Meet the new generation of conservative eco-warriors

In his first days in office, President Trump began doing what he promised he would do to Joe Biden’s environmental policy: dismantle it.

Immediately after entering the White House, Trump — who’s described climate change as a “hoax” — issued an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change. With a separate executive order, he froze billions of dollars in grants for clean energy and other environmental programs passed by Biden under the Inflation Reduction Act. Funding for electric-vehicle incentives and grants for charging stations are also paused. Tying all these moves together is Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency.

“We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries,” reads the order.

Left-wing environmentalists have been aghast, suggesting that Trump’s moves will plunge the planet into a new round of climate catastrophe. “No one in American history has shown more disdain for the environment,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “[Trump’s] anti-environment agenda is overwhelmingly unpopular and truly a threat to life on Earth.”

But not all environmental advocates are feeling pessimistic. Call them the new green conservative brigade. A mix of nonprofits, political action committees and podcasters, they represent a rising movement of environmentalists who believe you can care about the planet and still hold conservative values. In spite of Trump’s early actions, they say they are hopeful about what the new four years might bring. And one of their big goals is to reclaim the environmental debate from the left and make it their own. 

“When ordinary people look at climate change, they think of protestors blocking traffic and making people late to work. And they don’t feel it represents them,” says Danielle Butcher Franz, the twentysomething CEO of the right-of-center American Conservation Coalition (ACC).

The fast-growing environmental nonprofit was founded by a group of college students in 2017. It now counts more than 60,000 members and has field offices in four states. The group, says Franz, offers “a space for people who didn’t feel represented by the mainstream environmental movement” and takes inspiration from the legacy of former Republican presidents like Ulysses S. Grant (who created Yellowstone, the nation’s first national park), Teddy Roosevelt (who protected 230 million acres of public land) and Richard Nixon (who created the EPA and signed the Clean Air Act into law). “The Republican party hasn’t been championing this message,” says Franz, but “thankfully we are starting to see a shift.

Franz touts that the American Conservation Coalition has “positive relationships with several of Trump’s appointees” including new Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, new EPA chief Lee Zeldin and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who spoke at the ACC’s annual summit in 2023. “Between energy, interior and EPA we are very hopeful we have the right people in the right seats,” Franz enthused. 

During inauguration weekend, the ACC was on the scene in Washington, DC, co-hosting a party called the Power 30 Awards at the city’s Sax lounge. At the event  —  co-sponsored by TikTok and conservative media outlet The Daily Signal — some guests wore green MAGA-inspired baseball caps emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Beautiful Again.”

In contrast to the defiant climate denialism of many conservatives over the last couple of decades, green conservatives don’t dispute that climate change is happening or that carbon emissions are part of the cause. Where they differ from their left-wing, nature-loving counterparts comes down to priorities.

Eco-conservatives tend toward an all-of-the-above approach to energy policy. So while the left is big on solar panels and wind farms (a particular bogeyman of President Trump), the ACC’s website trumpets nuclear power as a clean energy source and promotes American energy dominance “by unleashing all sources of energy here in the United States.”

Among the group’s other priorities are permitting reform; carbon storage; active forest management (a fire prevention approach championed by Trump); regenerative agriculture and ecosystem conservation. “We do a lot of local, community action projects,” says Franz. She adds that “we champion solutions that promote economic prosperity and environmental conservation. So, yeah, we absolutely do see solar and wind as part of it. But we think that consumers are equipped to decide which energy sources are best for them.”

Another right-of-center environmental advocacy group is ClearPath, a DC-based clean energy organization. Jeremy Harrell, ClearPath’s CEO, tells The Post he’s also optimistic about making progress under the Trump administration, even given its strongly pro-fossil fuel priorities. “Our mission is American technological innovations that can reduce global energy emissions,” Harrell says. “Everything from how to catalyze the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors to how do we make steel with lower carbon. We work on carbon capture which can decarbonize the use of coal or gas for power generation, and we work on reducing emissions across the natural gas supply chain.”

ClearPath also endorses geothermal energy (using the heat of the Earth’s crust for power), hydropower and expedited permitting for clean-power developments. “I think one of the single largest barriers to growing clean energy in this country is our broken regulatory system,” Harell says. 

But while ClearPath has talked up solar power in the past, today neither solar nor wind (both of which are on Trump’s hit list) are things the group publicly champions. “The Biden administration was very climate forward. It was the first thing they would mention,” says Harrell, adding, “I think climate doesn’t have to be the political issue that, frankly, progressives and the traditional environmental community have made it.”

Making progress on environmental goals under Trump may come down to messaging and labeling. Already, some clean energy companies — such as Air Company, which converts captured CO2 into jet fuel — are positioning their technology as “defense tech” that will support America’s national security. And as major banks and tech companies pull back on their climate commitments, other businesses are engaging in what’s being called “green hushing.” Such firms are continuing to pursue their carbon emissions reduction goals, but they talk less about this work publicly, according to a 2022 report by climate solutions developer South Pole.

David Spence — author of the book “Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship,” and a professor at UT Austin — notes that it is the red state of Texas that has become the biggest clean energy market in the country by gigawatts. In the second quarter of 2024, it surpassed blue California as the biggest solar producer in the US.

“We’ve long avoided the word climate here,” says Spence, referring to the clean power sector in Texas. “That’s been a strategy here in Texas for a long time. People that want to boost renewables talk about energy independence or being an energy leader.”

Polling on these issues reveals that Republicans aren’t a monolith. A survey in October by Pew Research Center found that 56% of Republicans and those who lean right think climate policies “usually hurt the economy,” but 54% of Republicans said that climate news made them feel “sad about what’s happening to the earth.” That latter number tracks with findings by political data consultancy Northwind Climate. They recently conducted polling showing that 51% of voters who pulled the lever for Trump in his first term “said they would pay a little more for something if they knew that something was produced sustainably,” says Aaron Burgess, Northwind Climate’s co-founder.

 “What we’ve found and tried to help companies realize is if they have a product only targeting the Democrats or only those people who voted for Democrats it is going to leave off a huge portion of your potential consumer base,” adds Burgess.

Other players among green conservatives include EcoRight (founded by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis), which hosts a podcast called EcoRight Speaks; Green Tea Party Radio, a podcast outfit whose slogan is that “green is the new red”; ConservAmerica, a nonprofit focused on conservative solutions to energy and environmental issues; and PERC, a nonprofit focused on nature conservation.

Whether these voices on the right will be effective in the coming years remains to be seen. But the American Conservation Coalition, for one, has already proven itself quite influential. Back in 2020, Backer, ACC’s founder, and Chris Barnard, its president, went on a hike with John Curtis, then a congressman from Utah. Along the way, a discussion sparked the idea of starting a Republican caucus devoted to environmental causes. Curtis, who’s now the junior Republican Senator from Utah, subsequently founded the Conservative Climate Caucus, which now counts more than 80 members.

That could make for bipartisan environmental legislation originating from Capitol Hill in coming years, says Harrell. “The political debate here in DC has dramatically shifted over the last five to eight years,” he says. “You see Republican leaders leaning into this with their own solutions; there’s a lot more common ground than people realize.”