Our environmental problems have become a politically polarized issue. Why? I don’t know values of any political tradition that oppose clean air, land, water, and food, while all seem consistent with stewardship.

Meanwhile, the main political tribes seem to see their opponents as obvious enemies, blatantly exacerbating the problems.

Liberals say conservatives and libertarians don’t care and are greedy. They say they prefer profit over helping other people or wildlife.

Conservatives and libertarians say liberals are virtue signalling, behaving hypocritically, trying to seize power by fear mongering, and too stupid to realize that even if they genuinely care that they’re waltzing into growing government into what will evolve into a totalitarian Stalinist regime, whether they intend it or not.

How did this situation arise? I’m not a historian so can’t say for sure, and with a global situation with a world of responses, no one cause can explain everything, but I’ve been studying, communicating, and acting a lot, and I’m ready to propose a hypothesis that I think has historical merit, explains a lot, and suggests solutions.

A Timeline

Here’s the trend I saw:

Awareness of our environmental problems came from scientists.

Scientists generally work in academia.

Scientists teach and share their findings with other academics who also teach.

Academia is most liberal.

Those aware of the problems proposed solutions that made sense to them.

Being mostly academic liberals, solutions that seemed natural to them, but embodied liberal views that conservatives and libertarians opposed.

The Green New Deal came after decades of this trend, but illustrates it.

Since the liberals didn’t question each other and figured they were just acting on science, they saw resistance as opposing their motivations: caring, acting on science, and helping the environment.

Meanwhile, liberals didn’t themselves act on their news. Polluting and depleting as much as anyone, their proposals mandated other people change.

Conservatives and libertarians figured: If they believed what they said, they would follow their own advice. They don’t follow their advice, so they probably don’t believe what they say. If they don’t believe what they say, why are they saying it?

Conservatives and libertarians followed the money and power and concluded these proposals were grabs for power and, even if unintended, steps that would slide to authoritarianism. They saw liberals, scientists, and academics as insincere at best, brazen at best.

Consumed with opposing what they saw as typical liberal power grabs and mindless descent into authoritarianism, conservatives and libertarians didn’t look at the underlying science except to find flaws. They found plenty to confirm their views.

All parties reach the situation I described above, consider the other wrong, and focus on defeating the other more than to solve the problems.

I’ll repeat how I described the situation above, now after seeing how this pattern led to it:

Liberals say conservatives and libertarians don’t care and are greedy. They say they prefer profit over helping other people or wildlife.

Conservatives and libertarians say liberals are virtue signalling, behaving hypocritically, trying to seize power by fear mongering, and too stupid to realize that even if they genuinely care that they’re waltzing into growing government into what will evolve into a totalitarian Stalinist regime, whether they intend it or not.

Solutions

Seeing the situation from this historical lens suggests some solutions.

Liberals can live by the values they propose mandating everyone to. Until they do, they don’t sound credible. They also don’t know that what they describe as sacrifices aren’t.

Conservatives and libertarians can look at the environmental situation not just to disprove others or to confirm their biases. They can see that however much liberals seem to be up to their old tricks, there are problems they (the conservatives and libertarians) would oppose more if they understood them on their terms instead of reactively.

Read my book when it comes out this year. It goes into more depth.

What did I miss or get wrong?

I welcome criticism of and support for this hypothesis. If you see anything to disqualify it or that I missed that leads to different solutions, I welcome that feedback.

Likewise, if you find it compelling and you see more solutions or ways to implement the ones I mentioned, I also welcome ways to act on it and augment solutions.

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