by Cindy Salo
Sound Science LLC
This piece appeared previously on Sagebrush and Spuds
Ecologists have accused “climate deniers,” who do not believe that the world’s climate is changing, of “not thinking” and have described them as “angry.” Climate deniers cause heart burn in ecologists who are documenting changes in our climate and developing strategies for dealing with the impacts of warmer and more variable weather.
Understanding the apparent intransigence of climate deniers, how they think and why they respond the way they do, can help ecologists present their message more effectively and reduce anger and heart burn. When both sides communicate clearly and calmly we can meet in the middle to solve the serious challenges facing us.
Climate denying is often linked with opposition to progressive legislation, such as the recent health care reform act, and is seen more frequently in political conservatives than in political progressives. Conservatives are conservative because they prefer the way they are, good or bad, to unknowable change. Conservatives are often slower to change than are progressives, who conservatives see as indecisive creatures without clear value systems: after all, they change their minds whenever better data are available! But even more frightening to climate deniers and conservatives is the prospect that the government might tell them what to do.
Accepting climate change and working to address its impacts is often linked with support of progressive politics. Progressives are progressives because they can envision a better world and want to move toward it. This means that they modify their approach as they learn more, which compounds the poor conservatives’ fears: they were just getting comfortable with the first approach and now everything has changed again!
Both progressives and conservatives change, they just make decisions differently. For example, compare the Republican Party’s current role as the champion of Medicare with Ronald Regan’s 1961 speech that described Medicare as the first step down the slippery slope to Socialism. Conservatives simply needed more concrete evidence than those flighty progressives, who rushed headlong into a federal program of health care for seniors before they knew it would work. Now that Medicare is wildly successful conservatives support it.
Conservatism stems from discomfort with ambiguity, apprehension about change, and fear of government intervention. The conflict between these values and progressives’ acceptance of ambiguity, enthusiasm for change they believe is for the better, and vision of a compassionate government caring for its citizens are the basis of conflict over climate, health care, and other issues.
Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, described the moral roots of progressives and conservatives in a talk at the 2008 TED Conference. He started by describing the tremendous difference in openness to new experiences between progressives and liberals; what I call comfort with ambiguity. Progressive embrace new experiences and conservatives avoid them.
Haidt and a coworker then identified five areas where moral decisions are made:
• Caring for others
• Fairness
• Respect for authority
• Group loyalty
• Personal purity
They polled 23,000 people in the US to describe the moral foundations of progressives and conservatives (You can explore your own morals at http://www.YourMorals.org).
I’ve reproduced Jonathan Haidt’s graph of the differences (below). Progressives scored high in Caring for others and Fairness, but low in the other three areas. Conservatives scored high in all five areas. Haidt described the patterns as “Two channel” and “Five channel” approaches to morality.
Everyone agrees that Caring for others and Fairness are important bases for moral decisions, but only Conservatives also value Respect for authority, Group loyalty, and Personal purity. Haidt states that both approaches to making moral decisions are important and that they balance each other.
Progressives want to try new approaches to solving society’s problems and “want change, even at the cost of chaos.” Conservatives “want order, even at cost to those at the bottom.” Progressive speak for those at the bottom of society and conservatives speak for institutions and traditions. Both progressives and conservatives contribute to improving our society through their different, but complimentary, views on change and stability.
When someone is uncomfortable with ambiguity they look for solid, unambiguous answers that are part of a cohesive framework that will answer a range of questions. They would rather hear, “There’s no such thing as climate change, don’t believe any of it” than a mealy-mouthed mish mash of, “Well, some things we’re very sure of, other things we’re sort of sure about, and then there’s a bunch of stuff we’re still scratching our heads over.” Unambiguous, far ranging answers provide comfort and reduce the amount of thought required to understand complex issues. Thinking is hard work: when is writing the Discussion section of a manuscript easy?
Ecologists can help ease fears over climate change by clearly stating what we know, painting vivid scenarios of expected future conditions, and listing concrete actions that we can take now to deal with climate change and its consequences. Climate change will still be frightening because there WILL be tremendous change and the government may need to place limits on both industry and citizens. But neither anger at the idea of climate change nor frustration at refusals to recognize the process will alter the course of climate change.
Reducing the gap between confronting environmental issues and effective solutions is an impotant social objective. In a democracy how one bridges the gap between citizens of the “caring, fair” crowd and those who emphsize respect for authority, and group loyalty, personal purity types is an obvious obstacle.
Some illustrations of successful bridging of the gaps between individual persons of such different persuasions, assuming that they exist so neatly differentiated, would be the heart of the matter. Are there convincing illustrations?
It may be enough to identify convincing illustrations of attempts to bridge the gap and effective techniques for doing so.
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George,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It’s hard to imagine that very many people could change the way they respond to ambiguity or make decisions. But I think it’s up to the ones who can see that there is more than one way to look at things (that would be those folks who embrace new experiences, who can imagine what would happen if…, etc., some of whom turn out to be ecologists) to try to meet others in the middle. We need to remember that not everyone can see what we see and to try to reassure them with clear, vivid language and concrete detail.
Here in Idaho we have examples of groups of people with very different viewpoints agreeing because they were afraid of the consequences of not reaching an agreement.
1. When it looked as though slickspot peppergrass might be listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2003, the state of Idaho went to work on a Candidate Conservation Agreement. Fear drove all sides to hammer out the CCA in just six months. However, despite the promising start with the CCA, the species was listed as threatened in October, 2009.
2. The Owyhee Initiative was much more complex and took much longer (nearly a decade). Ranchers, conservationists, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, and Owyhee County agreed to protect half a million acres of wilderness and over 300 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers, to better regulate off-road vehicles, to recognize ranching as a traditional way of life in the area, and to work to increase understanding of conservation in the Owyhee Uplands. More at: http:// http://www.owyheeinitiative.org