By Charles F. Bass, Concord Monitor.

As a former member of the New Hampshire House and Senate, I have watched with dismay efforts undertaken by Republican legislators to roll back the laws that were passed to encourage energy diversity and native energy production in our state. I am equally saddened by efforts to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. These efforts are neither good policy nor consistent with traditional Republican values.

I would remind my fellow Republicans that it was under our leadership that the White Mountain National Forest was established. John H. Sununu was governor when the Land Conservation Investment Program was established. Governor Judd Gregg doubled the size of the LCIP program, and authored the Rivers Protection and Shoreline Protection acts. And at the federal level over the last 100 years, almost all major environmental initiatives, including the creation of the EPA, occurred under Republican presidents.

Indeed the very words “conservation” and “conservative” share the same derivation. Good environmental and energy policy should be a core conservative value.