Back in 1964, Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote the now-classic “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” for Harper’s Magazine. According to Hofstadter, this style of mind was characterized by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”…Hofstadter goes on:
“Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish….”
The rest of us rely on mental shortcuts to arrive at our opinions on climate change - mostly to do with trust and perceived plausibility. In other words, how we feel/think about climate change depends in large part on whom we trust or don’t trust, as well as what information, explanations, and opinions fit with our understanding of how the world works. This is not an irrational way for non-scientists to approach a subject as complex as climate change.
But we could do better. We could live the words “science is real”…
Most Americans have accepted that the climate is changing as a result of human activity. If pressed for a reason, many will refer to the scientific consensus that such is the case. Some will refer to a 97% consensus.
Not that these survey results are implausible. Plenty of peer-reviewed studies have revealed today’s millionaires to be frugal, hard-working, and mostly from middle-class backgrounds. They buy boring cars. They’re diligent savers. This is not new information - twenty years ago academics Thomas Stanley and William Danko found that 80% of US millionaires were first-generation rich. That is, they did not inherit their wealth.
Some in the medical community take a “wait and see” approach to the disease of climate change. They’re aware of computer models predicting a dangerous worsening of the patient’s condition but note that other models are not nearly so gloomy. These doctors point out that most treatments carry their own risks, so it’s best just to monitor the patient closely for the time being…However, most in the medical community acknowledge the patient will probably get worse without some sort of intervention. But many physicians aren’t convinced the prognosis is dire without aggressive treatment and so opt for a conservative approach to managing the patient’s condition. …Yet other doctors are convinced that without aggressive measures this climate change disease will inevitably progress to painful debilitation and possible death.
Overfishing, destructive fishing practices, coral harvesting and mining, sewage, sedimentation, pollution, elevated sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification are all stressors. Less stress and greater resilience to stress increase the likelihood of coral reefs living beyond the Anthropocene.
This year’s Green New Deal (GND) repeats the claim that “global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrialized levels will cause…a loss of more than 99 percent of all coral reefs on Earth”. The GND references an October 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I reviewed the IPCC report’s references and this is what I found…
For those who want to understand the Other Side better, a few do’s: …Strive to be humble about your own grasp of the relevant facts…
And a few don’ts: Mindread – that is, ignore the other side’s expressed thoughts and motivations in favor of what you consider their “real” thoughts and motivations. …
What’s a technocrat? Admirers would say someone who approaches problems and challenges with the mindset of a scientist or engineer, seeking out information from credible sources, confronting their own ignorance, changing their minds when the evidence calls for it, taking disagreement seriously, and gladly accepting criticism to avoid error, because they devoutly wish to get it right. …What’s an ideologue? …
In the debate, supporters of the Green New Deal came back with:
Other ideas are just cover for capitalist yearnings
Nothing significant is being done to combat climate change
There is no serious alternative to the Green New Deal
The Green New Deal is our only hope to avert catastrophe
What I see [in this list of the ten most unequal states] is southern states, rich states, and New Jersey. Compared to other US states, all but Florida have high unemployment and all but New Jersey and Connecticut have high poverty rates and low median household income.
It appears that states with the lowest level of inequality also have low unemployment rates (except for that huge outlier, Alaska*). They also tend to be rural, vote Republican, and do somewhat better than other states on median household income, poverty rates, and the composite measure of well-being. Of course, we don’t know cause-and-effect here.
…where once the Big Solution was seen as a means to fixing problems, it eventually becomes an end in itself - one that requires Big Problems to justify. That’s because Big Solutions tend to involve painful sacrifice (the darkness before the dawn). And that pain had better be worth it!
So what happened - especially between 1970 and the early 2000s when the savings rate bottomed out? It wasn’t because Americans increasingly couldn’t afford to save; it was because they increasingly choose not to. Consider…
Most chief executives make less than the average physician. Yes, there are super-star executives who make an obscene amount of money - but they are the exception, not the rule….the top 1% are mostly owners of partnerships and small (‘S’) corporations. These “pass-through” business owners earn more, on average, than major shareholders of the big ‘C’ corporations.
The capacity to imagine future danger and take constructive steps to avert it is called “adaptive anticipation”. Adaptive adaptation starts with sensitivity to threat. It ends with effective problem solving.
According to this trope, the Fearful Conservative is afraid of change and uncertainty, clinging to the safe harbor of habit and tradition, overly controlled, troubled by bad dreams and distressed by disorder. In so many words: fear makes conservatives stupid. The authors usually bolster their case with a few studies and quotes from “experts”, which can be hard to refute if you don’t know what they’re leaving out - namely, evidence to the contrary.
One thing the articles and opinion pieces don’t mention is the decades of research on personality and political attitudes, covering tens of thousands of participants. And that research is, well, unequivocal: conservatism is not associated with anxiety or fear - it’s most strongly associated with Conscientiousness.
Azarian wrote a Psychology Today piece titled, “Fear and Anxiety Drive Conservatives' Political Attitudes” …he supported his claims with evidence from four studies. Luckily I was able to locate most of the original studies to see if his conclusions were reasonable. Here’s what I found…
“…industry, self-reliance, frugality, self restraint or control, modesty, temperance, fortitude, cheerfulness, civility, compassion, and respect for the property of other persons.” Jean M. Yarbrough, author of American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People.
What would be the opposite of these virtues?