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What JD Vance’s Conservative Environmentalism Looks Like
Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, speaks in stark contrast to the traditional Republican candidate on the campaign trail.
He recently did so, with recent comments on the topic of environmentalism.
Vance said during a campaign appearance in Detroit, during the first week of October, that he is "worried about the environment."
Vance then attacked the faulty premises upon which Democrats frame this issue.
He brilliantly connected the issue of protecting the environment with MAGA economic populism, beginning with global warming.
If your number one issue is carbon emissions, look at two countries which have emitted the most carbon in the last 20 to 30 years.
It's China, and it's India.
"Make more stuff in the United States of America. That's how you make sure we have clean air and clean water," Vance said.
And the Republican candidate for vice-president in 2024 is right.
Globalist mega corporations are happy to offshore their operations to countries without adequate safety regulations; it's where they can maximize profits by abusing the environment and paying slave wages to labor.
Such policies are what drive increased degradation to the environment on a global scale.
Curious, that subject is rarely, if ever, talked about by Democrats.
It's a policy driving higher carbon emissions in developing countries, which equality-obsessed Democrats should care about.
Hostile foreign powers like China and Russia heavily subsidize their industries, which, of course, is far from green, and collude to make us dependent on their energy monopolies.
The answers from Republicans are to increase domestic energy production and levy massive tariffs on energy from countries like China and Russia.
Punishing countries not upholding our environmental regulatory standards in energy production with pollution tariffs is an obvious way to protect the environment while giving a boost to domestic manufacturing at the same time.
It is in this area in which we need to apply the Trump trade agenda.
Trump’s tariffs got at the heart of the issue: countries like China engage in unfair trade practices and must pay for it. That was obviously correct and has fundamentally changed political orthodoxy to the point where even Joe Biden kept them in place.
We must get even more thoughtful about this and hit them precisely where they are cheating us: the environment.
By placing a tariff on their pollution, we hit them where it hurts while forcing Democrats to deal with policies that expose their green hypocrisy.
Democrats are happy to gloss over these uncomfortable truths and solutions to them because they get in the way of their narrative.
Their one-size-fits-all answer to the problem of global warming is to give more power to mega corporations through rent-seeking "buy green" mandates and the regulation of industry.
Mega-corporations will be able to pay the fines and fees, passing them off to the consumer, for the Democrats’ global warming regime.
Their smaller competitors will be crushed and put out of business, like farmers in the Netherlands, in a power consolidation unlike anything seen in history.
"We've got to do a better job at real environmental protection, not the fake Kamala Harris environmental protection, which apparently the only thing it means is ship all of our jobs to China," Vance said.
This, ironically, also makes pollution worse here in the U.S. when it inevitably blows onto the West Coast.
Sen. Vance also talked about the third rail of the food supply and the alarming spike of childhood and chronic diseases occurring over the previous generation.
"But here's what I really worry about. I worry about our food supply. Like, what has gone wrong with our food supply that we have got an obesity epidemic in this country unlike we've ever seen in the history of the world?
"That really worries me," he said.
The obesity epidemic is supposedly being solved by pharmaceutical drugs, some of which cause people to waste away with a pill-induced anorexia of sorts.
It's an unsustainable way to attain weight loss and could have terrible unforeseen consequences. But for those who are without the resources or choosing not to drug themselves to suppress their natural appetite, they find themselves bombarded with unhealthy foods that the government often subsidizes.
Genetically modified and pumped full of antibiotics, the unhealthiest food is the cheapest and most plentiful, thanks to government policy.
Sugar is the most obvious example.
We've known for decades that sugar is a main driver of obesity, yet because of massive government subsidies, it's cheap to put in basically everything.
Food without this garbage is not subsidized in such a way, thus remaining a luxury for the wealthy, exacerbating class differences.
One of the most pressing health issues rarely talked about on a national level is microplastics. This is often because of who talks about it — grassroots conservatives. For the elite media, this signals that an idea is below them, worthy of scorn.
Yet, it remains true that Americans are ingesting these toxins at alarming rates, with new studies showing microplastics in human testicles, brains, and the placenta of babies.
Mr. Vance’s comments show he understands the bigger picture that preserving Western Civilization is what is key to protecting the environment.
Look at the environmental quality of Western life against the environmental quality of the third world.
In the West, the tradition of private property rights and societal taboo for others to desecrate what belongs to others sustains a polite, decent, and aesthetically pleasing society.
This reality is lost on the left, who support contradictory policies which would spell doom for the environment if realized.
Democrats care only about using the environment as a cudgel to increase their power and push toward their one-world agenda of total control.
They'll happily sacrifice human prosperity and human happiness to achieve these goals while empowering greedy corporations and then sell it to the unsuspecting masses as helping Mother Earth.
What America needs is a government that looks out for both people’s health and economic well-being, protecting the natural beauty of their surroundings.
This is what MAGA Republicanism, as championed by Donald Trump’s visionary vice-presidential choice, offers.
Gavin Wax is a New York-based conservative political activist, commentator, columnist, operative, and strategist. He also serves as the 76th President of the New York Young Republican Club and as an Ambassador for both Turning Point USA & Live Action. You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax. Read Gavin Wax's Reports — More Here.