Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study suggests that most greens believe that by virtue of their support for environmental issues they earn the right to ignore their personal responsibilities.
ON CLIMATE CHANGE, A DISCONNECT BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR
A new study finds climate change skeptics are more likely to behave in eco-friendly ways than those who are highly concerned about the issue.
TOM JACOBSAN
…
Participants in a year-long study who doubted the scientific consensus on the issue “opposed policy solutions,” but at the same time, they “were most likely to report engaging in individual-level, pro-environmental behaviors,” writes a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Michael Hall.
Conversely, those who expressed the greatest belief in, and concern about, the warming environment “were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions.”
…
Hall and his colleagues can only speculate about the reasons for their results. But regarding the concerned but inactive, the psychological phenomenon known as moral licensing is a likely culprit.
Previous research has found doing something altruistic—even buying organic foods—gives us license to engage in selfish activity. We’ve “earned” points in our own mind. So if you’ve pledged some money to Greenpeace, you feel entitled to enjoying the convenience of a plastic bag.
Regarding climate change skeptics, remember that conservatism prizes individual action over collective efforts. So while they may assert disbelief in order to stave off coercive (in their view) actions by the government, many could take pride in doing what they can do on a personal basis.
…
Read more: https://psmag.com/environment/mission-compostable
The abstract of the study;
Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study
Michael P.Hall, Neil A.Lewis Jr., Phoebe C. Ellsworth
We conducted a one-year longitudinal study in which 600 American adults regularly reported their climate change beliefs, pro-environmental behavior, and other climate-change related measures. Using latent class analyses, we uncovered three clusters of Americans with distinct climate belief trajectories: (1) the “Skeptical,” who believed least in climate change; (2) the “Cautiously Worried,” who had moderate beliefs in climate change; and (3) the “Highly Concerned,” who had the strongest beliefs and concern about climate change. Cluster membership predicted different outcomes: the “Highly Concerned” were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions, whereas the “Skeptical” opposed policy solutions but were most likely to report engaging in individual-level pro-environmental behaviors. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494418301488
Academics competing to see who can log the most air miles, Jetset hypocrites calling for “deniers” to be banned from public office, large climate conferences full of frequent fliers; the brazen climate hypocrisy of leading greens is nothing new to regular readers of WUWT.
But this study goes a step further – it is not just the leaders who are complete hypocrites. The leaders of the green movement are not duping followers with their hypocrisy, they are an expression of the top to bottom hypocrisy of their entire movement. The most vocal climate supporters are actually the people who care least about the planet – all those noisy expressions of concern are camouflage to conceal the fact they are deeply selfish people who can’t be bothered to make a personal effort to improve the world they claim to love.
I pick up trash outside my house – because I like having a nice house, I like living on a nice street. I don’t think it is someone elses job to make my little corner of the world a better place. If I thought CO2 was a problem I would make a personal effort to reduce my carbon footprint.
Perhaps that sense of personal ownership, of responsibility for one’s actions, is what is missing from the green movement – a point made by the authors of the study.
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I probably sound like a broken record on this, but here we have yet another bit of evidence that no-one really believes there is a problem – including the most vociferous green activists. It is, for them, simply a useful platform to organize on, and to use to make demands which they hope and know will never be met, to demand powers which they do not want.
If you believed individual action to reduce our carbon footprint would achieve anything, you would be doing it. But they are not.
The amount of evidence pointing in this direction rises every day. Here we have one on an individual basis. But look also at the Exxon case. The parties do not want or request the civilization destroying behaviour to stop. They want it to carry on, and the profits of it to be used partly to pay them a contribution. If you really believed emissions from Exxon etc were the cause of your coastline vanishing and civilization coming to and end, you would not want to tax it, you would want to stop it.
And you could. Just get an injunction. But they do not. And I think the conclusion is inescapable. Its that no-one actually believes in CAGW or emission reduction. They are just using it to agitate for policies they sincerely hope will never be implemented. But which will result in large scale popular radicalization. Or so they hope.
