Politics & Policy. Rock & Roll.

Last night, Chris and I were lucky enough to attend the premiere of National Geographic’s “Explorer: 25 Years” program, a retrospective highlighting the most compelling moments in 25 years of producing Explorer.  For those who have never watched Explorer, the program does everything from more traditional Planet Earth-y natural history episodes to investigative journalism into places like Guantanamo.  It “explores” human cultures and natural phenomena.  The “25 Years” show features the story of a woman who appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, a refugee of conflict in Afghanistan that they were able to track down years later and again photograph.  It featured a man who climbs the California Redwoods.  And it talked about the real world impact some of the episodes have had – for instance, coverage of the discover of the mouse lemur led its home nation to declare its habitat a national park.

Watching programs like Explorer always leaves me with a profound sense of…well…”what am I doing with my life?”  For these journalists and explorers, they travel to rainforests and maximum security prisons, they cross into North Korea and Tora Bora.  I walk six blocks to a desk with a computer every day and fear bumblebees.  Shows like that highlight the magnitude of beauty and suffering in the world and remind me to constantly keep asking questions, really taking the time to appreciate the world I live in.

I also found myself thinking about the politics around a show like Explorer.  For the natural history segments in particular, I couldn’t help but wish that the conservative movement would give a bit more attention to issues of conservation.  Reading everyone from Burke to Kirk will show you how a lot of the great thinkers whose work undergirds the modern conservative movement would likely favor preserving the natural beauty of the past against forces that want to mar them in the name of “progress.”   There’s a reason that only two letters separate “conservative” and “conservation.”  I see no support in almost any good conservative literature for the squandering of resources and the destruction of natural beauty.  This is why I get frustrated when some modern conservatives cheer for everyone to leave their lights on unnecessarily on Earth Day, as if to make a clever point.

Yes, many Democratic and liberal policies aimed at protecting the environment either don’t address the problem or create massive economic burdens.  I think there’s plenty of evidence that the market can handle a number of consumption based environmental problems.  Did the government mandate that more people buy hybrids? No. Gas prices went sky high, people looked for alternatives, and Toyota had the Prius on the market.  Companies that failed to adapt, like some domestic automakers, were left struggling (and later requiring government bailouts.)

But one of the things that makes America so fantastic, so exceptional, is its natural resources and landscape.  Conservatives spend a lot of time focused on protecting social norms or trying to preserve the things that “make America great” culturally.  But there’s too little time spent on preserving what makes America physically astonishing.  America’s national parks have been touted as our nation’s “best idea.”  There are many, many times when you’ll see a debate, say, at a town level, where a large store wants to come in and build on a piece of land that was previously the woods.   There’s an automatic assumption that the conservatives would support the “bulldoze away, make a dollar” philosophy, and while I’m not suggesting we ought to all take a page out of I Heart Huckabees, I’m merely suggesting that the definition of conservatism also include preserving the natural things that make America great, or at the very least giving those things greater weight when conservation and other interests conflict.