04 !""#$%&'(%)'*+,-$.(-$%&' Hugh Verrier The Gadfly A’14 For the third consecutive year, student-run recycling has fettered development while also promoting traditional values. featured prominently at Croquet—even making it into the of- I called his position untenable because it is, as far as I can tell, ficial “branding,” with wristbands proudly proclaiming that based on the premise that it is possible to preserve our values Croquet has “gone green.” I am proud of our environmental while also obliterating the land that forms our individual and engagement, which to me is an unequivocal indication of the cultural identity. pride we Johnnies take in our community. Such a premise is misguided. Oakeshott On the verge (some would say brink) of recognized that human society is formed Environmentalism is an by the particulars. You cannot separate our graduation, I have had the opportunity to expression of that age- values from our history, our culture, our reflect on the role of environmental activold conservative fear: ism in our community over the past four traditions, our familial and religious affiliyears. These thoughts snowballed into the ations, or our land. I am Canadian, and the the fear of losing our following general observations. I felt it rivers and forests of rural Quebec have inidentity. would be appropriate to share them here, formed my own growth and identity. We all in part because they touch on the question have such a place, or places; a land that we of what it means to be a “Johnnie”—a conhave become a part of, and that has become nection I will address later. a part of us. As creatures with material needs, we are inevitaFirst, it strikes me that concern for the environment is fun- bly tied to the earth that sustains us. Environmentalism is an damentally conservative. By “conservative,” I do not refer to expression of that age-old conservative fear: the fear of losing the neo-conservative—that mixed ideological breed who la- our identity. ments the loss of traditional values while simultaneously adImagine if The New Program shut down tomorrow. In a vocating the unrestrained development of our lands and wa- sense, every alumnus would be orphaned. Some part of their ters. This position, admittedly par for the course in modern identity would lose its roots. Whether they appreciated their conservative thought, strikes me as untenable. experience here or not, this education is formative, and one Instead, I am referring to the traditional conservative—ex- cannot renounce the effects of such formation. They are part emplified by such thinkers Edmund Burke in the eighteenth of you for life. Innocence, once lost, can never be regained. century, and Russell Kirk and Michael Oakeshott in the twenSo it goes with land, water, and air. We cannot renounce the tieth. The last of these summarized his political disposition in effect a particular place has on our identity or values. But we a wonderful paragraph: “ To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the un known, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one’s own fortune, to live at the level of one’s own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one’s circumstances. Here Oakeshott recognizes that, while necessary, progress should be incremental. This conclusion is born from the observation that change always causes loss, but only sometimes brings gain. In this sense environmentalists are preeminently conservative—they are acutely aware that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. How imprudent, then, to develop an entire forest at once, or to jettison industrial waste into our lakes! To both Oakeshott and the environmentalist, such grand, sweeping initiatives are often ‘Sicilian Expeditions’—hubristic over-reaches with unintended terrible consequences. Much better to proceed with caution—to prefer “familiar relationships and loyalties” to “the allure of more profitable attachments”—to be, in a word, conservative. 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