Standing before a packed house Thursday night, Teddy Roosevelt IV, the great-grandson of the first President Roosevelt, delivered to state lawmakers and environmental leaders a tough-to-hear assessment of their efforts on many issues.

Roosevelt, a managing director for Lehman Brothers in New York, is a throwback to a different time in American politics. He’s a Republican, part of the business elite, a pro-life, evolutionist and environmentalist. He’s reminiscent of the liberal Republican tradition that has largely disappeared from the electoral landscape, with a few notable exceptions right here in Maine.

Charming and dynamic, Roosevelt is a former Navy SEAL as comfortable talking with ranchers and farmers as he is addressing a roomful of politicians.

His advice to environmental activists: Drop the arrogance, don’t assume you have all the answers and listen to the people most directly affected by your ideas. Roosevelt described the great political divide of the country not in terms of red and blue states, but as rural versus urban and suburban. And he talked about the stereotypes that dominated on both sides and stand in the way of coalition-building.

In rural America, environmentalists often come across as Eastern elites, divorced from reality and afflicted with an air of arrogance and condescension, Roosevelt said. They stroll into a community thinking they have all the answers, leaving the locals with a feeling they have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

We see undercurrents of what he’s talking about in the fight about the Androscoggin River, which pitted Lewiston and Auburn’s state delegation against those upriver, who are more dependent on the mills for their livelihood. The two sides were divided by more than just the facts of the pollution issue, but also by culture and mutual distrust. It’s no wonder that many of the workers at the mills in Jay and Rumford were concerned about their jobs and felt they had much more to lose in negotiations than they could possibly gain.

Despite what we would think are the obvious economic and social advantages of reducing pollution in the Androscoggin, for people concerned about losing their jobs – their way of life – the question is not nearly as clear-cut.

But what Roosevelt didn’t mention is that outreach efforts and good-faith attempts to bridge the divide between rural and urban on the part of environmentalists are often rebuffed, stymied by attitudes that deem those from away or with different ideas as the enemy.

Roosevelt’s advice also underscores why programs such as the Land for Maine’s Future receive so much support. LMF’s efforts are locally directed and involve property owners and the communities affected in conservation efforts at every stage. If they’re not interested, nothing happens.

In many discussions, environmental interests are pitted against business interests. In most cases, Roosevelt said, it’s a shortsighted, needless conflict. There is considerable economic opportunity for businesses that embrace a green world view.

You can’t quibble with Roosevelt’s environmentalism or pedigree. Nonetheless, he gave environmentalists plenty to chew over. He said that new nuclear power plants might be viable again, that the advantages of a properly considered liquefied natural gas terminal on Maine’s coast might be worthwhile and that overly restrictive forestry policies that push timber industries into less-developed countries do more harm than good.

But accepting that half a loaf is better than no loaf at all may be the greatest challenge delivered by Roosevelt to the Mainers who turned out to hear him speak.