The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump

by James Morton Turner, Andrew C. Isenberg

Not long ago, Republicans could take pride in their party’s tradition of environmental leadership. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the GOP helped to create the Environmental Protection Agency, extend the Clean Air Act, and protect endangered species. Today, as Republicans denounce climate change as a “hoax” and seek to dismantle the environmental regulatory state they worked to build, we are left to What happened?

In The Republican Reversal, James Morton Turner and Andrew C. Isenberg show that the party’s transformation began in the late 1970s, with the emergence of a new alliance of pro-business, libertarian, and anti-federalist voters. This coalition came about through a concerted effort by politicians and business leaders, abetted by intellectuals and policy experts, to link the commercial interests of big corporate donors with states’-rights activism and Main Street regulatory distrust. Fiscal conservatives embraced cost-benefit analysis to counter earlier models of environmental policy making, and business tycoons funded think tanks to denounce federal environmental regulation as economically harmful, constitutionally suspect, and unchristian, thereby appealing to evangelical views of man’s God-given dominion of the Earth.

As Turner and Isenberg make clear, the conservative abdication of environmental concern stands out as one of the most profound turnabouts in modern American political history, critical to our understanding of the GOP’s modern success. The Republican reversal on the environment is emblematic of an unwavering faith in the market, skepticism of scientific and technocratic elites, and belief in American exceptionalism that have become the party’s distinguishing characteristics.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Environment, Science, History, Nature

280 pages, Hardcover

Published November 12, 2018

About the author

James Morton Turner is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Content is excellent. Presentation of that information is not excellent. I did learn a lot because it contains plenty of research and hundreds of footnotes. I’m now much more aware of and frightened about industry backed “institutes” and “foundations” pushing political and corporate agendas via Republican politicians, among others things. But it was not easy to read this book. I’m sure writing it in the midst of the Trump administration’s near daily attacks on the environment made it difficult to keep up, but the book suffers from a lack of synthesis into one strong voice of the many statements, data points and arguments.

[Alex Riina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative, concise, and mostly focused on the actual Republican Reversal instead of summarizing related history that's covered extensively elsewhere.

[Erse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and well written. I wanted to die reading it. Never will again.

[Addi Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and so hard to follow

[Brian Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book. Very well written and researched.

I have a daughter who studies atmospheric chemistry so many of the concepts were familiar to me through our discussions. She will be seeking her PhD in this area at either Cal Tech, Berkeley or Boulder.

On balance, I can see the reversal asserted by the author. But the good news is that our system of government has protected many important environmental laws that were passed in the 1970’s. Through these laws, we have eliminated acid rain, repaired the hole in the ozone, reduced smog, increased fuel efficiency in automobiles, as well as achieved many other important accomplishments. This is a work in progress, one that I believe requires balance. My hope is that the radicals from each side of the isle will be countered and the moderates will be the adults in the room to develop sensible policies for the future.