Environmental activist Benjamin Backer spoke to students and faculty about the importance of nonpartisanship in conservation efforts last Tuesday. The Roger Mudd Center for Ethics hosted the conversation as a part of their Leadership Lab series.
“The conservative versus liberal world that we live in is breaking our country in half,” Backer said. “We are breaking in half because of polarization, and I have decided over the last six or seven years of my life that I will never feed into that ever again.”
Backer is the founder and CEO of Nature is Nonpartisan, a nonprofit that tries to shape political action through nonpartisan environmental solutions. He is also the founder of the American Conservation Coalition, the nation’s largest conservative environmental organization.
In 2024, Backer published “The Conservative Environmentalist: Commonsense Solutions for a Sustainable Future.” The book is about solving the climate crisis while prioritizing American national interest.
Throughout his talk in Stackhouse Theater, Backer spoke about the problem with the current state of American politics. He identified political polarization as the reason the country fails to make environmental progress. He blamed the media for only covering political extremism and said the American public needs to care about outcomes over ideology.
Environmental studies major Travis Mann, ’26, got to hear from Backer in class as well. He said that while he agreed with Backer’s critiques of polarization, Backer failed to outline tangible solutions.
“He acts more like someone in business and not much like an environmentalist,” Mann said. “We tried learning what his tangible goals are, and he didn’t have a strong answer to that.”
According to the Center for American Progress, there are currently 123 members of Congress that have publicly denied climate change. All of them are Republicans.
Backer said in 1990, 80% of Americans self-identified as environmentalists, but today only 38% do. He said this decline is a result of partisan politics, and he said he created the ACC to make the environment bipartisan again and bring conservatives into the discussion.
“The difficulty with partisan environmental issues is that as soon as someone comes into power, you have this immediate erasure of whatever was happening before it.” said Backer. “I want [the ACC] to be a movement that actually speaks for every American, because we actually all want most of the same things when it comes to environmentalism, like we did in the 1970s, ’80s, the ’90s.”
In January, lawmakers in the House of Representatives withdrew a rule on emissions regulations proposed under the Biden administration. The rule would have required government contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and develop emission reduction targets to be approved by an international non-governmental organization known as the Science Based Target Initiative, according to the Federal Register.
“We live in a very polarized world where Marjorie Taylor Greene and AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] are running Congress. At least they’re running the narrative behind Congress, which is truly letting the inmates run the asylum,” said Backer.
He called for lawmakers to pass the 30 bipartisan environmental bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Though he did not speak on them specifically, active bills in the Senate Environment Public Works Committee include multiple amendments to the Clean Air Act, according to the committee’s website. There is also an active bill in the house to establish a New York-New Jersey Watershed Restoration Program, according to Congress’s website.
Professor Ryan McCoy joined Backer on stage to ask him questions about the ethical implications of environmental policy. McCoy is a philosopher in the environmental studies department whose research is centered around the social and ethical problems in climate change research and policy. He asked Backer what his organization does to break the partisan divide.
Backer said he focuses on the “patriotism of place.”
He said the ACC launches local initiatives to encourage people to fight for issues that affect their own communities.
“It’s important to talk to people about issues they actually care about so that we can get them involved again. When it feels like this global crisis of polar bears and ice caps, there’s so many ways to feel like, ‘Oh that’s so far away from home, it’s too big of a problem to tackle,’” Backer said, “So trying to make people feel like there’s some personal connection, because there is, and it affects each community differently.”
McCoy and Backer also discussed the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile natural gas pipeline through Virginia and West Virginia that was met with opposition from local communities.
Backer said it is hard to balance the need for energy with the individual liberties and interests of local communities. But he did not provide a solution to the issue.
Backer criticised “NIMBYism,” a “not in my backyard” mentality that many Virginia residents have expressed in wanting to keep the pipeline off their property.
“I don’t know what the best solution is to that, but we can’t just block every project from getting done because we don’t like the way it looks or the way that it affects our community. At the same time, it has to have community buy-in and support for people to feel like they’re part of the equation,” said Backer.
He emphasized the importance of balance between free markets and government regulations in order to do what is best for the planet.
“Capitalism alone will not solve environmental challenges, but neither will the government. We need smart government, we need smart entrepreneurship,” he said.
The Mudd Center will host two Washington and Lee alumni, Judge Mike Luttig, ’76, and Lewis Powell III, Esq. ’74, for the next Leadership Lab on Nov. 13 at 5:10 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater.
