Vernon Ehlers: “He was a great Republican, and also started in some ways the political meaning of the term conservationist. I always…”

“He was a great Republican, and also started in some ways the political meaning of the term conservationist. I always love to point out to my friends that the root word for conservation is the same as the root word for conservative and that any true conservative should be an environmentalist, because it is important for all of us to conserve what we have for the advantage of future generations. During my time in the political arena and working on environmental issues, I have learned some lessons which I just want to share with my colleagues here. First of all, the environment is extremely important. I can perhaps draw an analogy to something that we discuss here an awful lot: The balanced budget. We approach this, as Republicans, from the standpoint that we want to protect this economy, this Nation for our children and grandchildren. It is simply not right for us to continue to live in debt and expect our children and grandchildren to pay that debt. We want to leave them a promising future and not a huge debt. Well, that is also true of the environment. That is one of the reasons I am a confirmed environmentalist. It is absolutely wrong for us to leave a polluted country to our children and grandchildren and to other future generations. We have to give them the same resource opportunities that we inherited from our ancestors. We have to give them the same clean environment that we have inherited from those who came before us.”