Six Myths About the Republican Record on Conservation and the Environment

The Environmental Protection Agency was created by a Republican president. So was the Clean Air Act of 1970, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the first national wildlife refuge, and the Antiquities Act, and the 1990 acid rain program that most economists who have studied it count as a success on cost. If you grew up thinking that conservatives and clean air were natural enemies, I understand why. It is the story that gets told at the top of the loudest cable shows. It is also, as a matter of record, wrong, and the people who tell it know better or ought to.

But I am not going to hand you a victory lap, because that would be dishonest in the other direction. Republicans have also fought environmental rules, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad ones, and the party's record is a mix. The way to argue this fairly is to take the claims one at a time, state each, test it against what happened, and give a verdict. Six claims, one at a time. Some are myths the left tells about us. Some are myths we tell about ourselves.

Myth one: "Conservation is a liberal invention"

The claim. The idea of protecting land and wildlife comes from the progressive left, and conservatives have always been on the side of developers.

The record. The national conservation tradition is Republican at its roots. Ulysses Grant signed the law creating Yellowstone, the first national park, in 1872. Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901, made conservation a signature of his administration. Working with his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, he added roughly 150 million acres to the national forests. He established the first federal bird reservation at Pelican Island, Florida, in 1903, which became the first national wildlife refuge. He signed the Antiquities Act on June 8, 1906, which lets a president protect federal land with historic or scientific value as a national monument, and he used it to protect the Grand Canyon as a monument in 1908. In May 1908 he hosted the Conference of Governors on the conservation of natural resources at the White House. The full story is in Theodore Roosevelt busted trusts and saved forests, and the GOP forgot half.

The motive deserves notice, because it is a conservative one. Roosevelt was a hunter and a rancher. He understood that a resource used up is a resource lost, and that a country which wastes its forests and game leaves its grandchildren poorer. He framed it as stewardship, a moral duty to pass on what you inherited.

Verdict. Myth. Conservation grew out of Republican leadership, and the logic behind it is a conservative logic.

Myth two: "Republicans have always opposed clean air and water"

The claim. The modern environmental laws were extracted from reluctant Republicans by Democratic pressure.

The record. The decisive year was 1970. In January, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to study the environmental effects of major actions. In July, he sent Congress a plan to consolidate the government's scattered pollution programs into a new agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, which began work in December 1970. On the last day of that year, he signed the Clean Air Act of 1970, which set national air quality standards and gave the federal government a central role in enforcing them. The bill passed Congress by lopsided margins in both parties. In 1973 he signed the Endangered Species Act.

Democrats, including Senator Edmund Muskie, were pushing hard, and the political competition between Nixon and Muskie, a likely 1972 opponent, was part of the story. Fair enough. Politicians respond to incentives. But a president who is dragged into signing a bill does not usually propose the agency that will enforce it. The EPA was his own administration's reorganization plan.

Verdict. Myth, with a footnote. The footnote comes next.

Myth three: "Nixon was a green president"

The claim. The other side of the coin: that Nixon was an environmentalist at heart and the party followed him.

The record. It is more complicated than either story. Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in October 1972. His objection was cost: he said the bill would spend far more than the budget he had proposed and would damage the economy. Congress overrode the veto on October 18, 1972, and the bill became law. Separately, Nixon impounded some of the money Congress had appropriated for it, a dispute that led to the 1974 budget law, which you can read about in Nixon Impounded the Money, Congress Fought Back, and the 1974 Law Still Rules.

So the picture is of a president who created the agency, signed the major air law, and then fought Congress about the cost and the scale of the next one. That is not hypocrisy. It is the real tension in every conservative approach to the environment: you can want clean water and still ask what it costs and who decides. Neither a hero nor a villain.

Verdict. Half true. He signed the founding laws and he also tried to hold down the price tag.

Myth four: "Market tools never work on pollution"

The claim. You cannot trust markets to clean up pollution. Only command-and-control regulation works.

The record. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed amendments to the Clean Air Act that included a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide, the pollutant behind acid rain. Instead of telling every power plant exactly how to cut emissions, the law set a national cap and gave plants allowances they could buy, sell or save. The goal was to cut annual sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants by about 10 million tons from 1980 levels. A plant that could cut cheaply would cut more and sell its extra allowances. A plant that faced high costs could buy.

The program is widely regarded as a success on cost: the reductions were achieved at a lower price than regulators had predicted, and most economists who study it see it as proof that incentives can work. The design drew on the thinking of market-minded economists, and it was signed by a Republican president.

That is not a claim that every market-based scheme is good. Cap-and-trade for carbon is a different design in a different setting, and conservatives have good reasons to disagree about it. But the narrow point stands: the Republican tradition has produced pollution policy that works with prices rather than against them. For a conservative this is the right instinct. See Yes, Markets Sometimes Fail, and Governments Fail Right Alongside Them.

Verdict. Myth. Market tools have worked, and a Republican president used one.

Myth five: "Conservatives who criticize the EPA just want dirty air"

The claim. Anyone who objects to an EPA rule is on the side of polluters.

The record. The real conservative objections are mostly about who decides and what it costs, not about whether the air should be clean. Here are the main ones, stated fairly.

