WSJ.com : Careful What You Wish For: California's Tougher Renewable-Energy Targets A Mixed Blessing for Greens

Transmission is the biggest obstacle to boosting renewable energy in California and other states, as recent utility-sector reports show. The permitting process for new transmission lines is time-consuming, and cumbersome. The environmental impact statement for a single, 150-mile transmission project in southern California, for instance, runs to 11,000 pages.

An Interview With David Frum About His New Book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again

[Q:] On environmental issues, the GOP seems to be caught in sort of a Catch-22. Republicans are for clean air, clean water, etc, but most of them don't buy into global warming, nor can they ever hope to satisfy the environmentalist groups, many of which are run by the worst sort of extremists. So practically, how does the GOP improve its image on the environment beyond the sort of near useless calls for solar, wind, and Switchgrass that are never going to solve our problems?

[A:] You don't have to please the environmental groups. In fact, it's a mistake to try. One of the big surprises to me when I was researching the book was that I assumed, like a lot of us have assumed, that the environmental issue is strongest among the best educated, most affluent voters. I was rather startled to find that, in fact, it was most intensely felt among some of the least affluent voters. It was especially important, often to younger voters.

To these voters, the environment means something different than it does to the Sierra Club. It's very much a quality of life (issue). When low income voters talk about the environment, they don't mean "THE environment," they mean "MY environment." The environment of the cities, six lane highways through new suburban developments, garbage dumps and toxins, things that have a very direct impact. It is precisely because the Republican Party does not buy into a lot of the apocalyptic fantasies of the environmental movement that it has the ability to reach these people in a common sense, non-fanatical way.

The way you position the party is to say, Al Gore has been looking for ways to take away your car since 1972. Global warming is just the latest justification for doing something he wanted to do anyway. We are the party of a more common sense approach. We want to do what's necessary, but only what's necessary. For us, this is not a substitution for religion.

I think it is often true that in politics, the party that ends up owning an issue is often the party that is less determined about the issue. For example, it was a Democratic president who ended up signing welfare reform because he could say to the voters that he was doing it as a pragmatic matter, not as an ideological issue. In the same way, we can be the pragmatists on the environment and leave the job of being the ideologues to the Democrats.