Twenty-seven years after my own modest pamphlet, "Greening The Tories," a far more distinguished philosopher grapples with the question of conservatism and conservation: Roger Scruton. Bryan Appleyard summarizes Scruton's case in Green Philosophy: How To Think Seriously About the Planet:
He believes in capitalism — he calls it the "free economy" — but it is an idea that needs constant vigilance to prevent capitalists transferring their costs and risks to others. "A free economy can be abused and it can only be justified on the assumption that costs are returned to the person that produces them." The banks very successfully ceased to become capitalists by externalising their risks — and, Scruton says, so do supermarkets and the aircraft and motor industries through a patchwork of hidden subsidies that mean the taxpayer takes up their costs. In the case of the environment, carbon emitters should pay for every gram; only then will they take their pollutions seriously. But wouldn’t a carbon tax require an international treaty of precisely the kind he says will not work?
"Not necessarily. If you take the example of plastic trash — China exports millions of tons of plastic to America in the form of toys. If America put a carbon tax on it, that would vastly increase the cost of those toys and that would make the Chinese make the toys out of wood, something biodegradable."
In a more critical review, Jonathan Rée gets to the heart of how conservatism can and should be pro-conservation:
He knows that conservatism has got itself a bad name by flirting with unbridled capitalism and promoting the idea that there's no motive like the profit motive. But that's never been Scruton's version, and for the past few years he has been conducting a grand exercise in rebranding. He still divides the world into shrewd conservatives and leftist buffoons, but in the new terminology his sort of people are now "oikophiles" (from the Greek "oiko" for house, which is the derivation of "eco"), while the rest of us are benighted "oikophobes".
The English have a word for it too: home-lovers, as opposed to home-haters. … I got through Green Philosophy sitting by an open fire in the old stone cottage where I have lived most of my life, and I can understand why oikophiles such as me might be well-attuned to environmental issues. We like to think of ourselves not as lords and masters of our private patch, but trustees of a heritage that we hope to pass on to successors who will cherish it as we do.
The Dish 