Farmers and ranchers are the original environmentalists, along with lumber companies, professional fishermen and others who recognize that they must preserve and protect the land for it to keep providing them with a living.
It is assinine to think that environmental radicals like Greenpeace have a leg to stand on, when they denigrate the very people in whose self interest it is to preserve and protect the land. Farmers and ranchers quickly realize that the land is a renewable resource, and will fail them, if they don't take care of it. Similarly, loggers must replace the trees they harvest for lumber, or there won't be any more lumber.
A great think tank in Bozeman, Montana called PERC has the slogan For Free Market Environmentalism. It promotes projects by private enterprise that see the profit incentive in doing things right. It rigorously stands up against the hammer of government setting inflexible and inviolate environmental regulations that make the problem worse instead of better.
A great example is the Yellowstone Forest Fires of 1988. They were caused primarily by environmental regulations that didn't allow logging in national forests, so the trees were too close together and the forest floor clogged with dead timber. When lightening set off a fire, there was tremendous fuel for an inferno that so sterilized the land that in some places trees never have grown back.
In private forests adjoining Yellowstone, which are harvested regularly for timber, the fire was not nearly so hot and in just a few years, trees had grown back tall enough to hide men. The profit incentive prevented the disaster environmental regulations caused on federal land.
That's just one small example of free market environmentalism. Ultimately, that's what will save the planet: making it profitable for free enterprise to do the right thing.
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