Why is it the odds of someone being sceptical about climate change shoot up if you find out they’re on the conservative side of the political spectrum? Why are more conservatives known (or deeply suspected to be) climate change sceptics – Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Nick Minchin, Alan Jones, to name but a few?
What could conservative political attitudes – a belief in stability over change; in markets over centrally planned economies; in traditional values over social progressivism – have to do with attitudes about whether anthropogenic emissions are warming the world?
And why is it many conservatives appear to be immune to the overwhelming scientific evidence and rational argument that suggests anthropogenic climate change is real?
The simple fact is it’s because, to conservatives, climate change is not about science or economics. To conservatives, climate change is a moral issue.
And the moral worldview adopted by many conservatives predisposes them to reject the very notion of anthropogenic climate change well before any evidence or reason has a chance to interject.
Why a moral issue? Because politics is, for many, an inherently moral subject: it has to do with the duties and obligations of those in power over the people. And when it comes to morality, and how we form our moral attitudes, it’s (sadly) not reason that is the prime mover, but psychology, emotion and ultimately our implicit worldview.
Lying just beneath the surface of all our well thought-through political attitudes, just deep enough to evade easy observation, is our implicit worldview. This is the way we make sense of the world around us, and inject it with meaning and value. It operates automatically, parsing a scene as we observe it, giving it its salience and inspiring an immediate emotional response.
So, by the time you’ve even looked at a scene, or considered an issue, it has already been imbued with your values. You’ve already reacted positively or negatively before you even have a chance to reflect on it rationally.
One of the characteristic traits of conservatism is to see the world at large as a dangerous place, filled with threats natural and man-made. This is why conservatives tend to be tough on crime, more concerned about the threat of illegal immigration and more ‘hawkish’ when it comes to defence and foreign policy.
Another characteristic is to see the world as a meritocracy: people generally get what they deserve, be it positive or negative. This means if you work hard, you deserve to be rewarded (and the government doesn’t have a right to rob you of the fruit of your hard work and give it to the lazy and undeserving). Yet if you flout the law, or if you break social conventions, you deserve whatever punishment you get (being ‘soft’ on crime or ‘rehabilitating’ criminals just perverts the natural order and encourages more deviant behaviour).
Of course, these attitudes vary tremendously from one individual – and one conservative – to the next, and many are conditionally triggered by only some circumstances. Someone might feel their nation is a safe place, thus be more a ‘dove’ in domestic politics, and might feel the rest of the world is hostile, thus be a ‘hawk’ in foreign policy.
What’s all this got to do with climate change? Characteristic of the conservative worldview is a general tendency to see nature as hostile, as being a force at odds with humanity, something to be conquered and exploited for our benefit. Leave nature alone, and it won’t show us any mercy. It’s survival of the fittest, you know.
Add to this the implicit idea the world is a meritocracy, and you can see how a conservative might lean away from environmentalism which, to them, just seeks to prevent hard-working individuals from exploiting nature for humanity’s benefit, and seeks to pervert the natural order by preventing enterprise in order to protect a few trees. Jobs over frogs, and all that.
Anthropogenic climate change represents a fundamental threat to this conservative moral worldview. First of all, it challenges the notion that hard work is rewarded. Instead, it suggests our hard work and our striving for better living conditions for humanity has resulted in harming ourselves and our environment.
As a consequence, action against climate change requires that we value the environment over humanity, that we kowtow to a hostile and uncaring nature, and that we effectively cease rewarding enterprise.
Instead, we embrace the very anti-meritocratic policies that the political Left love and conservatives hate: common good over individual enterprise; equality over freedom; softness over strength. Taxing polluters (the hard working industries that provide us with the energy that makes our lifestyle possible) and redistributing that to individuals who haven’t earned it is gut wrenchingly unfair to the conservative worldview.
To conservatives, climate change represents a surrender to progressivism, it undermines the conservative belief in being rewarded for hard work, and it places nature ahead of humanity. Frogs ahead of jobs.
It’s more than a challenge to conservative beliefs, it’s a challenge to the very core of the conservative moral worldview of just deserts in a dog-eat-dog world.
For those on the Left, on the other hand, you can see why climate change makes so much intuitive sense. We’ve inflicted wicked harm on our benefactor, nature, because of our polluting technologies driven by greed. We now have to turn around and embrace sustainability, which means not working as hard or producing a much as we might, and we need to pull together to make it happen.
However, it’s not that progressives are naturally more rational or accepting of science; both sides of the political spectrum can be selective when it comes to what facts they’ll embrace. The Right might typically be sceptical about climate science, but the Left is often sceptical about genetic manipulation in agriculture and nuclear power despite attempts by scientists to demonstrate their fears are often overstated.
Both technologies are particularly interesting because both offer solutions to different aspects of climate change: growing more food with less land and chemicals; and generating electricity without resorting to dirty fossil fuels.
So how do we break the deadlock of our implicit – and often irrational – worldviews on our political attitudes? The first step is to be aware of them. When considering a political issue, we can pause and reflect on whether our feelings about them are inspired by evidence and reason or by a strong emotional inclination. Think about how we’re approaching the issue, and how we’re injecting it with value.
When arguing with someone at the opposite end of the spectrum, we can help them become aware of the deeper motives that might be flavouring their beliefs. Agree that we hold different implicit values and see the world in a different way. Have them think about what they might believe if they saw the world the way we do; think ourselves about how the world looks to them.
And above all, we should agree to let the facts speak for themselves. We’re entitled to hold our own values, and can debate them with as much spirit as we can muster. But we’re not entitled to our own facts.
Scientists might hold their own political views, but the very nature of peer review and the scientific method rids the results of most value-laden bias, leaving the most reliable and impartial account of the world humanity can muster.
And the science is clear: anthropogenic climate change is real. We’d all do well to accept that fact, conservatives included. Denying it because they find it morally unpalatable doesn’t make climate change go away. It only makes dealing with it even harder, and inflicts unnecessary cost and harm on future generations who will be forced to deal with it.
The policies dealing with climate change may be onerous to some, but they’re necessary. And, ultimately, we’re not combating climate change to elevate nature above human welfare. We’re preserving the environment in which we flourish and preventing it from shifting to a state that causes us harm.
Ultimately, combating climate change is rational, morally justifiable and in our humanity’s best interests – and that’s true whether it feels that way or not.
Tim Dean is a science journalist and editor of Australian Life Scientist magazine.
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