How to take climate change out of the culture wars

Home appliances used to be a safe, if boring, topic of conversation. But today, many Republican politicians view gas stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers and washing machines as symbols of government interference in people’s lives. Earlier this year, House Democrats passed the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act to make it harder for the Energy Department to create new energy conservation standards, although it failed in the Senate. Other appliance-related bills proposed this year included the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Liberty in Laundry Act.

The uproar over efficient devices is just one reason increasing polarization is threatening efforts to reduce carbon emissions. During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump revived longstanding complaints about energy-efficient dishwashers and showerheads and also railed against clean technologies. He falsely claimed that wind turbines break when exposed to salt water and that hydrogen-powered cars could easily explode like bombs.

A growing portion of the public appears to share some of Trump’s reservations. Four years ago, 84% of Republicans supported new solar farms; The number had fallen to 64% this spring, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Support for wind energy saw a similar decline, and the share of Americans who say they would consider buying an electric vehicle for their next purchase fell from 38% in 2023 to 29% this year.

“Just the facts” approach

Pushing climate change out of the culture wars might feel nearly impossible. But scientists have found ways to talk about the changing weather that resonate with Fox News fans, a segment of the population that many climate advocates see as a lost cause, by taking a “just the facts” approach.

“If it’s just pure observation, there’s nothing political about it,” said Keith Sietter, a lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross and executive director emeritus of the American Meteorological Society. If you tell people that hurricanes, for example, are intensifying faster because they are over record-warm ocean water, they may draw their own conclusions about how the world is changing.

Climate Central, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to be “ruthless, non-advocacy and nonpartisan,” provides localized data and graphics to help newspapers, online news sites, meteorologists, and television and radio programs understand the science behind our climate To explain increasingly strange weather, warming winters lead to longer allergy seasons. According to Peter Girard, vice president of external communications at Climate Central, the organization has found success working with right-wing media outlets like Fox affiliates because of its non-political approach.

“Audiences, regardless of their political leanings, want to know what science tells them about the weather and the climatological experiences they are having in their backyards,” Girard said.

The climate divide is widening

But even as fires, floods and heat waves get noticeably worse, Democrats and Republicans are further apart on the science of human-caused global warming than on almost any other issue. Some observers have noted that resistance to accepting climate science may not be related to the science at all, but to the potential consequences of attempts to solve the problem. A 2014 experiment found that Republicans who read a speech about the United States’ use of green technologies to stimulate the economy were twice as likely as other mainstream Republicans to read a speech about imposing strict environmental regulations and pollution taxes, compared to a speech about imposing strict environmental regulations and pollution taxes -Climate science agreed. In other words, it might be easier to simply ignore a problem if you don’t like the proposed solution.

This concept of “solution aversion” may help explain how the culture war over climate solutions began. In the early 1990s, as scientists re-alerted the public that global warming had already begun, momentum for global action increased and countries considered mandatory requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Companies with an interest in continuing to burn fossil fuels—oil companies, utilities, automobile manufacturers, railroads, and steelmakers—saw this as an impending catastrophe and mounted a counteroffensive. Conservatives began to cast doubt on climate science and argue that moving away from fossil fuels threatened the economy and the American way of life. There was a rift between Republicans and Democrats over an issue they once largely agreed on, with Republicans in Congress increasingly voting against environmental action.

Climate change “became a proxy for everything that’s wrong with government,” Aaron McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University, said in an interview with CNN last year. “‘You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do on my land. Federal government – ​​stay away from me.’” Between 1992 and 2012, the gap in support for environmental action between Democrats and Republicans widened from 5% to 39%, according to Pew polls.

The fault lines have deepened in recent years. When progressives pushed for a Green New Deal in 2019, Republicans falsely claimed, “They want to take your hamburgers.” It became a refrain, with the correct warning that Democrats would take your cars and gas stoves. “This is all part of an agenda to control you and your behavior,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said last year in a speech delivered from an oil rig in West Texas. “They’re trying to limit your choices as an American.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks with members of the media and construction site workers at the Permian Deep Rock Oil Company site during a campaign rally on September 20, 2023 in Midland, Texas

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Brandon Bell

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Listen and find common ground

There have been efforts to position climate action as appealing to conservative values ​​and associating them with patriotism, innovation or competition with China. But Kenneth Barish, a psychologist and author of the upcoming book Bridging our political divide: How liberals and conservatives can understand each other and find common groundsays that in practice, conservatives may reject this type of wording entirely because they feel like they aren’t being listened to. His depolarization formula begins with a one-on-one conversation between two people who have different opinions. The goal is to find out why the person you are talking to thinks the way they do and then work together to find solutions that address both of your concerns.

This kind of dialogue creates opportunities for creative, pragmatic workarounds—perhaps ones that manage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while limiting the government’s power over budget decisions. Matthew Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming, said it’s possible that resistance to these technologies could be partially overcome by making electric stoves more responsive to temperature changes or making electric vehicles cheaper and charging stations more readily available.

“When you make the shift from expressing an opinion to understanding the concerns underlying the opinion, it’s really a different kind of conversation,” Barish said.

The approach is reminiscent of “deep canvassing,” an outreach method developed by LGBTQ+ advocates that involves listening to people’s concerns without judgment and helping them process their conflicting feelings. Face-to-face conversations like these have been shown to change people’s minds and have lasting impacts.

In an experiment in British Columbia, volunteers trying to persuade local governments to switch to 100% renewable energy repeatedly encountered roadblocks in the rural town of Trail, home to one of the largest lead and zinc smelting plants in the world. They spoke to hundreds of residents, listened to their concerns about job losses and worked to find common ground. In the end, 40% of residents changed their mind and the Trail City Council voted in 2022 to move to 100% renewable energy by 2050.

That’s evidence that breakthroughs are possible, but it also suggests that climate advocates still have a lot of work to do. Knee-jerk reactions are quick and easy; Meaningful dialogue is slow and difficult. Barish said better conversations require acknowledging that complex issues like climate change need to be viewed from different perspectives. “If we approach someone who opposes certain interventions and try to convince them why we are right and they are wrong, then we are unlikely to get anywhere.”