Congressional Republicans are on the run from environmental issues. Beyond a handful of young, diehard members, such as Rep. David McIntosh (R-IN) who addressed this year’s Fly-In for Freedom, few are willing to tackle environmental issues and continue the push for meaningful environmental reform. Senators Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID) and John Chafee (R-RI) may pass their Endangered Species Act Reauthorization bill, but only because they have sacrificed nearly every issue of importance to property rights activists. On other issues the outlook is not much better. There is one issue where Congress might seriously challenge the regulatory initiatives of the Clinton Administration – a proposal to dramatically tighten clean air standards, but that fight will be lead by Democrats Ron Klink (D-PA) and John Dingell (D-MI).

The failure of House Republicans to pass a flood control exemption to the Endangered Species Act without the House leadership’s support was the final straw. Now the Republican leadership, particularly the Speaker, is dead set against promoting reform legislation without substantial bipartisan support. Thus, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) is considering regulatory reform legislation, but only if he can get Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) on board. As a result, there will be minimal legislation that is worth passing. House Resource Committee Chairman Don Young’s American Land Sovereignty Protection Act may be the lone exception.

This defensive posture is a result of the beating Congressional Republicans have taken from the media and environmental activists—in both—parties over their efforts to reform environmental laws and restrain the federal regulatory leviathan. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) charged that efforts to reform environmental laws caused "a black eye for the Republican party" because Republicans tried to do too much. In other words, Boehlert feels that House Republicans were insufficiently committed to maintaining the federal regulatory leviathan.

Other GOP luminaries have made similar charges. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) spoke on election night in 1996 about the need for Republicans to become more green. Republican pollster Linda DiVall argues that Republicans are "out of sync with mainstream American Opinion," even though her own polling found that most Americans support environmental reform proposals, once they are explained by anyone other than the Sierra Club.

The consensus view in Washington is that Americans do not support reforming environmental regulations. This view is wrong. The problems faced in fighting for environmental reform are mainly the result of the failure to articulate a long-range environmental vision grounded in a respect for property rights, free enterprise and federalism.

Reformers make a huge mistake when they seek to beat environmental activists at their own game. Industry will never successfully stave off environmental extremism by agreeing to meet Al Gore half way. It is unsound policy and unsound politics. It is a strategy that legitimizes the critics of reform. All it accomplishes is preemptive surrender.

The challenge is to articulate an environmental vision that rejects extensive federal bureaucracies and embraces traditional principles of free enterprise and limited government. As every farmer and rancher knows, sound stewardship begins with private property, and environmental decisions need to be based upon local conditions and local needs. Attacking private property creates perverse incentives and undermines sound environmental stewardship.

Federal Government efforts, where truly necessary, should focus upon preventing harm to people and their properties, and less upon prescriptive bureaucratic edicts. Better results are more important than additional regulations. There is nothing pro-environment about generating paperwork or having the government micromanage industry decisions.

Such views are common sense outside of the Beltway. Poll after poll shows that Americans support greater protection of private property and are willing to devolve responsibility for environmental concerns. This is recognized even on the left. According to President Clinton’s one-time pollster Stanley Greenberg. "For ordinary citizens, devolution is a way of making the environmental regime more responsive, more flexible and sensible."

Perhaps the best evidence of this comes from polling conducted by Kellyanne Fitzpatrick’s The Polling Company on the question of endangered species. Her 1996 poll presented voters with three policy options: 1) regulating private land when necessary to protect endangered species and their habitat, (the status quo); 2) regulating as in the first option but compensating landowners for any property devaluation’s that result; and 3) abstaining from land-use regulation altogether and relying upon incentives to encourage private protection of endangered species. 33 percent preferred the second option, a staple of most GOP reform plans, while 49 percent chose the third. Only 11 percent opted to support the status quo. From this data one could conclude that, if anything, Republican efforts to reform the Endangered Species Act are too modest, not too extreme.

While voters may be sympathetic to this message, enacting a new environmental agenda cannot occur overnight. Would-be reformers must first carefully lay the proper groundwork. So long as it is perceived to be anti-environmental to oppose existing environmental programs, true reform will be impossible.

Turning this around is possible - if reformers and land rights activities focus their efforts. Well over 2 percent of GDP is spent on environmental protection, with increasingly little to show for it. There have been tremendous environmental gains over the past few decades, but the laws written in the 1970s are reaching the end of their productive lives. Just as market socialism in Eastern Europe could produce only so much wheat, centralized environmental regulations can only protect so much, and that limit has been reached. Current environmental concerns are heavily dependent on local conditions that the "one-size-fits-all" approach cannot accommodate, and efforts to impose rules appropriate for one region on the rest of the country produce few results.

Equally important, federal environmental regulation has produced a string of nightmares for ordinary citizens while failing to safeguard environmental values. At the extreme, federal environmental regulations have wrought economic ruin on landowners unfortunate enough to own designated wetlands or habitat for endangered species. In an extreme case, landowners in California were threatened with prosecution if they cleared firebreaks to protect their homes as this might disturb the endangered Stephens Kangaroo Rat. In the ensuing fires 29 homes - and much of the K-rats habitat - burned to the ground.

Advocates of property rights and regulatory rollback are often uncomfortable making the environmental cause against existing laws, preferring instead to emphasize the economic costs or the impact on industry. This sets up a dynamic that pits environmental protection versus corporate profits, a debate that is difficult to win. The costs of many federal environmental laws are unreasonable, but greater outrage can be generated when people realize that these laws do not advance environmental protection. As many landowners know all too well, the Endangered Species Act encourages the destruction of habitat. Removing such perverse incentives is anything but anti-environmental.

Until reformers learn that being pro-environmental does not require defending federal regulations, their political agenda will continue to falter.