A Species Supremacist

Conservatives can articulate a case for environmentalism

By Matthew P. Cavedon

Environmentalism and conservatism have long been at odds with each other. Many Democrats accurately cite President Teddy Roosevelt as an example of a Republican identified with environmentalism. Sure, the man did a lot to preserve forests, but he also ran for president as a Progressive after his first term in office and radically expanded the federal bureaucracy. Expecting conservatives to go green because of Teddy is like expecting Democrats to support immigration restrictions because Democratic California Governor John Bigler supported the Chinese Exclusion Act. Other conventional environmentalist appeals, such as suggesting that animals have rights comparable to those of humans (I’m looking at you, Pete Singer) or that building parks is more important than keeping taxes low enough to make jobs, have similarly fallen on deaf ears. If conservatives really are going to jump on the environmentalist bandwagon, they need something a little more compelling. I suggest species supremacy.

I am a proud species supremacist. I truly believe in the depth of my heart that a member of the human race has greater capacities and an inherent prerogative over nature than the members of the canine, bovine, and equestrian races. Many conservatives share this opinion. I like dogs, of course, and I will even suggest that animals have souls, but human beings have certain rights over nature. We can clear a swamp to build a town, and we can equip horses to carry our loads. We can shoot, kill, and eat wild animals and give the ones who live with us cute and derogatory names as we please. Yes, animals have some rights, such as the right to live free from physical abuse and the right to not go extinct. But you won’t catch me agreeing with the Animal Liberation Front’s suggestion that “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”

How, then, could species supremacy justify conservation? Supremacy implies duty. Whether or not you believe that God created the Earth or that the Christian Bible has divine authority, there is something deep about its claim in the Book of Genesis that God tells the first humans to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.” Human beings have a far greater capacity for logic, morality, and self-improvement than any other species we have ever encountered, and that gives us a right to use nature in a unique way. But to some degree, this is an accident. We did not choose to become humans and, according to most belief systems, we did not get here on our own merit.

We have dominion over all life on Earth because we alone are in a position to handle that authority. Just as we as democrats select educated and experienced people to have political dominion over them—so long as they pursue what we perceive to be our best interests—and just as the aristocracy had a sense of noblesse oblige towards their constituents, so too do humans have duties to nature. These duties come from the facts that we are superior in our reasoning to other creatures; each of us has the right to own some chunk of nature, and our children will have to live here on Earth for the foreseeable future. All three of these facts are quite fully embraced by conservatives, and they all imply a duty to protect the environment.

Human reason is an incredible gift, but with it comes duties to other, less capable beings. We exercise this principle towards our fellow humans in every society on the planet. There is something about humanity that makes us take care of infants, the elderly, the poor, the sick, and people with mental disabilities whenever any of these groups cannot care for themselves. Humanity has proven itself to be a good steward, perhaps more so than we give ourselves credit for. There is still work to be done, but on some level, every one of us acknowledges the moral imperative to be our brother’s keeper. We care for the least among us precisely because they cannot care for themselves, yet we acknowledge that they and we are cut from the same cloth of humanity.

Is it radical to believe that we and other life on the planet are cut from the same cloth of matter? We all know to some degree that cruelty to the rest of life is wrong. There is something that disgusts us about Michael Vick’s dog fighting ring, something grotesque about the notion that people are willing to keep twenty cats living in squalor. These are not self-interested instincts: indeed, they demand actions that limit the entertainment and liberty of other people. But that isn’t enough to stop us from according some degree of dignity to all life. We see something in other animals that we see in ourselves, particularly since the theory of evolution gave us scientific reason to believe that we have more in common than we ever thought.

Given that we have life and animation in common with these other beings and that we know that we can do things they cannot, we feel a sense of paternalistic responsibility towards them. Given that we identify to some degree with animals, and given that we see their patent inability to affect their world in the way that we can, we feel a sense of altruism. Contrary to the claims of many environmentalists, our altruism towards animals is based on our supremacy to them in so many regards, not on our being on the same level as they. Our very supremacy compels us to protect all life, beyond just the pets we keep.

So too does our own self-interest. Conservatives acknowledge, far more than our friends on the Left, the role that property, or the right to lay claim over some part of nature, plays in furthering human dignity. Our right to be sovereigns over some piece of land gives us freedom. Whenever someone else infringes on that liberty, either by taking what is ours or desecrating it, we have a right to legal recourse. If someone dumps trash on my lawn, or if the government decides to take my house to build a military base, I have the right to compensation. Even more, I have the right to my property being free from infringement, barring any compelling reason to do so.

Private actors are infringing on the property of perhaps a billion humans right now through long-range environmental degradation. Like it or not, scientists have reached a consensus that, shocking though it may sound, pumping tons of carbon into the sky every year keeps more heat here than would be ideal. Their conclusion that this will do bad things like warm ice caps and raise sea levels seems logical. If parts of Florida, Louisiana, Bangladesh, India, and Venice sink into the ocean, any fan of property rights will ask why private corporations have the right to destroy our property. It isn’t as obvious as dumping garbage in front of my house, but how is pumping carbon into the atmosphere or creating acid rain that falls on my lawn any less of a violation of my property rights?

Speaking of numbers that should never reach the tons, conservatives have been very smart in the past few months to call out Congress on fiscal child abuse in passing budgets that make us count zeroes with magnifying glasses. We know that one of our greatest duties is to posterity. We want life to be fruitful and prosperous for our children. We know that our duties extend beyond ourselves and that future generations deserve to live lives that we haven’t already squandered. As good old-fashioned American thrift has always taught us, don’t waste today what we may need tomorrow. Yes, logging the Amazon would create tremendous wealth today. So would fishing the seas as much as trawling can. But to leave our kids a world without precious resources that they can sustain would be a negation of our sacred duties to them. Lebanon learned this the hard way millennia again when it logged every last one of its beautiful cedars for temples, ships, and homes. Now, there is nothing left of one of the most potent cultural symbols and one of the most lucrative sources of prosperity in that country. Their economy could be all the richer and their lives all the more prosperous if their ancestors had not sacrificed their greatest resources for immediate gain.

Conservatives have real and compelling reasons to conserve animals and protect the environment. Our hardwiring tells us that the strongest beings have duties to the weakest, that property cannot be violated by careless actors, and that we are duty-bound to leave posterity the blessings of prosperity. There are legitimate places where we can disagree with liberal environmentalists about the best way to protect the environment: We have a far better appreciation for market forces than they do, and a far keener eye to comparative human dignity. But to continue to ignore the need to conserve sanctuaries for other life on Earth, drop carbon emission rates, and find sustainable ways to use our resources is anything but conservative: It’s downright irresponsible and runs contrary to the values that define us.