On this week’s podcast, we focus on the private sector’s role in protecting our environment. It’s an important topic as young people are more concerned about the health of the environment than ever before, yet wrongly think that socialism is the answer. We talk about why government solutions are not the most effective solutions, and we highlight examples of how the private sector has innovated in clean ways—Elon Musk a prime example.
Danielle Butcher is a nonprofit executive who aids organizations in developing and implementing their national strategies. Danielle currently serves as Executive Vice President of the American Conservation Coalition and Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. She was previously a visiting fellow with Independent Women’s Forum in 2021. Danielle is an international speaker and has appeared as a frequent guest on NPR, Fox News Radio, One America News, and Newsmax.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and thank you for joining us today as we look into how the private sector has a role in protecting our environment. It’s an extremely important topic, as young people are more concerned about the health of the environment than ever before, yet often wrongly think that socialism is the answer. So we’ll get into why government solutions are not the most effective solutions, and we’ll highlight examples of the private sector innovating in clean and new ways, Elon Musk being a prime example of this. And we have a wonderful guest to break it all down. Danielle Butcher is a nonprofit executive who aids organizations in developing and implementing their national strategies. She currently serves as Executive Vice President of the American Conservation Coalition, and is a Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. She previously was a visiting fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum in 2021, and it is a pleasure to have her on She Thinks today. Danielle, thank you so much for being here.
Danielle Butcher:
Beverly, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I want to start with the young people, the youth vote, where young people are on this issue, on climate change, on environmental concerns. Polling has consistently shown that millennials and generation Z rank climate and environmental issues among their top political concerns. So first of all, is that correct? Do you think that polling is accurate? And why is this such a big concern for them?
Danielle Butcher:
Yes, that polling is correct, and actually, there is some pretty concerning polling on the topic. Not only do they care about this issue, but actually 68% of young people say that climate change is giving them anxiety, so it is impacting their mental health. This is an issue that they view, not just as red or blue, but as a part of who they are. From the time they were very small, they were hearing the likes of Bill Clinton and Al Gore and John Kerry talking about climate change and global warming. And so they have grown up hearing about the circumstances that we are in, and they want to make a difference and they feel that they have not been empowered to make a difference. And so this is where I think it’s really important for us to change and challenge that narrative a little bit for young people.
Beverly Hallberg:
And how concerned are they? So for example, we hear from certain politicians, certain activists, they say that the world is going to end, let’s say, in 10 or 12 years, if we don’t do something about it. We know that celebrities, or those in the spotlight, such as Megan Markle and Prince Harry, talk about not having more kids because of overpopulation in the world. Where are their main concerns? And is it this apocalyptic fear that they have, that the world’s not even going to be there for them in, let’s say, 10, 20 years?
Danielle Butcher:
Well, the first thing I want to say is that I really hope young people can have a little bit of a reality check on this issue because circumstances are not as dire as they have been led to believe. Of course, climate change is a very serious issue that we should be tackling, but this fear response that they are having is the result of a narrative that has been driven, and it’s been such a poor strategy on the part of the environmental movement, the mainstream climate movement, to try to instill fear and disempower people rather than to inspire them into action. And so I would love to see a shift in this narrative, showing young people all the ways that they can make a difference for climate change and all the ways that we can come together. And many of those ways are through the free market and through consumer choice and competition.
Beverly Hallberg:
And do you also think, too, we see this hypocrisy with wealthy people like John Kerry who talks about the climate changing and environmental concerns, but then hops on his private jet all the time. I think it’s interesting that, besides the pandemic, which has changed people’s lives, energy consumption continues to go up among the American people. And I think of young people — they always have technology, which of course, is from energy, on video gaming, using their phones, even learning online, using their computers all the time — so do you think that young people are even willing to give up some of these luxuries in order to, quote unquote, save the planet?
Danielle Butcher:
First of all, I think that’s a false choice, but what I would say about millennials and gen Z is that they hate capitalism, but they love their iPhones, right?
Beverly Hallberg:
Right.
Danielle Butcher:
They espouse these ideas without fully grasping what that means in the real world and for their day-to-day lives. And I don’t think that we have to make the choice between these day-to-day luxuries, like Twitter, Instagram, iPhones, Starbucks, and saving the planet. I think that there are very easy lifestyle changes that we can all make and that we can demand, as consumers, that will trend us in the right direction.
