Guest essay by Eric Worrall
University of Queensland Literature PhD student Jamie Freestone thinks the way to convince Conservatives to support climate action is to make climate action sound Conservative.
To get conservative climate contrarians to really listen, try speaking their language
May 15, 2018 2.06pm AEST
Jamie Freestone
PhD student in literature, The University of Queensland
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Climate change holdouts are not necessarily ill-informed. But they naturally – like everyone else – do not welcome information that conflicts with their worldview. Conservatives are likely to disregard or filter out information that threatens economic growth, standards of living, and business interests.
They’re also likely to be unmoved by messages that emphasise the impact of climate change on the world’s poor. Especially ineffective are morally tinged narratives about how climate change is humanity’s fault and that we’re getting our comeuppance.
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The first suggestion is that carbon dioxide emissions could be explained as a disruption to the status quo (of the climate), and thus at odds with conservative values. Climate change is a radical, anarchic experiment with the world’s atmosphere and vital systems.
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Conservatives are more likely to respond to positive messages that emphasise agency rather than doom and gloom. Promoting geoengineering or market-based solutions like a carbon tax is a good idea. Even if your own political identity is opposed to these specific solutions, it’s at least worth using them to win conservatives round to the idea that climate change is real.
Third, climate change can be framed as a matter of impurity rather than harm. Harm to marginalised people and the environment is how many liberal-minded people conceive of climate change. But conservatives think more in terms of purity or sanctity. No worries. The effects of climate change can be no less accurately framed as being a violation of the purity or sanctity of the planet. Instead of harm to ecosystems, it’s a contamination of God’s green Earth.
Finally, we come to a difficult but potentially powerful narrative. It involves turning big industries in general against parts of the energy industry in particular. The more severe effects of climate change threaten the interests of everyone, including those of most large corporations.
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I can’t help thinking Jamie has missed the target, but what do you guys think? Would messages about the benefits of carbon taxes and “climate impurity” move you to support more climate action?
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Apparently the writer thinks that conservatives are dumb enough that if you just change the advertising, they will suddenly like the product. Polluting the environment? An unnatural pollutant? All animals produce CO2 as a necessary part of life. How about all of the liberals hold their breath to avoid polluting the environment? How about the marginalized people who will never have electricity because of these dumb ideas. Just disgusting moral preening.
Liberals think all people are taken in by propaganda, not just liberals.
Here in Canada all the conservative politicians are holding their breath, as far as any policies go that they might be running on. They’re all a bunch of crawling cowards. They’re all afraid to stand up, tell the truth, and expose the lying left for what they are.
To be fair, they know the only thing they need to do to win the next election is not be Trudeau.
But, yeah, we badly need a Trump up here in the Frozen North.
All over the Western world, “conservatives” have been paving the way by accepting or even promoting leftist talking points.
Nicolas Sarkozy the officially rightist French President (“extremely right” according to the opposition party at the time) in particular promoted “diversity”, did nothing to reduce mass immigration. He pretended to be in favor reducing the nuclear power fleet (no power plant was closed), outlawed fracking, promoted so called “renewables” and even promoted “job creations” from spending taxpayers money. He was anti pesticides and promised to reduce the volume of pesticide use in agriculture (a useless stupid metric).
He created many taxes, even an “exit tax” (so that former slaves can buy their liberty).
He pushed an anti “piracy” law that turned the legal principles in the head (although it’s practically harmless). In the process it was demonstrated that “conservatives” were eager to “regulate” things they couldn’t explain or describe.
French right politicians pushed voting machines with arguments showing that they have strictly no idea what financial accounting is. They believe voting machines are OK because … there are sooo many regulations they have to follow. The French right really believes in regulations.
Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to be liked by the left, but he was hated by the left.
“Conservative” here means somewhat less leftist. Even Macron seems less leftist than Sarkozy.
He doesn’t realize the AGW conjecture is already dead.
Is anyone here familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator? Now, I, personally don’t fully subscribe to it but I find one aspect identified by its progenitors fascinating; the notion that there exists THINKING and FEELING personality types.
Liberals are unable to understand Conservatives because Liberals are FEELING types while Conservatives are THINKING types.
THINKERS analyze situations and FEELERS react to them (hence knee-jerk liberal).
This means Conservatives CAN understand and assess Liberals when Liberals can’t understand and assess them.
THINKERS can understand FEELERS but FEELERS can’t understand THINKERS – and that’s why people like Jamie Freestone write this kind of stuff.
https://www.16personalities.com/articles/nature-thinking-vs-feeling
Thoughts?
Ergo the moniker “Bleeding heart liberals.”
The Liberal mind “feels’ like the NRA and 2nd Amendment were ultimately responsible for the Parkland shooting, for example, while the Conservative mind “calculates” that such a conclusion doesn’t make any sense.
Jamie Freestone is trying to craft an Emotional argument that he thinks would appeal to Conservatives but he doesn’t realize that Conservatives are not swayed by such things.
