by R. Bradley Severtson
Board President

The new president of People For Puget Sound is Brad Severtson who introduces himself in this inaugural column.

Dan Evans was interviewed on public television recently. I have been thinking for years that I miss the civility of Republicans like former Governor Evans. So I watched the interview, curious to see whether my childhood memories were more than just a nostalgic fix for the ache left by the premature death of my father, the most decent conservative I have known. Half an hour into the program, in the course of expressing some exasperation with the direction his party had taken since he had resigned from the US Senate, Evans said, basically, that it was obvious that conservatives should be conservationists, that the very words derive from the same Latin word, conservare, to preserve, to maintain undiminished.

This makes sense to me, and not just for the etymologic reason tossed off by our distinguished ex-governor. For conservatives, the stuff of political life consists of historical institutions (language, laws, morals, religion) that have developed naturally through many generations and that have been shaped by traditions peculiar to a community or a country. These institutions are revered because they define the traditional order and maintain the relations of authority to which conservatives feel a deep allegiance. They have a holistic view of their traditions and resist attempts to change them, even in principled ways, denouncing (those pesky liberal) reforms as “social engineering.” Conservatives also believe their traditions have intrinsic value quite apart from the value it has to any particular individual and that they should be preserved for the benefit of future generations.

The conservation ethic toward the natural systems of our environment is comparable, even similar, to the conservative tenants regarding social systems. The key is to compare what conservatives say about institutions with what ecologists say about habitats. Ecologists have taught us that complex natural systems have evolved over thousands of generations and established a web of relations among species and with the physical environment that sustain life on earth. They have a holistic view of these ecosystems: the value assigned to any individual organism can have no significance outside the context of their habitat. We are just beginning to understand how ecosystems actually work and why much of the “economic re-engineering” of the environment since the Industrial Revolution is not wise or even sustainable. These industrial impacts are now, in fact, starting to have catastrophic consequences as we have begun to exceed the carrying capacity of many, if not most, of our habitats. “The land ethic,” the term Aldo Leopold uses to describe the ecological ethic, “simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively: the land.” The difference between this conservation ethic and the conservative ethic is simply that environmentalists have a much larger sense of community.

The mission of People For Puget Sound is to preserve its integrity, stability, and beauty. Our most immediate concern is to insure that the right choices are made now to save the Puget Sound ecosystem. It is an aggregator of environmental impacts for our entire region and so we can be successful only if we make ecologically sound land-use decisions throughout the region. If we allow special interests that do not have the health of the Sound as their priority to prevail in the environmental debates, either within the Puget Sound Partnership or elsewhere, over what our best scientific research indicates we need to do, then Puget Sound is doomed to destruction.

Conservatives interested in preserving what is good and sustainable about our way of life need to widen their sense of community and become better environmentalists. Many republicans from Dan Evan’s generations understand this. We are fortunate to still have his peer Bill Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to serve as Chair of the Leadership Council of the Puget Sound Partnership. His support helps broaden the appeal and political reach of the environmental agenda. Are there young conservatives ready to fill his shoes?