1. Agencies should not make major laws on their own. In West Virginia v. EPA, decided in June 2022, the Supreme Court held that a regulation of vast economic significance needs clear authorization from Congress, an idea known as the major questions doctrine. The case concerned the agency's attempt to reshape how the nation's electricity is generated. You can follow the line in The Court Did Not Ban Clean Air. It Told EPA to Ask Congress First.. The argument is not "no regulation." It is "Congress, which voters can fire, should make the big decisions."
2. Judges should not defer automatically to agencies. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, decided in June 2024, the Court overruled the Chevron doctrine, holding that courts must use their own judgment when interpreting what a statute means. Details are in Chevron Is Gone, and Here Is What Loper Bright Changed for Everyone.
3. Property owners need clear rules. In Sackett v. EPA, decided in May 2023, the Court limited the agency's reach over wetlands, in a case about a couple who wanted to build a house on a lot in Idaho and were told that a soggy patch of ground made it federal territory. The long argument about what counts as "waters of the United States" runs through How a Backyard Lot and a Farm Pond Became Federal Waters, Then Didn't.
4. Costs are real. A rule that costs a small manufacturer or a farm family more than it returns is not free because the benefit is noble. A hard look at costs, which Reagan required of federal agencies in 1981, is not hostility to clean air. It is arithmetic. See Regulation protects us, so why count the cost? Because someone pays it.

Now the fair concession: some who raise these points are indeed hostile to environmental protection, and some opposition to rules has been driven by narrow interests rather than principle. The honest approach is to judge each rule on its own record.

Verdict. Mostly myth. The serious objections are about authority and cost. But the label cuts both ways: we should not pretend that every deregulatory push is high-minded.

Myth six: "The party's conservation tradition ended with Reagan"

The claim. Whatever Republicans did before 1980, they abandoned conservation after the Reagan administration took office.

The record. The Reagan years had real fights. His Interior Secretary, James Watt, and his EPA administrator, Anne Gorsuch, were controversial, and Gorsuch resigned in 1983 amid a dispute with Congress. His administration also pushed to review regulations for cost. All true, and critics were not wrong to complain.

But it is not the whole picture. In 1987 the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, was signed, and Reagan's administration was a leading backer. The Senate ratified it in 1988. In 1990, as noted above, Bush signed the Clean Air Act amendments. In 2020, President Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act on August 4, which permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund and set aside money for the maintenance backlog in national parks and other public lands. And outside Washington, the largest part of the conservation work is done by hunters and anglers, who since 1937 have paid an excise tax on guns and ammunition under the Pittman-Robertson Act to fund state wildlife restoration, and by ranchers and farmers who manage millions of acres of private land.

Another thread is the dispute over public lands, particularly in the West, where Republicans have often sided with state and local control and with ranchers, as in The Sagebrush Rebellion and the Westerners Who Wanted Their Land Back. You can agree or disagree with a given position, but it is a view about who manages land best, not an indifference to land.

There is also a live conservative argument about the Antiquities Act itself, and it is worth stating fairly because it comes from the same instinct Roosevelt had. The act was written to protect "objects of historic or scientific interest" and it says the area reserved should be "the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management" of those objects. Critics, including many westerners of both parties, argue that later presidents have stretched that language to cover enormous tracts of land, often over the objections of the people who live next to them. Supporters answer that the statute has been used by presidents of both parties for more than a century and that Congress has the power to change it. Both positions can be defended, and the way to settle it is the way conservatives would settle any question about executive power: read the statute, count the acres, and ask whether the local voters had a say.

Verdict. Myth, with the Reagan-era fights counted honestly. The tradition persisted, though the party's emphasis shifted from federal programs to state, local and private stewardship.

One more test: what should a family ask?

So where does that leave a family trying to judge a proposal? I would suggest a short list of questions, which apply to a rule from a Republican or a Democrat.

1. Who decided? Congress, which you can vote out, or an agency that you cannot?
2. What does it cost, and who pays: you, your employer, your town?
3. What does it deliver, in measurable terms, and by when?
4. Is there a cheaper way to reach the same goal, such as a market tool, a state program or a local fix?
5. Who is accountable if it fails?

A policy that survives those questions deserves support, however it is labeled. For a longer approach to the energy question, see All of the Above, Graded on What a Family Actually Needs From Power, and for the permitting side, NEPA Explained, the 1970 Law Where Paperwork Outlasts the Project. If a rule is headed for a vote in Congress, the bills page is where you can look it up.

The bottom line

• Republicans founded national conservation: Grant and Yellowstone in 1872, Theodore Roosevelt and the national forests and Antiquities Act, Nixon and the EPA and the Clean Air Act of 1970, Bush and the 1990 acid rain program.
• The record is mixed, not spotless. Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in 1972 and was overridden. The Reagan years had real clashes over the EPA and public lands.
• The serious conservative objection to environmental regulation is about who decides and what it costs, not whether air and water should be clean. Courts have backed the demand that Congress, not an agency, make the big choices.
• Judge any environmental proposal with five questions: who decided, who pays, what does it deliver, is there a cheaper way, and who is accountable.
• When someone says the party never cared about clean air, hand them the 1970 record and the 1990 amendments, and then ask what they would do about cost.