, you can be a conservative and care about the environment as well.

And so we’ve developed a very strong grassroots program where a nearly 250 colleges across the country. And we have a presence in pretty much every single state in the country. And we do activism and calls to action and promote local issues and whatnot. And so we kind of do that on the grassroots front.

And then on the more POL political front, we have outreach to members of Congress on the Hill. And I, as policy director do a lot of the policy stuff on. What are the ideas that we should be supporting to help us get to net zero and to protect our environment. So that’s, that’s kind of broadly what ACC does.

And the kind of the mission of ACC is to change the politics of the environmental movement. Then there’s the conservation coalition and TCC, which is our five Oh one C3 sister organization, which means that it is a nonpolitical nonprofit. So we can’t lobby on any political issues, but we can. Educate people on environmental issues.

And so that’s what TCC does is the mission is to change the culture of the environment to movement as opposed to the politics. And so that’s kind of how the two organizations work together.

Crystal: [00:25:08] What do you think is currently missing from the current discourse about the environmental movement? You touched upon it before

Chris: [00:25:15] I would say, is currently missing from the environments who debate is there still that mentality of blue team, red team, and you still very much see.

People support something or a policy or an idea on the basis of who proposes it or on the paces of what political party it is attached to. And one of the things that we promote as an organization is this idea of solutions, first activism, or actually how, the way we put it is environmental action, not environmental activism.

We, we want to have solutions, be the focus of what we’re doing rather than. Agitating in the streets and just being angry about the issue. And so a lot of that is where are the bipartisan opportunities for people to come around a solution rather than around a political party. And what does that look like?

And another part of that is calling out what we see as the progressive groups that have blocked this kind of common sense, environmental. Action because it doesn’t kind of suit the broader political and economic agenda that they want to push. And so, for example, at the end of 2020, there was the American energy innovation act, which passed Congress with bipartisan colors.

And it’s probably very few people have heard of it, but it’s, it’s one of the most important climate bills. Ever in the U S but in American ones, American energy innovation act, and it streamlined regulations and it invested heavily in modern technologies and innovation to help us get to net zero. But over 200 progressive groups wrote a letter to Congress opposing this.

Because it wasn’t far enough, it wasn’t the green new deal. It included carbon capture and nuclear, which are both taboo in their eyes. And so we’ve witnessed a kind of anti-scientific attitude from some groups on what we would see as the far left. And they’re actually opposing climate action, which we see as bipartisan and commonsensical and.

Just broadly. You can see that in the way that they’ve opposed, for example, nuclear energy or biotechnology as scientific solutions that the science is completely clear about are safe and would help reduce emissions and be good for the environment. But this idealistic utopian image of climate action to them, it means that they can support these kinds of solutions and in doing so stop real action from happening.

Crystal: [00:27:32] That’s an interesting perspective on the anti-science from the other side. Yeah.

Chris: [00:27:36] I mean, and, and that’s extremes dabble in anti-science on both sides on the conservative side, that’s denial of the issue, and we’re hopefully moving away from that. But on the progressive side, that’s denial of some of the solutions that could get us there such as nuclear and biotechnology and carbon capture and artificial intelligence and whatnot.

Crystal: [00:27:55] Now what kind of work have you or, and, or the conservation coalition done to bridge the two partisan sides?

Chris: [00:28:03] So one really good example of that is that as COVID was unfolding, we kind of saw the opportunity that virtual engagement had to offer, especially for young people. And so last summer we organized a youth environment summit, which was.

Not just for conservatives. It was for across the spectrum and we co-hosted it with the Audubon society. And we had some progressive climate leaders, uh, youth climate leaders, like Vic Barrett and Jamie Margolin. And I think even people involved from the sunrise movement as part of this summit, really to kind of foster a dialogue between the different sides.

And so that was really successful. And. We were able to bridge some of the gap and obviously we’ll still differ on solutions and whatnot. But the idea that we agreed on is that we all find this an issue that is very important that we want to tackle, and we might have different ways of getting there, but we can agree on the problem.

