A couple generations
ago, concern for clean air and water and a desire to preserve open spaces and
living things had enjoyed wide support across the political spectrum. Starting
with the Reagan administration, however, the idea that you could be both a conservative
and an environmentalist became as rare as Birkenstocks on bankers.
Reagan got the ball rolling, labeling environmentalists as extremists. And places like
the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other “think
tanks” that do the PR work for large corporations and GOP politics have
continued to shoe horn concern for the environment into a politics of
left-right. Now we have more evidence of the success of their work.
In
a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
people were given information on the benefits of compact florescent light bulbs
over incandescent bulbs. In a shopping situation created by the researchers,
the more conservative individuals in the study were less likely to buy a costlier
florescent bulb when it was labeled with an environmental message than when it
was unlabeled. In other words, the environmental label motivated the
conservative shoppers to not
purchase the more environmentally friendly product.
So
what is going on here? What are the motivations of people wanting to avoid
buying a more environmentally friendly product? Although in some ways I might
be considered to be politically conservative, I don’t believe that would be a
term to describe my entire political outlook. And I cannot claim to have the
ability to climb inside the minds of these conservative shoppers. My guess—and
that is all it really is, a guess—is that the rhetoric of Reagan, conservative
“think tanks,” Fox News, and talk radio has so poisoned the idea of
environmentalism for people who identify themselves as conservative that many
of these folks will avoid anything to do with eco-friendly anything, even if it is at a cost to
them.
For
these conservatives environmentalism is anathema. It is comparable to the way
people in this country felt about communism or the way segregationists thought
about black people. It goes way beyond anything that they have experienced or
what they may be able to reason and has gone into the deep-seated realm of prejudice. So as
they are weighing the costs and benefits of buying a new light bulb and they
see an environmental sticker on the product, that strong feeling in the gut
goes off that says environmentalism = bad.
So
they buy the incandescent light bulb.
Of
course the implications go beyond what people screw into their light sockets.
When you have enough folks to have these sorts of prejudices, as long as you
have organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute carrying on the
legacy of Ronald Reagan, it means that any sort of progress on energy policy or
fighting climate change is a difficult uphill battle.