I disagree. I thnk many of these people do believe. However, they believe they only have to SAY things, not do things, to fix problems.
I was told by one young leftist that since government is actually “we the people”, then whenever they vote to have government do something that is the moral equivalent to doing it themselves, therefore that is all they need to do.
Serious question: Did anyone ask/check/correlate these people’s dietary habits and beliefs?
All I want to know is, just dividing them into 2 groups, where do they stand on saturated fat and which eat more sugar?
(Sugar in all its forms, from cooked starch = glucose thro dextrose, sucrose and fructose)
Otherwise, what we see here is paranoia of people living inside Magical Thought Bubbles – such thoughts and things being created from the long term ingestion/consumption of depressant substances.
The researchers themselves also fail the magic bubble test – surely a *huge* part of what the eco-warriors worry about is food – wasn’t it on their questionnaire/survey?
Maybe it was, can we find the raw data? Willis……….
We can beat up the warmists about this but moral licensing is a universal human phenomenon. There is a teleconnection between morality (of all kinds) and violence. Someone one said “do not judge, or with the judgement with which you judge, you will be judged”.
Yet without judgment, there’s anarchy. Everyone judges and there has to be some judgment or there’s no laws, no rules, nothing. I have never, ever found anyone who does not judge.
The one who said that did not mean no judgement in the sense of administering the law . He meant judging in the moral sense, the “you are a bad person, I am better than you” kind of judgement. It is that kind of judgement that, via the oddities of human psychology such as moral licensing, becomes self-returning – one becomes the thing that you judge.
Laws are based on moral judgments, are they not? We outlaw murder because we think it’s morally wrong.
Laws are selfish. We outlaw murder because we don’t wish to be murdered.
I’ve said this all along. I guess instead of a website (theaccidentalconservationist) I should have gone for a grant and written a paper for one of those “special” journals. As far as environmentally friendly, I have wildlife habitat by the acres, compost, garden, recycle (don’t bury my trash by diggin a hole and dumping in the trash, like my neighbor with the backhoe does….). Yet I get told I hate the planet because I don’t believe CO2 is destroying it and I don’t want to live without running water except over a weekend at the cabin. Hate the planet? I love the planet. Ignorant people with chips on their shoulders, not so much……
A number of people with tons of frequent flier miles develop a guilty sub-conscience and compensate that by preaching Green to others. Careful to point this out to them as the compost might hit the fan.
I am rushing through so apologies for any redundancy from others’ posts above.
Same is true for most activists of any stripe. Think of the Left and … race, speech, women, science, justice. Then there is the Antifa group in California calling for military style violence against enemies of “the people.”
Anecdotal evidence from my own experience: the most dishonorable, dishonest, treacherous people I have ever met were, without exception, environmentalists and/or hard-Left activists.
The real question is, do the monsters join a cause to excuse their monsterous behavior, or does the cause itself corrupt them?
From George Orwell
“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”
1984 sums up the Green Movement
Your quote is from “Animal Farm”!
But the argument is sound?
Well, 1984 works too…
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever
This study says so much. I suspect this phenomenon occurs in a wide variety of human behaviors.
Other studies have found this same effect but I propose a different reason for it: the Left and greens expect the government to solve problems. By expressing their concern, they are then turning over solution to the gov. This also applies to feeding the homeless or giving to charity. But conservatives firmly believe in individual responsibility and are more likely to personally engage in charity or give to charity. My conservative friend goes to a church that every winter takes a tropical vacation–while the wives and kids are at the beach the men build a church.
The concept of individual agency and responsibility is utterly incompatible with Left-wing belief.
The conservative cares more about people than ideas, and values integrity over intention. The so-called progressive gets that bass-ackwards.