So that’s just like one tangible example. Another one is there’s this movement called that the youth in government coalition. And they’re essentially trying to get more youth input in the administration and across the agencies, including the EPA, primarily because. The youth are why politics exists, because we’re trying to create a society that is better for the next generation.

And I think there’s over 80 organizations involved in that coalition and we’re the only conservative organization. And so we’re more than happy to work with groups across the aisle, but where we might agree on the same issue, but we might not agree on the solutions and that’s where we need to have that constructive dialogue, but that’s really where we find ourselves in.

And we’re, we’re more than excited to do that

Crystal: [00:29:33] at the end of the day. The end goal is what’s important and if we could all agree the end goal, then. We’re halfway there in my opinion. So now why would you say that market-based solutions could be stronger than government top-down approaches such as the new

Chris: [00:29:49] deal?

I would start by saying that the broad evidence shows that market economies. Do a lot better on environmental protection. And I’ll kind of put the specific names on this. So there’s the, the Yale university environmental performance index. And when that is overlaid with the heritage economic freedom index, you see that countries that have higher economic freedom have better environmental standards and protection, similarly countries with the most amount of property rights, which is essential core.

Concept of capitalism and market economies also tend to have better environmental outcomes. And that’s because we see markets as aligning the incentives correctly in a democracy that is generally kapsalis. What are market solutions versus government solutions. We see market solutions as just being a lot more innovative and efficient than government solutions, because I’d much rather a trust.

Somewhere like Isla must have come up with the, or bill Gates to come up with these solutions, then trust a bureaucrat in DC to come up with these solutions for me. And, and the reality is that all these amazing advancements that we see in like solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear and carbon capture and hydrogen and hydro-power and always clean energies that we need.

Those are all being driven by the private sector. And they’re being brought to scale by the market and by consumers and by companies meeting that consumer demand. And when you have that happening, Through the market then, but rather than by the government, it’s a lot more cost effective and a lot quicker as well.

Now that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for the government and there’s definitely kind of an R and D role for the government to support early stage innovation, that there is no appetite for in the private sector. And obviously also holding polluters to account in different ways and, and directly incentivizing environmentally beneficial practices and whatnot.

But broadly speaking, it is only when we can. Unleash the market to come up with this innovation and then scale that innovation that’s really the important part is that they could scale that much more rapidly than the government can. And, and that’s really where we’re going to see the big change in. And one just quick example of this is from a lot of people on the left.

Don’t like the fact that Texas has deregulated energy markets that are very competitive and people can choose their own energy source. And without directly talking about what happened there with the cold snaps a few weeks ago, cause that’s. Pretty irrelevant to what I’m going to say now is because of this competition, you saw a huge boom in the wind industry because they were able to compete on a level playing fields in Texas.

And because of that, right now, if Texas were a country, it would be the fifth largest producer of wind energy in the world. And that’s not something that you think of kind of super red conservative, Texas that loved their fossil fuels, but they have a ton of wind farms because the market realized there’s an economic opportunity and you have farmers that put wind turbines on their lens with cattle underneath, and you have utility companies making wind a part of their portfolios because it made economic sense.

And because consumers critically wanted that. And because this consumer choice was matched up with what utilities could directly provide in a competitive market. You saw a boom in wind production. And so those are the kinds of solutions that, that we, that we support and that we want to further empower.

Crystal: [00:33:09] You still have plenty of companies who are trying to cut corners or ignore the environment because they want to, or because they’re only focused on the dollar bottom line. And you also have consumers who are part of the market who don’t necessarily consider the environment and they’re in their purchases.

For one reason or another, not a malice or anything like that, but how can you get the companies and the consumers that are within this market system that you’re talking about to start making these kinds of choices? How do you incentivize

Chris: [00:33:42] them? Yeah, I think that’s a really important question. And I would argue that this has already been happening.

Quite effectively, to the extent that half of fortune 500 companies now already have climate commitments and plans as part of their official corporate outlook. And you see the top companies in the world like Google and Microsoft and Apple and Amazon have all made net zero pledges. And you see increasingly for example, general motors saying we’re only going to produce electric vehicles by 2035.

