I wish President Bush well, but environmentally, his administration remains astonishingly shortsighted. They inexplicably ignore an increasingly important political fact: as individuals' wealth and education increase, so does their sensitivity to environmental quality.

Economist Don Coursey of the University of Chicago recently demonstrated that the demand for environmental quality resembles that for BMWs and foreign travel. For every one percent increase in income, Coursey's research shows, the demand for environmental quality increases 2.5 percent.

The Bush Administration could build upon twenty-five plus years of intellectual and practical progress, much originating in Montana, in environmental science and economics. However, Bush's team has ignored successful reforms that encourage harmony among ecology, sound economics, and responsible liberty.

Republicans have attacked Clinton's set aside of 40 million acres of National Forest as roadless. Yet there is good reason for roadless designations. After a hundred years of exploitation, these areas have low economic value. Without explicit or implicit subsidies, aside from sensitive oil and gas development, resource extraction on these lands is no longer feasible. Fiscal conservatives everywhere, and the vast majority of Westerners, applaud the roadless designations, even while they abhor both Clinton and his process.

Given her experience, the appointment of Gale Norton to run the Department of Interior holds promise, and the nomination of Lynn Scarlett (President of the libertarian Reason Foundation) for the Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy, is most encouraging. Both women have the experience and intellectual understanding to enact innovative ways to better the environment through sound science, property rights, markets, and an

Having lived next door to the People's Republic of Boulder, Ms. Norton understands the enviros' inherent mistrust of capitalism. And while she was at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, she saw the political damage done by conservatives who confuse and confound pro-business subsidies with pro-market process positions.

The battle over the environment, (e.g., oil drilling in ANWR, road building in national forests, and concern for endangered species) offers the GOP an opportunity to demonstrate genuine commitment to environmental issues. They can do this by painting a New Shade of Green-implementing superior social and institutional arrangements for managing and protecting our environment. These reforms are founded on three principles:

1. Prices that reflect real costs, including environmental costs,

2. Institutions that create incentives to act responsibly in view of these costs, and

3. Recognition that while markets coordinate wonderfully, they ignore much that is intangible and often destroy that which has no price and no owner.

There are compelling, well-respected arguments against the Green tradition of greater bureaucratic powers, increased federal control, and heightened paranoia over environmental issues. The Bush administration, however, has yet to make them.

It is increasingly evident that their natural constituency, the well-off and well-educated voters, is disenchanted with Republicans' environmental policies. David Brooks describes this group in his book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. "We're the ones who go out on fall weekends in parkas that were built to withstand -40 degree temperatures," he writes. The membership of Trout Unlimited reinforces this message, for the average TU member has an income of $123,000, and 30 percent of their members have master's, J.D., M.D., or Ph.D. degrees.

Those in positions to influence Republican leaders should heed the concerns coming from Green allies. Resources for the Future (RFF), a Washington, DC environmental think-tank, is staffed and led by some of America's most respected and market-oriented natural resource economists. Its president, Paul Portney, criticized the Administration in last week's Wall Street Journal: "We've got real grown-ups at the White House who work on these issues. I just don't understand the apparent lack of sensitivity…."

How can they be so tone deaf and maladroit as to alienate conservative, centrist, and libertarian conservationists? These are precisely the folks who could and should be mobilized in support of environmental policy reform consistent with sound science, market incentives, innovation, local leadership, and entrepreneurship, key Republican principles.

The Bush Administration should understand that neglecting positive environmental reform and caving in to special interests which promote extractive industries through subsidies will cost the GOP dearly. By giving their environmental portfolio to novices, gratuitous antagonists, and provincial environmental reactionaries, Bush threatens his party's future while missing grand opportunities for policy reform.