Beverly Hallberg:
And we’re going to get into some of those solutions, but real quick, when it comes to gen Z and millennials, you just said it there, they tend to hate capitalism and they have a fondness for socialism, so we see more and more young people are veering towards embracing socialism, but is socialism the answer to environmental concerns?
Danielle Butcher:
It’s absolutely not, but the young people have faced this challenge where they care about this issue very, very deeply, and only one side of the aisle is talking about it. And if you care about something, and someone is proposing a solution, you’re going to gravitate towards that solution if it’s the only solution you know. And that’s part of why I think it’s so, so important for people who are right-of-center, or libertarian leaning, market leaning, to really become more vocal on these issues. We owe it to our ideology. We owe it to —
…
Beverly Hallberg:
— those ways that are better. So when you talk about an alternative to socialism, to the Green New Deal, let’s say, what do you think is the right way to make sure that we are addressing climate change, which is happening?
Danielle Butcher:
Yeah, we need to focus on solutions that don’t just sound nice or look good, but that can actually make a real difference and that can be sustainable. So the problem with something like the Green New Deal, ideology aside, is that it is a highly partisan resolution. And even if it were to pass, in some dreamland, it could very easily be repealed or replaced or overturned by a new administration or a new Congress. And so we need to look at solutions that will last beyond the political wins, and where that has to happen is in the marketplace. So we need companies and innovators and entrepreneurs to be leading this charge and basically transforming our culture and transforming our society, not from top-down, coming in with these mandates saying “you have to live your life this way, you have to live your life that way.” What it comes down to is private companies offering consumers choices that will help us build stepping stones into a more green culture.
Beverly Hallberg:
And something I’ve heard you talk about before is illustrating the idea of government ownership is not the right answer through what is known as the Tragedy of the Commons. This is a 1968 article by Garrett Hardin, it’s a classic. Can you explain to us why government ownership does not lead to desired outcomes, it’s actually private ownership that does?
Danielle Butcher:
Yeah, absolutely. It all comes down to incentives, and when government or the collective is responsible for something or owns something, there is no incentive to be a true conservationist. And I think that conservation is a topic that often gets lost in the climate change debate, but it’s really, really important because what it all comes down to is the responsible management and the active involvement with our resources. And so if you can capitalize on conservation, you really can have a really good system for using resources in a responsible way, and being green, and government just has no incentive to do that because they won’t be hurt by mismanagement or by not conserving things. And the private sector, on the other hand, will feel those incentives and will be compelled to do things responsibly and cleanly.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you talk about being compelled to do these things responsibly, but what about that — I’m going to play devil’s advocate — that person who may say to you, “but profit is their bottom line, so how can they care about the environment and be a good steward of it if money is what they’re seeking?”
Danielle Butcher:
Of course. So, for one, it’s not profitable to waste resources, right? But on the other hand, what I’ve mentioned a few times is consumer choice. And consumers are increasingly caring about their carbon footprints and about their waste, and they are demanding alternatives that are more green and are more eco-friendly, and so you see this oftentimes in the energy sector. It’s very true that we need an all-of-the-above energy approach, and I would never advocate for outright banning one source of energy over the other, or tipping the scales in favor of one for the other, but I do think that consumers have a preference, and as costs become competitive, they are increasingly choosing green energy.
Beverly Hallberg:
And let’s get into, so that’s the land management side and you bring out the case in point that resources do bring profits, so if you deplete your resources, then you aren’t going to make a profit, so there is that incentive structure with private ownership. I want to talk more, though, than just about land, it’s about thinking of alternative energy. So I know the big funded alternative energy source when President Obama was President was Solyndra. It was a failure; we spent a lot of taxpayer money to try to figure out whether or not we could use alternative energies, or this company could make it for us. But what we are finding is somebody who has done really well, when you think about using alternative energies, is Elon Musk. Now, he’s made a huge name for himself with Twitter as of late, buying Twitter. But of course, he is known for electric vehicles at Tesla. How has he been able to make this work? And some would say, well, it’s not solely private because he has received government subsidies, so is a partnership between private and public something that is optimal?