And so you do see these major companies taking responsibility for that. But there’s two reasons why they’re doing that one. They don’t want the government to come in and regulate them. And so they’d rather do that themselves because they know they can do it more cost-effectively which is an important consideration.

The second one though, is because they realize that consumers want this and more and more, you see financial institutions and investors and shareholders and boardrooms taking two accounts. The climate impacts of their business model. And so more and more, you see them moving in the right direction because they realize if they want to be accompanied as relevant, not just next year, but 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, they have to do what’s right on this issue that matters so much to the next generation of consumers.

And so there is this kind of self-interested aspect of them responding to that and in a market that’s entirely fair rate. So I think that’s a really good and important consideration in terms of incentivizing them. I think there are certainly ways that you can. Have for example, there’s a tax credit called 45 Q, which basically is a tax credit for carbon capture equipment and technologies, mostly for fossil fuels, but you could expand 45 hue should just be emissions reductions across the economy, which would basically mean that companies that emit fewer emissions.

Then also our tax lists. And so that’s one direct incentive, kind of like a reverse carbon tax, a direct incentive for them to not emit more carbon emissions. And one final point on this whole kind of big companies polluting there’s is this famous statistic of the top 50 companies in the world create seventy-five percent of emissions.

And we actually dove into that and we saw that only one of those 50 companies was entirely private. Every single other one was either government owned, partly government owned or had kind of government funding in one way or another. And so you see how in the same way that government still subsidized fossil fuels $10 million every minute around the world.

You see that actually governments are still in the way of this because Sarah directly giving money essentially to fossil fuel companies or companies that are, that have a very large fossil fuel footprint. And so. At the end of the day, because of those things, I’m not entirely convinced that governments are the answer to this problem.

Crystal: [00:36:22] And I want to make the point that we need to stay on top of these companies who are making these pledges and make sure that they’re actually following through with them. And then not just greenwashing, because that’s the, it seems like the trend of the time. So we need to be on top of them. We need to keep at it and demand with our dollars.

What kind of world we want to live in. So now, what would you say about things that should be protected, but don’t necessarily have a monetary value, a more of an intrinsic one. How does the market account for that?

Chris: [00:36:53] Well, so, so there’s a common misconception with a lot of people about what the free market actually is.

And within the free market, it is simply what people value. But value is different from what people put at a dollar price tag on. And so it is an entirely legitimate position within a free market to be like, I’m going to conserve this piece of land rather than develop it to make money off of it. And you see that some of the most important conservation projects.

Across the country are on private lands by private land owners that do it because they care about it. I don’t like this transactional attitude of, Oh, something is only worth it. If it’s financially beneficial or productive or whatever, we’re profitable within a free market, you’re entirely empowered to do something simply because you care about that issue.

And we see that increasingly and we also increasingly see people tying their business model. To their desire to protect the environment. And so you have companies like for ocean that collect sea plastic, and then turn that into bracelets that they sell and they make money off the bracelets at the same time as protecting the oceans that they love so much.

And so when we can combine our personal passion for the environment, with our business model, I think we’re onto something huge. There.

Crystal: [00:38:08] So one can argue that for any environment’s action to be taken, there needs to be a culture of environmental stewardship ingrained in people. We talked about how the culture of the political right leans towards denialism and anti protection, which could make the work that you’re doing very difficult.

What brings you hope that we can change an instilled belief in the political, right. And get the political left on board with how you would like to see things done.

Chris: [00:38:34] I think that we’ve seen a gradual progression of Republicans and conservatives on this issue to where I do not believe it is I’m still mainstream to be a climate denier in the Republican movement.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. Mass, partly because of organizations like ACC and TCC that have kind of called out the people that were deniers to the extent that even. Donald Trump, who is by no means a good conservative example on climate change said in the first presidential debate of this past election against Joe Biden said, yeah, humans probably have some impact on the climate, which was kind of a pretty radical break from what he said before.

