I listened to an interesting interview on NPR's All Things Considered radio show with Newt Gingrich that I found quite interesting-
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15732636

Quote:

Newt Gingrich was always considerably more environmentally conscious than most of his conservative Republican colleagues in Congress. In the early 1970s, before he entered politics, Gingrich taught a college course in environmental studies. And he continues to espouse a conservative brand of conservation that he calls "mainstream environmentalism" in a new book called A Contract with the Earth, which he co-wrote with Terry Maple. The former speaker of the House says he grew up a conservationist and that there was nothing inconsistent about been green and being Republican — until later. Starting in the 1980s, Gingrich says that "the leading environmental groups on the left — particularly the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters — began to equate the environment with litigation, regulation, taxation, bureaucracy." "And you were either for their solution or you were against the environment," Gingrich tells Robert Siegel. That turned off many Republicans. Gingrich discusses how, in fact, the Republican Party has a history of conservationism — for example, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt is considered the father of modern federal conservation efforts and of the national forests. Part of the motivation for writing Contract with the Earth, Gingrich says, was to explain that it's possible to have a science-and-technology-based, entrepreneurial, free-market approach that incentivizes the development of new systems and new technologies that can lead you to a better environment. He says this approach is "faster" and has a "greater likelihood of achievement than you're going to get by focusing on regulation and litigation and bureaucracy and trial lawyers."

Because I have always considered myself to be a conservative enviromentalist I would be quick to add my amens to his comments.
On newt.org he promotes his new book and states-

Quote:

Over the last 36 years, I have watched the pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation and pro-centralized-government advocates become the definers of environmentalism. The left would have us believe that to be an environmentalist you have to believe in catastrophic threats, dramatic increases in government power and economically draconian solutions. Such a big-government bureaucracy, trial-lawyer-litigation and excessive-regulation "environmentalism" does a poor job of protecting the environment while it erodes individual freedom, destroys jobs and weakens our country. The time has come to propose a fundamentally different approach to a healthy environment and a healthy economy. The time has come for the development of a mainstream environmentalism as an alternative to big bureaucracy and big litigation environmentalism. You could call it "green conservatism," but it's really the mainstream environmental approach that has worked so well in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt epitomized this approach when he said, "The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method."

Quote:

A Contract with the Earth, which is available in both book and audio form, describes a different -- and better -- way to protect God's creation. Take this quick quiz: Do you believe a healthy environment should be able to coexist with a healthy, growing economy? Do you believe investments in science and technology will generate solutions to most of our environmental problems? Do you believe incentives should be offered to encourage corporations to clean up the environment? Do you believe corporate and private philanthropy is essential to the success of a global environmental movement? If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, you're probably in the environmental mainstream. You may even be a green conservative.

What are your thoughts?Any other green conservatives out there amongst our citrus lovers?

I do believe that we can have a strong economy and a healty environment and that science and technology of environmental protection can be a part of a growing economy. I have long been a proponent of protecting our industries from economic dis-advantage when our environmental laws cause them to be more expensive than imports that do not have the same environmental protection.

I think the bubble principal that EPA uses to let companies trade environmental credits when new technology is developed is a good way of providing incentives for environmental technology and keeping our environment clean.