the Conservative View:
The environment is the home in which we all live. It will provide for us and give us resources with which to improve our lives and the lives and living conditions of others. We must make wise use of the resources while protecting what we have.
the Liberal View:
The environment is a wonderful tool with which to push the Marxist agenda of controlling all human activity. Just as we learned to use the race card to squelch any view we don't agree with, we can use the environment to stop any and all attempts by those who want to wander too far from controlled urban containment.
Once we control air, land and water we can control everything including food and mobility.
As to Gulf drilling, that oil will naturally seap from the ocean floor even if we do nothing (no consumption, no pumping). The Left doesn’t even want us to remove it to place it someplace where it might do less harm.
And they don’t push for embargos against the other nations pumping Gulf region oil (rigs we have no oversight on which are just as likely to cause environmental damage).
So it isn’t about people getting oil out of the ground vs. leaving it there. It is about US/U.S. getting and using that oil.
We are told that we consume too great a share of the world’s resources, yet we are prohibited by liberal law from using our own national resources and those off of our coasts.
In short socialists lie and liberalism is just “progressive encroachment socialism”.
I can sum up some peoples’ perspective of the conservative stance as “conservatives are mean” (want to keep what’s theirs, don’t want to be forced to share, don’t want to be forced to like everyone).
“Mean” maybe but so are liberals, just watch when someone in a political demographic chooses the wrong party. You will hear every racist and misogynist term used to browbeat the “turncoat”/”racetraitor”. Identity politics only matters when it serves “THE” (Communist) Party.
Because... socialists lie. Always.