http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0717/shocker-conservatives-dislike-conservation/
A pair of University of California, Los Angeles professors tracking subtle socioeconomic responses to detailed consumer information about power consumption have effectively pinpointed something oft' joked of by so-called "liberals" but never genuinely proven until now: conservatives, by and large, have no taste for conservation.

By studying average household electricity consumption after what they called a "nudge" (more specifically, giving the residents a detailed chart of that home's drain on the electric grid), UCLA professors Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn pinpointed distinctly different response patterns along political fault lines. Using voter registration information and data about charitable contributions, they picked out homes that bought renewable energy, voted for Democrats or contributed to environmental causes, and compared consumption to addresses given by registered Republicans.

People who fell under the prescribed labels of liberal and conservative, as it turned out, seemed to show behaviors quite the opposite. Liberal-leaning households tended to reduce power consumption 3-6 percent after seeing a detailed usage outlay, but on average so-called "conservatives" used 1 percent more.

Conservatives are motivated to get their disproportionate share of the commons, not preserve it.
_________________________
It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals - Anaxagoras