The “liberals” will explain that the AR-15 is an horribly dangerous “assault weapon” because (from what I read on the Web):
– high speed of fire
– high energy of bullets causing very serious damage to victims
– high speed of bullets that causes “cavitation” inside organs
and that somehow justifies gun “regulation” with restriction on:
– the position of the handle
– the fact some parts of the weapon can be unmounted or folded
– the “shroud” (not clear what that covers exactly)
– high capacity magazines
…
none of which has any real link, or plausible link from the POV of someone not knowledgeable, with the energy of the bullets or their speed. It isn’t remotely plausibly defensible.
Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that, if the school didn’t have an agreement with the police to not arrest kids because the arrest rates of non-white kids went against The Narrative, Cruz would have been unable to legally buy a firearm due to the mental health and criminal record he would have had.
The left make stupid decisions, then double down and blame everyone else, because they can never admit they’re wrong.
The AR-15 fires one bullet per pull of the trigger. Just the same as every other semi-automatic on the market.
Many states do not allow you to use an AR-15 when hunting because it is not powerful enough to ensure a clean kill with one bullet.
Mark, you are assuming the AR15 is chambered in 5.56X45. There are other cartridges available, up to .450 Bushmaster, which is equivalent to a light bullet load for 45-70.
I think you are right on the money there, Freedom Monger.
From my viewpoint, conservatives deal with the world realistically and liberals/leftists deal with the world through their emotions Liberals definitely have more emotional outbursts than conservatives. I have a liberal freind but we can’t talk poitics because he gets so emotionally wound up that rational conversation becomes impossible, even though I am sitting there cooly and calmly (mostly because I know what to expect) and would be prefectly willing to discuss the subject logically, but he just can’t get beyond a certain point and then no amount of logic will get through. Other than that, he’s a good friend who I could count on. We just don’t talk politics.
It’s funny, he respects my opinion and thinks of me as a different kind of conservative, but when he thinks about any other conservative, you can just see his temperature start to rise. Don’t even mention Trump’s name to him.
I think that’s a bit simplistic. I usually score very high on FEELER scale, though I also prize logic and reason.
Out of curiosity I just tried the 16personalities test, I got “Personality type DEBATER – ENTP-T”…
I am an INTP. I would characterize my statements as “generalized”, not “simplistic”, however. My very personality prevents me from being “simplistic” about anything. I analyze everything I care about to the max – even to the point of analysis paralysis.
I’m proudly intuitive. I like TV because I can watch and feel people. I like to watch dishonest people’s face although it’s very unpleasant. (I can’t do that for long without risking psychological problems.)
Usually when I feel someone is dishonest, just from his face and his looks, not knowing the facts, it’s confirmed by facts later.
Ask a teacher: you can judge a child from his face. It just works.
Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality test? I would suspect that you’d come out with an “SF” in the middle, but that’s just my opinion. An Intuitive personality, as defined by Myers-Briggs, doesn’t rely on their senses, so they don’t judge things by they way they appear.
So here’s my book report.
It turns out the good news is that I’m not necessarily ill-informed, who knew? But I only care about economic questions, especially making sure that my standard of living isn’t impacted. I hate the poor and detest the idea of taking responsibility for my criminal use of energy. I really hate all forms of change, but I love action, which means I’m schizophrenic apparently. I don’t give a rat’s tail about sharing anything with “marginalised people”, let those impure scum die! But I am obsessed with concepts of purity and sanctity, perhaps I am anal-retentive and certainly some kind of religious neurotic.
So we can sum it up like this, I am totally selfish and venal. If I were ill-informed, my actions might be excused, but far from it, I am well-informed and fully culpable. I never fail to act on my knowledge to exploit others at every turn. You can only influence me by tricking me into thinking I am acting to protect my privilege.
I guess that he missed the fact that I hate anybody who doesn’t look, talk, and act exactly like me, especially if they have darker skin.
Indeed!
I’ve rarely encountered such a blatant example of caricaturing as this. It’s clearly more revealing about the author’s own personal viewpoints than it is anything approaching reality. I’d call it trivial silliness…if it weren’t so depressingly pervasive.
rip
Change the phrasing, and the conservative world will wake up saying D’Oh! How could I have not seen the wisdom!
Simplistic babble. Let them waste their time on this hypothesis. Using that same logic, they’ll probably lose their liberal followers, as the new phrasing will appear too conservative and offend those libs.
What an as$.
The message needs to be: “climate change threatens our precious bodily fluids”.
I would only go over to the other side if the message was “climate change threatens your precious bodily fluids”.
Idiots gonna idiot. He’s obviously never talked or interacted with a conservative in his life.
He has, but they were all pretending to be liberals.
He could start by trying to talk to his parents. Well, that’s probably not right… he could start by trying to listen to his parents.
I have a rhyme for this sort of slime.
Authority figures, foretelling
Hot doom (and our “myths” dispelling),
Cast great dispersions
On skeptical versions
(Which keep carbon credits from selling)!
