As this suggests, there’s a fundamental problem in trying to oppose local to centralized approaches to environmental problems in a fundamental way. Surely no one, conservative or liberal, by now supposes pollution and environmental degradation are typically, never mind necessarily, local problems. Or that they will naturally remain the problem of those who cause them if governments and the like stay out of the way. Pollution is used in textbook to illustrate economic externalities for a reason–it’s precisely the kind of thing that causes problems for all of us but typically gives no one party has any special incentive to take try to mitigate, including those who create it. Nor is it local. Coal plants in Kansas create air pollution that goes to Missouri. Fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides used in wheat fields in Kansas end up in the Gulf of Mexico. Which community is supposed to address this problem out of love of place? As for a local approach to global warming…

Conservative voices in environmental debates are welcomed, but hopefully they will be less naive than Scruton comes across here.

Scruton has been very influential in my own views on environmentalism. He likens environmental abuse to rape, i.e., the objectification of God’s creation purely to satisfy carnal desires. God’s creations have value in and of themselves apart from their material utility.

This argument about conservative environmentalism is a completely separate point. While I would agree with the wisdom of a conservative bias, he makes categorical statements that don’t necessarily follow.