Climate deniers ride the bus, too: Making sense of pro-environmental action in polarized times


Rachel McLay, Dalhousie University

Climate change and environmental issues are major sites of polarized political discourse in Canada. My research considers the linkages between such discourse and pro-environmental actions in Atlantic Canada. Pro-environmental actions are often framed by researchers as products of environmental knowledge, awareness, or concern—outcomes of a multi-stage pipeline model comparable to social movement recruitment from uninvolved bystander to movement supporter, then to full-fledged activist. But such a model should not be applied uncritically to pro-environmental actions, not least because it upholds the primacy of individual action and frames the unconverted as environmentally destructive, or as a key threat to environmental progress. This paper challenges approaches that imply a mostly one-way causal relationship from environmentally supportive attitudes or beliefs to pro-environmental action on several grounds. First, I consider the ways in which environmental habitus structures both attitudes and actions; furthermore, I address potential causes of pro-environmental action beyond expressed attitudes. While attitudes and actions are undeniably connected in many ways, a key insight here is that polarization is a political phenomenon, so its meanings are primarily of consequence within the political field. Thus, anti-environmental political stances affect people’s political actions to a greater extent than their environmental actions. This is demonstrated using survey data on Atlantic Canadians’ attitudes toward climate change and pro-environmental behaviour. This paper also weighs in on the normative problem underlying a great deal of research on pro-environmental behaviour: if environmental action is taken as a high priority by researchers or policymakers, focusing on structural affordances and leveraging broadly shared cultural meanings is crucial, as opposed to upholding only those meanings most salient to a particular social class.

This paper will be presented at the following session: