"Righter Shade Of Green"

One of the best articles I have read on why conservatives should be environmentalists...it boils down the basis of true conservatism vs. neoconservatives... society is a contract with the living and the dead and those yet to be born.

Righter Shade of Green:
A Righter Shade of Green
While the Left pursues environmentalism to advance its global agenda, conservation is best entrusted to local stewardship.
by Roger Scruton

Conservatism is about preserving intrinsically valuable things—economic capital, social capital, and natural capital. I use the word “capital” deliberately, for its opponents say that conservatism is nothing but the apologetics of capitalism. That is absolutely right—provided you understand that capital embraces many things that are not translatable into economic terms.

So why have conservatives been so slow to capture the environmental cause and the agenda that has been built around it? And why have their opponents been so eager to prevent them?

First, the damage done to our environment is connected in many people’s thinking, and to a great extent in reality, with the activities of business. You don’t do damage if you are not interested in changing things, and the usual reason people change things is to make a profit. And undoubtedly some of the big players in various markets that impact the environment have been extremely unscrupulous—even if their profits usually depend on their ability to meet demands made by the rest of us.
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It is here that I think we Anglophone conservatives can show our relevance. The common law of England developed, through the branch known as equity, a concept that has no real equivalent in Napoleonic or Roman legal systems: the concept of the trust. Trusteeship is a form of property in which the legal owner has only duties, and all rights are transferred to, and “held in trust for,” the beneficiary. Through the device of the trust, English and American law has been able to protect the interests of absent generations by compelling the current owners of property to set their own interests aside. The trustees of a bequest must respect the wishes of the testator and in so doing—by holding their own desires and present emergencies in abeyance— will serve the interests of future generations. This form of ownership, and the moral idea contained in it, ought to be regarded as defining the conservative approach. We don’t solve environmental problems by abandoning our attachment to private property or free enterprise, but we can make sure that these notions are shaped by the spirit of trusteeship.

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