Member-only story
Why climate politics are destined to fail
Your own political viewpoint may blind you to the real solutions we need to succeed.
When you think about climate change, what do you feel? Is it a frightening but exciting chance to reorder the world, or is it a chaotic mess that threatens to break your carefully curated systems? The way you answer probably has a lot to do with your political alignment.
In a point of view we rarely hear, Oxford trained Dr David Hall notes that your personal politics predict your response to climate change.
Liberals tend to embrace climate change. On the surface, the solution appears to require dramatic social change, something liberals are comfortable with and even celebrate. They live to overturn the status quo. Meanwhile, conservatives have resisted climate change for exactly the same reason, because they value tradition, stability, heirarchy, and are willing to maintain the status quo.
Because liberals tend to be more motivated by climate change, the majority of solutions we see proposed are liberal-based solutions. They are heavily weighted toward social goals such as alleviating poverty or fighting for the underdog. On the extreme end they are anticapitalist and favour governmental control. These are concepts that directly oppose conservative ideologies.