Five years ago, a group of social conservatives penned a famous essay titled “Against the Dead Consensus” in the religious journal First Things. They argued that Reaganite free-market libertarianism had failed to support family stability, communal solidarity and other public goods. So they proposed jettisoning the “dead consensus” of libertarianism in favor of a policy framework that could better support these higher-order goods. In the years since, social conservatives like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance have taken up the baton, arguing that libertarian dogmas such as deregulation and laissez-faire economics should be reconsidered if they are resulting in social, community and family decay.
This pivot is commendable. Yet there is another issue where social conservatives still cling to the libertarian dead consensus, even as the social consequences get worse and worse. This issue is climate change.
Climate change is generally cast as an environmental crisis, which it is. But it also has grave implications for tradition, community, family and the other higher-order goods that social conservatives most value. We have recently seen entire communities wiped off the map by massive wildfires fueled by ever-hotter weather. There have been multiple days when my own young children could not safely play outside because the air was so foul from wildfire smoke. There is nothing pro-family or pro-social about this state of affairs. There is nothing conservative about this state of affairs, if conservatism is understood as protecting our traditional way of life against wrenching and destructive change.
Wildfires are a particularly violent manifestation of this change, but they are not the only one. Climate change disrupts seasonal rhythms and traditions in countless ways. Many lakes and ponds no longer freeze, making outdoor ice-skating a nostalgic memory in places that used to cherish it. Ditto for sledding, snowball fights and other traditional winter activities. A key tenet of social conservatism is that traditions matter, and climate change is literally liquefying our winter traditions.
The list goes on. Florida waters have turned into a Jacuzzi in recent years, and good luck trying to snorkel as fish flee for deeper waters and coral dies off. The iconic Georgia peach is already withering as the weather becomes too hot for it to thrive. Pick any outdoor tradition—agricultural or recreational—and you are likely to find a tradition that is imperiled by climate change.
Yet with few exceptions (more on that below), social conservatives are still embracing the libertarian dead consensus when it comes to climate change. No congressional Republicans voted for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which incentivized clean energy, and there is no evidence that social conservatives pushed for them to do so. Republican politicians talk about increasing fossil fuels and rolling back emissions regulations, and many cannot bring themselves to even admit that climate change is a problem. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s well-known blueprint for a future Republican presidential administration, proposes to gut virtually every governmental program that addresses climate change. When it comes to the environment, the dead consensus of deregulation and laissez-faire economics still reigns on the right. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide levels keep rising, temperatures keep going up, and our traditional way of life becomes more and more jeopardized.
To be sure, regulations and financial incentives in the United States are no silver bullet for fighting global climate change. They will not close coal plants in China and India—not immediately, anyway. But a careful blend of carrots and sticks can certainly incentivize U.S. companies to search for the most innovative and impactful technologies to cut emissions. And once those technologies are perfected and proven, they can be exported around the globe. The “Against the Dead Consensus” writers recognized that the government has a significant role to play in family policy, labor policy and financial policy. Why should the government be deemed feckless or counterproductive when it comes to climate policy? In other words, why have social conservatives jettisoned the libertarian dead consensus on so many other issues while clinging to it on climate?
The Malthusian Past of Climate Action
One reason is undoubtedly a decades-long reaction against Paul Ehrlich and the neo-Malthusians. Mr. Ehrlich is the (in)famous author of The Population Bomb, the 1968 book warning that population growth was poised to cause a host of environmental ills. The Population Bomb echoed the writings of Thomas Malthus, the Enlightenment-era demographer who linked population growth with resource depletion and human misery. But Mr. Ehrlich did Malthus one better: He proposed a raft of outrageous policies to address population growth, ranging from mandatory sterilization to punitive taxation on baby products.
The Population Bomb became a sensation in the nascent environmental movement of the 1970s. Given that the modern climate movement is an outgrowth of that environmental movement, it is easy to see how the macabre anti-natalism associated with Mr. Ehrlich poisoned the well against social conservative support for climate action. After all, a central tenet of social conservatism is that children are blessings, not a scourge to be suppressed.
But while a reaction against Mr. Ehrlich and the Malthusians can explain social conservatives’ hostility to climate action, it can no longer justify it. For the modern climate movement has finally, mercifully broken with The Population Bomb. As the social conservative (and devout Catholic) Tim Carney writes in his recent book Family Unfriendly, climate scientists and environmental activists “keep having kids,” and many now exhort others to do the same. Mr. Carney name-checks modern climate hawks like Ezra Klein, Kate Marvel and David Wallace-Wells, all of whom have disavowed the dour Malthusianism of The Population Bomb. Other climate hawks forcefully advocate for more children, not fewer. And, of course, Pope Francis argues for both having more children and taking aggressive action on climate change.
There is a new synergy between climate and family. In Family Unfriendly, for example, Mr. Carney devotes an entire chapter to the family-friendly virtues of walkable neighborhoods and the sterile atomization of car-centric living. As Mr. Carney explains, prioritizing cars over pedestrians is a policy choice, one that does a disservice to parents and children alike. Aside from one sentence, he does not explicitly link this issue to climate change, but creating more walkable neighborhoods would certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By advocating for such neighborhoods, social conservatives like Mr. Carney are backdooring their way into effective climate policy. They may resist the label, but they are being climate hawks.
Conservatives as Climate Hawks
In short, it is no longer sensible for social conservatives to reflexively oppose climate action. Not when climate change is endangering our traditions, and not when conservatives like Mr. Carney endorse policies that are pro-climate in substance if not in name. It is time for social conservatives to reject the dead consensus on climate change, recognize that a rapidly heating planet does not serve their goals and openly endorse serious climate action.
Is this unlikely? If you look closely, you can already see faint stirrings in this direction. For example, the Catholic scholar Adrian Vermeule wrote a superb essay three years ago castigating the political right for “reflexively oppos[ing] public action that protects endangered species, controls pollution and toxic substances, or mitigates the pace and effects of climate change.”
Mr. Vermeule is no progressive, and moving left on climate issues would not mean giving an inch on other issues. Quite the opposite: Moving to the left on climate may be the best way to open up space for creative policies that advance socially conservative goals. As one example, consider generous child subsidies funded dollar-for-dollar by strong carbon taxes. If you want to pass socially conservative policy in a politically divided country, perhaps the best way is to move left on climate and start making deals.
Let’s preserve our seasonal traditions and natural patrimony. Let’s protect the very air our children breathe. Let’s open up space for creative policy packages that give social conservatives and climate hawks something they badly want. Let’s end the dead consensus on climate change.