Danielle Butcher:
There’s certainly a place for private/public partnerships, and I think the way that Musk and Tesla went about it was a really good way to go about it. At the end of the day, Elon Musk did take a risk by investing in a clean transportation sector, and he’s reaping the rewards for that risk now, right? He was able to make the decision for himself and weigh the cost-benefit analysis and decide that this was something he wanted to move forward with, and now Tesla is a wildly, wildly popular brand. Everyone my age wants to drive a Tesla, and it’s a cool thing to drive a Tesla. And so I think that’s a perfect example of how you actually can profit by going green and by investing in clean energy.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you were mentioning earlier that it seems that, while there may be conservatives or the right or Republicans, however you want to categorize it, are doing things to address environmental concerns, that it’s really the left that we hear about most often. So I want to talk about what the right is doing. What different things have they been focused on, whether that’s legislation, or whether that is working with the private sector, to figure out solutions to environmental concerns?
Danielle Butcher:
Well, first I want to step back a little bit and just frame this because I think, for so long, the right-of-center has been accused of not caring about the environment, period, and I think that’s just such an unfair thing to pin on them. When you look at where conservatives and Republicans live, it’s mostly in rural communities, in the land. They are our agriculturalists, they’re our hunters, our hikers, our fishers, people who are in the land every single day. And so this narrative that they don’t care about the environment, I think, just couldn’t be further from the truth. And when it comes to what it is that they’re actually doing on this issue, there’s so, so much that just does not get talked about.
One thing that we really like to champion at my organization is natural climate solutions, so helping farmers fight climate change. An example of this would be that trees actually sequester carbon out of the atmosphere and clean our atmosphere, and so you can literally fight climate change by planting more trees. And it’s simple solutions like that that make sense in communities and that make sense at the local level, that we can really be champions of, so that’s really exciting.
And then another avenue is something that we like to very simply call cutting red tape to create green jobs. And basically what that means is getting rid of the regulations that slow down innovation and slow down progress as we pursue different clean and renewable energy sources. So for example, nuclear power plants now take about 10 years just to get the regulatory process passed, and nuclear energy is our largest source of carbon-free energy. There’s no reason that the process should be taking so long. There are lots and lots of things that the right-of-center can champion, and those are two really good examples.
Beverly Hallberg:
And what do you say to the left, too, it seems what they want is to speed up the use of alternative energies and get rid of fossil fuels altogether. Obviously, that would put a lot of people in difficult situations where the cost of energy would go sky high; those who are low income would struggle the most with that. Do you think of this more as, with the private sector, this is going to be a process, over time we’re going to be innovating more and more, transitioning over to alternative energies, and in your opinion, do we have time to do so?
Danielle Butcher:
I think it certainly will be a process, and the idea that we can just flip a switch one day and go a hundred percent renewable, or a hundred percent clean, is just not founded in reality. We do have time to make this transition happen, but not if we focus all of our energies on trying to flip that imaginary switch. So we need to focus on what types of energies and technologies we can be doing now to reduce our emissions and to move toward that clean energy future, but again, we can’t waste our time on these fantasies. And I think we also need to keep into perspective how far we have come. The United States has cut our emissions more than the next 10 leading countries combined, and that is a significant thing for us to do, and I think that we should recognize how far we’ve come.
Beverly Hallberg:
Final question for you: we started this episode today talking about young people, and you brought up the point that they are environmentally conscious and want to do something about it, so they’re very active in this sphere. What do you say to a young person who wants to do something, but they’re obviously not as wealthy as Elon Musk, they don’t work in legislatures and therefore can’t roll back red tape. Is it something as simple as plant a tree? Or what do you suggest to young people who do want to be involved?
Danielle Butcher:
It really is as simple as plant a tree. But beyond that, it’s about taking steps that you can make sustainably throughout your day-to-day life and making choices that will be easy to sustain in your lifestyle. So whether that means shopping secondhand for your clothes, or going vegan, whatever it is that makes sense for you, that small act will add up. It’s sort of like voting, where everyone thinks, oh, well, my vote doesn’t matter. But then you look at all the people who think that, and actually those votes could have mattered if they were all put together. And so it’s the same way with environmental action. You may think you can’t make a difference, but if everyone who thought that were to take one single action, it would have enormous implications.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, we so appreciate your time today, coming on She Thinks. Danielle Butcher who is with the American Conservation Coalition, thank you so much for being here.
Danielle Butcher:
Thank you.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate, that’s iwf.org/donate.
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