Why conservation needs a supply-side revolution
In the last few years, the Abundance movement has grown into a legitimate political force in the United States. What began as a loose coalition to remove artificial policy constraints to building more housing, cheaper energy, and better infrastructure has coalesced into a broader reform effort that defies traditional political boundaries. Amplified by last year’s best-selling book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the movement has drawn support from progressive reformers and free-market deregulators to climate advocates and urban YIMBYs.
One group that is notably missing from this coalition is the conservation community—the people and institutions devoted to protecting America’s lands, waters, and wildlife.
This is because conservationists often view the abundance agenda as blind to ecological realities. Journalist Ben Goldfarb observed that Abundance “has hardly a word to say about forests, oceans, fresh water, ecosystems, or wild animals.” Science writer Michelle Nijhuis noted that it “all but ignores life beyond city limits.” Andrew Bowman of Defenders of Wildlife warned that the movement “is predicated on a weakening of bedrock environmental laws that voters on both sides of the aisle will vociferously reject.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at The EcoModernist
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Shawn Regan is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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