Turning over solution to Big Government or Big Charity is a great way to ensure that the problem in question will never be completely solved, because they’d lose justification for existing if it ever was. So at best only half-solutions are pushed, that always leave the original problem with a starter crop.
well, if you know an actual green , you know that , it is always so much fun to make them face their hypocrisy.
We do not buy the hysteria about AGW. We do hang our laundry, recycle, grow some salad vegetables, compost, do not litter. We reuse our plastic bags for kitchen garbage instead of buying bags. I have started to wash the heavy plastic salad bar containers & reuse them at the market.
Gang Green is famous for their hypocrisy, if it were not for double standards they would have none at all.
Belief is ALL.
They want to believe themselves the enlightened ones, all paths of self delusion are embraced to achieve the desired narrative.
This is part of the reason they seem so unreachable by logic,evidence and cold hard reality.
Alternate explanations are required by their own programming.
The ability to believe “6 impossible things before breakfast” is a prerequisite for all activists of Gang Green.
Rules,such as those they insist on imposing, do not apply to themselves.
These directives from “on high” are for the dirty little people not those Gods who can control the climate.
Sadly most of us already knew these people were fools..so how did they end up in positions of authority?
How many Alarmists use iPhones that were built in China, a country with no EPA, no OSHA, built in factories with nets around the windows to prevent suicide.
Sorry for the bible quote, no proselytising intended but it’s interesting that moral licensing was recognised 3000 years ago (Isaiah 58):
For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Conservatives/right-wingers are by and large “good stewards” of the land and everything else, too. When they do have a march or demonstration – which is not often because they’re usually working – they leave the area as clean or cleaner than they found it, they pick up after themselves, willingly.
I am a skeptic, I eco source native seed, grow and plant 1000 trees a year slowly extending and enhancing a patch of rare native forest. I restored fish passage through culverts and enhanced the waterways around me. I restore lost wetlands. I live in a small house and live with a small footprint, I grow much of my own food and eat little meat. I do this as I enjoy being close to nature and being connected with the world around me. I am everything the greens aspire to, yet I think global warming is over hyped nonsense. I do all my work alone and quietly without fuss, that is the difference. Whilst the greens all talk loudly about what to do, i am out there doing it and focussing not on co2 emissions but preserving the last patches of important flora and fauna so others can enjoy it, something I believe is far more important.
Recurring theme above, the study is flawed,a better study might….
Rubbish.
No study is needed,physical evidence is obvious after every gathering of the Gang Green.
The rubbish they leave displays their contempt for society,their local environment and themselves.
They act in total contradiction of their words..
This is stupidity or evil.
Possibly a combination of both.
By their actions we know them.
They have earned every ounce of contempt.
A sample size of 600? How about a sample of tens or hundreds of thousands or even a million? All one needs to do is look at the National Mall after a liberal event, such as the Women’s March on Washington on Jan 21, 2018, environmental protests, the Occupy movement, or even Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan 20, 2009, which had the largest crowd ever. Those people leave the mall filthy and strewn with trash. Obama’s inauguration: https://tinyurl.com/ybs6wl6r Of course the best one is Earth Day 2017: https://tinyurl.com/y7d2y3sd Of course there were some unintended consequences of the Women’s March on Washington on Jan 21, 2018: https://tinyurl.com/y93bnf42 Now compare that to the aftermath of the conservative 9/12 Tea Party (Taxpayer March on Washington) https://tinyurl.com/ya4kqkwj This enormous data bank is already out there, but no one has written a paper on it yet.
Everyone in my house is a certified caring climate change(tm) believer…except, of course, for me, the sucker who goes out to work every day.
But guess who leaves all the lights on, tv’s and devices on and the toilet fans going 24/7. And guess who the sucker is who spends all his time going around and around turning them off. Usually to no avail.
This is no surprise to me.
Leftists are all about improving their self-esteem by “taking action” in the form of demanding control over other people’s lives in support of their pet projects…being willing to sacrifice personally…not so much.