The following OpEd by ConservAmerica Fellow Rob Sisson appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
In more than two decades of working on common sense, conservative solutions to environmental and conservation issues, I have yet to meet an elected Republican in Washington, D.C. who denies climate science or who wants anything but clean water and clean air.
However, any Republican who dares oppose the progressive left’s solutions to those issues is denigrated as a denier or anti-conservation. Even the notorious, late Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe once told me, “I know the climate is changing. I just don’t believe man can compete with God on a global scale.”
He was skeptical about the opportunity cost of trying to slow or reverse climate change versus focusing on reducing debt, strengthening our military and VA, etc.
There are two proven rules when it comes to environmental legislation. First, voters get behind good policy when they feel economically secure. Second, every major conservation law we take for granted today enjoyed strong bipartisan support.
The Democrats, with their hilariously mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act and other trillion-dollar bills, have spent four years insuring just the opposite. Americans, suffering from massive inflation, housing affordability, and watching conflagrations around the world, are anything but economically secure.
Grassroots environmental groups, including Citizens Climate Lobby, which has a strong presence in Bozeman, worked hard to build up the bicameral Climate Solutions Caucus in Congress. By 2018, the caucus had 94 members — 42 Democrats and 42 Republicans.
Yet, Sierra Club and League ofConservation Voters targeted 22 of the Republican members of the caucus in that year’s elections not because those members were bad on the issue but because they were in swing districts where those organizations thought they could win seats for Democrats and the entire progressive agenda.
They were successful, beating many of those good Republicans, including one of the leading proponents of climate action of either party, Carlos Curbelo, and set climate policy back a decade.
The conservation movement worked for three decades to convince presidents and congresses to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That was finally achieved during the Trump Administration and the two key people who worked with President Trump to get it and the once-in-a-generation Great America Outdoors Act across the finish line were Montana’s own Sen. Steve Daines and current Congressman Ryan Zinke. That bill passed in both chambers by a wide, bipartisan margin of about 3-to-1. That’s how you do conservation.
We need elected officials who will restore our economy, strengthen national security, and pursue broadly supported common sense solutions on conservation issues. In this election, that means we must re-elect Ryan Zinke as our Congressman and elect Tim Sheehy to the Senate to partner with Sen. Daines on issues important to Montanans and all Americans.
Rob Sisson, of Livingston, previously was CEO of ConservAmerica for a decade and served as Commissioner of the International Joint Commission from 2019-2024.