Now, shriller and louder they’re yelling,
To drown out the doubters’ rebelling!
New taxes are “just”
When you’ve gained public trust,
So “the questioners” (quickly) they’re quelling.
I’ve arrived at this realization;
Our industrial civilization
Can only be sin
If the ‘green’ Marxists win-
On their platform of demonization!
A better idea for him would be to find out exactly why conservatives don’t accept the CAGW alarmism and then convince them by showing that the basis for their belief is wrong. Conservatives base their opposition on the science, the data, the evidence, so all he needs to do is show them where that science is wrong…..oh, wait….uhm….yeah, well that won’t work either.
Back to the drawing board…..
More junk from the University of Queensland, Australia. What, again?! I’m not surprised.
Narrator: It won’t.
A degree in literature is ridiculous.
— “Lord” Monckton, degree in classics
I know. Let’s mock a PhD student. Eric, get on this.
— Watts, no degree
Aw, lets allow the stupid public climate essay stand unchallenged because the young adult looks too nice to criticise.
When I discuss vaccine “science” (really, pseudoscience), people often ask me what my qualifications are. I answer that I know the four operations. Or that I am at least as qualified as a child. Any child should see through most of that garbage.
Climate change alarmists are necessarilly misinformed and they, naturally, do not welcome information that conflicts we their world view.
Etcetera, etcetera …..
Yup, something that is not a problem is still not a problem even when you use the word God in your argument.
You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.
Once again, liberal propagandists think that if they can just craft their propaganda just right they can fool the conservatives to join their anti-capitalist, anti-human cause.
” … likely to be unmoved by messages that emphasise the impact of climate change on the world’s poor. ”
On the contrary, we conservatives are moved by the impact of the greens regressive “carbon taxes” and “necessarily skyrocketing” energy costs have on the world’s poor. Making energy expensive hurts the poor the most and that’s one of the many reasons why we won’t be bamboozled by the greens propaganda messages no matter why coat of paint they slap on them.
Well said John Endicott. The Greens are the ones who ignore the problems of the poor in the pursuit of something which they hope will give them a needed psychological boost. They are people who lack confidence in the real world.
As a physicist who has spent over ten years researching the so-called AGW – in fact all impossible warming by CO2 and other green house gases – it appals me to see students of literature, economics, psychology, accountancy, and above all, geography, mouthing off about the AGW problem.
They do not have a single clue about the science, they ignore the last twenty years without warming while CO2 increased and millions of years of geological evidence, yet keep touting a silly but VERY EXPENSIVE hoax.
“They’re also likely to be unmoved by messages that emphasise the impact of climate change on the world’s poor.” And yet even if all the hypothetical Climate Change happens as forecast, it wouldn’t be even one tenth as damaging to the poor as any of the proposed so-called solutions.
Aren’t Conservatives for lower taxes and less regulation… how will more of both ‘win’ them?
Allow me to share my most diligent analysis of Mr. Freestone’s approach:
BS
Deeper BS
An ocean of BS
Speaking of a climate “status quo” is ludicrous. There’s no such thing. You might as well frame the approach in terms of fairies and unicorns and wee elfin folk.
If we talk about “impurity”, then we best talk about the impurity of our bodies that are polluted by CO2 and carbon, in general. Life, thus, is “polluted” and “impure” and, therefore, should NOT exist at all.
If humans and all life are carbon based and created by God, then God made a mistake by creating beings that are impure and who propagate their impurity. Even worse, God is self contradictory, since HE created all this crap you want to call “impurity”. HE based all life on “impurity” !
And this guy wants to TAX impurity, which is compounding one impurity with another ! And some people will, thus, profit from impurity.
Okay, my head is exploding from this guy’s idiocy, and so I need to stop now.
Not sure the point of the article, but find the author outrageous.
The biggest problem with most liberals, is that they find it impossible to believe that they can be wrong.
Therefore anyone who disagrees with them is
1) Stupid/Uninformed
2) Under the influence of some malign force
3) One of those malign forces.
Oh, I see the strategy now — redefine the basis of how intelligent decisions are made by reducing the importance of real facts, redefining conclusions of pseudoscience as THE “facts”, then double down on popular alarmist claims by incorrectly profiling what a climate-change skeptic is, and use false conceptions based on the incorrect profiling to aimlessly try strengthening your position through even deeper emotional appeals.
This is why Progressives are always the best bigots – they invent a stereotype and then they proceed as if it’s real.
And it’s all to pull a con – Obama did the same thing, reading a bunch of old Reagan speeches – for cadence and phrasing – certainly not for content.
I guess he’s too used to people that respond to shiny objects.
What is positive about a carbon tax or using unproven geoengineering? And how does either improve individual choice or agency? Is Jamie Freestone that brainwashed? Just because liberals think high taxes are a positive thing and believe a big government promotes liberty doesn’t mean conservatives would ever adopt that kind of thinking. How hard is it to understand that high taxes are regressive, and that the bigger the government, the smaller the individual?