Political tribalism and the climate crisis
We may be splintered by politics, but there is hope
Climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
After all, an overwhelming majority of Americans agree it exists. A September Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 79 percent of Americans agreed that climate change is real and that human activity is causing it. Seventy-six percent believed that climate change is either a “crisis” or a “major problem.”
While there was some “tribal” fluctuations, the main sentiment transcended political affiliation. Ninety percent of Democrats, 82 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans realize that global warming is a human problem.
Yet, the same month that survey was released, Harvard University professor Robert Stavins publicly lamented that we are far too fractured on this topic.
“Climate change has become highly politicized as an issue … the biggest barrier [to change] is simply the politics,” he told the Harvard Political Review.
He’s right. Despite the aforementioned poll numbers, environmentalists remain in a daily fight to get Americans to prioritize preventing the worst effects of global warming. While we could point to many factors for this, the fact that political tribalism has reached an inflection point in our society must be at the top of the list.
For the uninitiated, The New Yorker offered up this concise definition of the phenomenon:
American politics today requires a word as primal as ‘tribe’ to get at the blind allegiances and huge passions of partisan affiliation. Tribes demand loyalty, and in return they confer the security of belonging. They’re badges of identity, not of thought. In a way, they make thinking unnecessary, because they do it for you, and may punish you if you try to do it for yourself.
It shouldn’t be surprising that this problem is top-of-mind for bigwigs of all stripes — from former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
But tribalism reached another level last month when Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper explained that his film adaptation of the seemingly apolitical musical Cats was meant to be “a reflection on today’s political scene. Both in the UK and the US the tribalism of cultural discourse and politics is making it harder and harder for acts of kindness across the divide.”
When a musical best remembered for garish costumes and the haunting ballad “Memory” is being rejiggered for the silver screen to address this issue, you know it’s pervasive.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t fully explain why climate action is getting swallowed up in this us-versus-them dynamic. While the answer is inevitably complicated, writer Robert Wright provided a key clue in a book review he penned for Wired magazine back in 2018.
“As with most issues,” he wrote about global warming, “few people in either tribe have looked closely at the actual evidence. On both sides, most people are just trusting their tribe’s designated experts.”
No doubt, nearly none of us are deeply knowledgeable on every subject — especially ones as complex as climate change. The average American may instinctively believe in global warming, but we ultimately rely on people who we trust from our tribe to give us the shorthand.
As such, although NASA has concluded that “97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree” that climate change exists, if your experts are among the other 3 percent, you’re duty-bound to follow them.
This is one of the reasons why a meaningful part of the population discounted global warming just a decade ago. Thankfully, nowadays, only a small minority denies climate change. Still, this doesn’t mean that many of those tribal experts speaking on climate have shed their non-action mantle.
Roger Bate, who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a good example of how one non-action tribal expert is currently presenting the climate issue. In an August AEI blog post, Bate, who long had his doubts about the pervasiveness of “rapid warming,” conceded that “warming, and harm from it, seems more likely now.”
However, just because Bate believes warming exists doesn’t mean he’s ready to advocate for taking the huge steps necessary to combat the climate crisis. In his blog, he appears to prioritize the economy over climate action, pointing to the failure of carbon taxes in the European Union and arguing they “have slowed its economies and hit the poor the most.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers a similar position. “Climate change is not a hoax, but as a political matter,” its website explains, “it is a persistent pretext for expanding government control over the economy, redistributing wealth and empowering unaccountable elites at the expense of voters and their elected representatives.”
Facing these positions, environmentalists may feel daunted by the prospect of trying to convince skeptics to make a significant shift.
But there is hope.
Powerful proof came in December when the multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs announced it wouldn’t finance new oil projects in the Arctic. On its face, the move may come as somewhat of a surprise. If there’s any institution you might expect to prioritize maintaining a buoyant economy over addressing global warming, Goldman Sachs, which boasts $933 billion in assets under management, would be near the front of the line.
And yet, the company made its Arctic announcement on Dec. 15 along with “a raft of changes to its environmental policies,” according to CNN. Those additional new positions included a prohibition on giving money for new thermal coal mines or power plants worldwide and an investment of $750 billion over the next 10 years into “areas that focus on climate transition and inclusive growth.” All this came after two years of persistent lobbying from environmental and indigenous peoples groups.
Now, Goldman Sachs may not represent a whole tribe when it comes to climate issues. But it’s impossible to deny that they are economic experts. So, if this paragon of capitalism can make a dynamic pivot, it offers promise that others will listen up and break their tribal ways when it comes to climate change.
