Summary: Conservatives are rightly suspicious of environmentalists. By 1992, with Reagan, Thatcher and the end of the Cold War, socialism and left wing thinking appeared to be dead. Conservatism was triumphant and left of centre parties all around the world shifted heavily to the right to compensate, occupying positions that would have looked centrist or moderately right wing 10 years previously. This left true socialists and left wingers out in the cold, looking for a reason to exist. Conveniently, the emerging ozone hole crisis of the mid / late 1980s gave them an outlet for their energies: environmentalism.
