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Climate change is a threat to the conservative moral worldview
Tim Dean (Ockam's Beard blog, graduate student of Moral Philosophy) wrote this absolutely excellent piece on why climate change is such a threat to conservatives that they HAVE to keep denying it, no matter how much evidence is accumulated. Naturally there are tremendous economic interests behind this denialism, but his piece really brought something new to my mind: why climate change threatens the moral worldview of conservatives. In a nutshell, because hard work must ALWAYS be rewarded, and in this case, human "hard work: is being "punished" by the natural world that reacts to the destruction of the environment.
I post excerpts here, but read the whole thing, it's priceless.
Why conservatives are climate change sceptics
Excerpts:
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.
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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.
Read the comments to his piece, too, the meme that "belief in climate change is like a religion" seems to be spreading among conservatives. Sounds familiar?
Tags: climate change, conservatives, denialim, meritocracy, morality, politics
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on -
This one is a great comment from one of the readers. It's a keeper!
rtb61 :
24 Mar 2011 10:27:12pm
I am a man of psychology and I don't need statistics (ha ha) to tell me why conservatives are climate change sceptics. Dealing with climate change leads to social consciousness and stepping away from greed, selfishness and ego driven mass consumerism.
Current day conservatives seem to have very little in common with conservatives from fifty years ago, rather than being cautious and resisting change they seemed locked into teenage like excess and a desire to exploit everything and everyone around them, and are purely emotionally driven, fearful, hateful braggarts driven to attack anyone who threatens their lifestyle of excess.
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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Incidentally, acknowledging climate change can lead to a whole bunch of new jobs in alternative energy sources and technologies.
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Permalink Reply by Chuck Goecke on -
Ya, it's not really Frogs ahead of jobs, but frogs ahead of corporate profits and shareholder wealth.
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Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on -
I haven't read the post yet, but here is some supplemental information. I've posted this before on other sites, so some of you may recognize it, but here it is again. - Dallas
Climate denial activists’ parallel to anti-relativity movement of 1920s
“This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.”
So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann in 1920.
Jeroen van Dongen of the Institute for History and Foundations of Science at Utrecht University in Holland, writing in a recent edition of the journal, ‘Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,’ describes the effectiveness of the movement that grew up to oppose Einstein’s theory. There are some striking parallels with today’s climate debate.
At a time when The Guardian just reported another poll showing a drop in concern about climate change, and a New York Times front page this week described Britons’ growing doubts about the science, its worth taking a look at that anti-science campaign, which was waged by Einstein’s critics because like today’s climate denial movement, the anti-relativity movement had some success too.
Van Dongen highlights:
“Anti-relativists… built up networks to act against Einstein’s theory in concert. This led to some success. For instance, the clamor about the theory in Germany contributed to the Nobel Committee’s delay in awarding its 1921 prize to Einstein and to the particular choice of subject for which he finally did receive it: his account of the photo-electric effect, instead of the controversial theory of relativity.”
Read the rest on the DeSmog Blog.
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Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on
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More supplemental information. PDF attached. - Dallas
The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change
Abstract
In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist cross-trained in philosophy, sociology, and psychiatry, invoked consciousness of self and the inevitability of death as the primary sources of human anxiety and repression. He proposed that the psychological basis of cooperation, competition, and emotional and mental health is a tendency to hold tightly to anxiety-buffering cultural world views or "immortality projects" that serve as the basis for self-esteem and meaning. Although he focused mainly on social and political outcomes like war, torture, and genocide, he was increasingly aware that materialism, denial of nature, and immortality-striving efforts to control, rather than sanctify, the natural world were problems whose severity was increasing. In this paper I review Becker's ideas and suggest ways in which they illuminate human response to global climate change. Because immortality projects range from belief in technology and materialism to reverence for nature or belief in a celestial god, they act both as barriers to and facilitators of sustainable practices. I propose that Becker’s cross-disciplinary "science of man," and the predictions it generates for proximate-level determinants of social behavior, add significantly to our understanding of and potential for managing the people paradox, i.e., that the very things that bring us symbolic immortality often conflict with our prospects for survival. Analysis of immortality projects as one of the proximate barriers to addressing climate change is both cautionary and hopeful, providing insights that should be included in the cross-disciplinary quest to uncover new pathways toward rational, social change.
Janis L. Dickinson, Associate Professor, Natural Resources,
Arthur A. Allen Director of Citizen Science
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Cornell University - Attachments:
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The People Paradox.pdf, 86 KB
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Permalink Reply by DaveW on -
Conservatives, Liberals or indeed the trembling masses may have an opinion on whether or not man's CO2 emissions have a dangerous effect on global climate, but their opinion is irrelevant to the science.
Climate science is... a science. Science doesn't depend on politics. Scientific conclusions depend on testing of an hypothesis. In all records, global climate hasn't changed outside of historical norms since the industrial age, in fact since the dawn of civilization. Ergo, the hypothesis has thus far not been proven. The predictive model has failed the test. That is all. To compare the political reaction to climate change politics may be valid but to introduce social factors as a determinate to whether or not the hypothesis tests in favour of one conclusion or the other is fallacious. Use of the term denier is also incorrect. One can only deny something that has happened. One cannot be accused of denying the validity of a prophecy or a prediction. I believe deniers would be better labelled as heretics under the Algorian faith model.
As an atheist I cannot give credibility to prophecies or predictions based on faith. The Algorian faith requires that I put aside the results of the data and accept that climate will change as a result of man-made CO2 emissions. I don't contest that it might... or might not, but it hasn't and that dear friends, is science.
Einstein said (words to the effect) it takes only one man to prove me wrong. Such is the nature of science. Consensus is not a conclusion. This of course is the problem with a science that is championed by art students.
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Permalink Reply by doone on -
... "championed by art students". Or, you can look at this website http://www.realclimate.org/ for real data NOT gathered by Art Students.
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