I mean, the bar bar’s not very high, but it’s still pretty significant that the climate change denier in chief. Kind of realize that he even, he had to like change his position a little bit. And so you do see that that Republicans are getting better on this. And I talked earlier about the freshmen that are making this a central issue, and you really see that a lot of Republicans and conservatives are being more outspoken about this.

They are saying. That market-based solutions work better. And they’re saying that it is in the conservation ethic of Teddy Roosevelt, that we should be protecting our environment and reclaiming that legacy. It was Nixon that founded the EPA was Reagan that signed the Montreal protocol and. I think those are the kind of examples that we’re increasingly we’re hearing about and conservatives are starting to lead on these issues again.

And you also see that with the bills that they’re introducing in Congress. And so the American energy innovation acts was heavily co-sponsored by Republicans and you see other bills like the growing climate solutions act and the trillion trees act, and those are all sponsored and introduced by Republicans.

I’m definitely optimistic. We’re not there yet, but we’re really going in the right direction.

Crystal: [00:40:14] Tell me about the conservation coalitions market, environmental ism Academy that you guys just released.

Chris: [00:40:21] Yeah, absolutely. So the market environments lives in Academy is our tool to educate students on the important environmental issues of the day and give them the right knowledge and talking points to be able to be strong advocates for those ideas.

It’s an online educational platform with courses on a variety of issues, and each course has a video, several readings and a few quizzes as well. Super interactive. It’s free to take. It takes only under an hour, per course, it’s do it in your own time. So you can save your progress, come back to it and whatnot.

And so every month, two new courses are released and we’ve already had courses on kind of the role of hunters and conservation and the introduction to market environmentalism and the philosophical, conservative roots of environmentalism. And we’re going to have other courses on nuclear, energy, and biotechnology and on all kinds of other.

Important issues like climate change as a national security threat and whatnot. So it’s really kind of the, the one stop place for young people that care about these issues to go to learn more about it. And so you can go to market academy.eco, and it’s free to sign up. And then you can just take these courses with really cool speakers and cool topics.

So

Crystal: [00:41:28] what can the listener do to help bridge the divide wherever they may be?

Chris: [00:41:33] I think regardless of your political label or background or affiliation, taking a mindset of, I am first and foremost. Pro-environment and then. Pro conservative or liberal or Republican or Democrat. Uh, but it’s, you should really start with, with, uh, your passion for the environment as the first thing.

And then because of that, being willing to engage with and talk to other people that are pro-environment and saying that even though we might not necessarily agree on solutions, we both care about this issue and we want to talk about it and there’s maybe some common ground that can be found. So I think that’s really the main one.

The second one would be education. The market environmentalist and Academy is a great way to start, but also just broadly kind of. Being honest with yourself about things like nuclear, energy and biotechnology and carbon capture and storage that are solutions that are technologically potentially very good.

And that the science they’re good, but that some groups have kind of campaigned against, but the science is really quite clear that these are good technologies. And so being honest with oneself and doing the proper research to be able to advocate for these ideas and answers,

Crystal: [00:42:35] Chris, I’m so excited to have been able to speak with you today and learn from your perspective.

Which is, which is one that is not usually heard in this realm. And so thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all that you do. You’re making

Chris: [00:42:51] a difference. Yeah, it was really great to talk to you.

Crystal: [00:42:56] There should be nothing political about having clean air, clean water and rich biodiversity. Our only disagreement should lie on how best to protect them all.

And through healthy discussion, I genuinely believe that we can find compromises that are good for people planet and the economy. I commit to you my listener to be a bridge, to respect both sides of the aisle and find the most effective middle ground solutions. And I want you to hold me accountable. Hit me up on social media or email, and must have a discussion.

If everyone comes to the table with open ears and open hearts, we are going to go so much further United. Than we ever could divide it. Don’t forget to go to forces for nature.com and sign up to receive email show notes, action tips, and a free guide to help you start taking practical actions today. Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode?

I would be so grateful if you would share it with them, hit me up on Instagram and Facebook and let me know what actions you have been taking. Adopting just one habit can be a game changer because imagine if a million people also adopted that, what difference for the world are you going to make today? .