Is Environmentalism Just for Rich People?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/opinion/sunday/yellow-vest-protests-climate.html

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The Yellow Vest protests that have convulsed France for the past few weeks, leaving chic Parisian neighborhoods smoldering, are making environmentalists nervous.

The protests began in reaction to President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that a planned increase in taxes on gasoline, part of an ongoing ambitious effort to combat global warming, would take effect in January. Though the tax was favored by Parisians, who have access to efficient public transportation, it was seen as a provocation by struggling residents of the country’s rural and suburban areas. (“The taxes are rising on everything,” a rural retiree told a reporter from this newspaper. “They put taxes on top of taxes.”) Caught off guard by the intensity and popularity of the protests, Mr. Macron backed down on the tax hike, but not before the Yellow Vest movement morphed into a leaderless, anti-establishment revolt that now threatens his government.

As with working-class support for the faltering coal industry in the United States, the question arises: Is environmentalism a boutique issue, a cause only the well-off can afford to worry about?

Some social science suggests the answer is yes. In a landmark 1995 paper, the sociologist Ronald Inglehart observed an intriguing pattern in public support for the environmental movement. According to a public opinion survey he conducted in 43 nations, the countries where large percentages of the population supported strong environmental policies shared two characteristics: They were dealing with major environmental challenges (air and water pollution and species conservation were among the top priorities at the time) and they were affluent.

Mr. Inglehart argued that citizens were apt to prioritize environmental concerns only if they were rich enough not to have to fret about more basic things like food and shelter. Environmentalism was part of a larger “postmaterialist” mind-set, focused on human self-realization and quality of life, that was naturally to be found in the world’s economically advanced societies — and especially among better-educated, wealthier citizens. Mr. Inglehart anticipated that growing prosperity, rising education levels and increasingly dire environmental circumstances would translate into the further spread of environmental consciousness in the years to come.

In some ways the situation in France fits this theory. France is wealthy and well educated. And environmentalism is big there. A 2017 study, for instance, found that 79 percent of the French population believes climate change to be a very serious problem. It is plausible to think that some of the anger the Yellow Vests are unleashing on Paris revolves around the cultural gap separating those French citizens privileged enough to be able to devote time, attention and money to matters like the environment from those not as fortunate.

Thought-provoking as Mr. Inglehart’s thesis is, however, it’s not hard to identify weaknesses. Here’s an obvious one: The United States, like France, is a prosperous country with a well-educated population. Yet according to a survey conducted this year by the Pew Research Center, only 44 percent of Americans say they care a great deal about climate change.

More recent research bolsters this skeptical view. Work by the sociologists Riley Dunlap and Richard York, based on a wider range of data, turns Mr. Inglehart’s finding on its head: They have discovered that the publics of poorer countries facing imminent resource loss from environmental destruction often hold the strongest pro-environment attitudes. For example, the island nation of Fiji — which stands to be decimated by global warming, rising sea levels and storms — ratified the Paris climate agreement on a unanimous parliamentary vote before any other nation did.

Another study, by the political scientist Matto Mildenberger and the geographer Anthony Leiserowitz, has found “no evidence” that people became less attuned to climate change when their economic prospects dwindled after the 2008 financial crisis.

Mr. Dunlap and Mr. York emphasize the contingency and variability of public support for environmental causes and practices. How much backing there will be — and in what quarters — depends on the specific environmental, economic and political conditions countries face. Environmental protection efforts can advance if the environmental movement acts strategically.

The notion that there are few hard-and-fast rules when it comes to public support for environmentalism has influenced the response of environmentalists to the Yellow Vest protests. While raising taxes to reduce fossil fuel consumption or fund green energy transitions is essential, they say, depending on how and when such policies are proposed, they may spur a backlash. So smart rollouts and messaging matter. Mr. Macron’s environmental policies, for example, were announced from on high, without meaningful input from all the communities that would be affected.

Environmentalists insist that there is no reason in principle why a more effective communications strategy could not be found to pull together urban dwellers and the rural working- and lower-middle-class in a broad environmental coalition. The fact that the French public is sympathetic to the cause of the Yellow Vests but also concerned about the climate shows that the protests were never really about the environment in the first place.

Such a perspective is comforting. But it arguably understates the magnitude of the problem the environmental movement now confronts. Yes, contrary to the theory of postmaterialism, the well-off aren’t the only ones who care about climate change and the environment. Yet in many of today’s capitalist democracies, class and status resentments, fostered by rampant inequality and whipped up by opportunistic politicians, have developed to such an extent that issues like the environment that affect everyone are increasingly seen through the lens of group conflict and partisan struggle.

Differences between urban and rural, new economy and old, college educated versus working class and cosmopolitan versus local loom larger than ever. Although the research of the sociologist Dana R. Fisher shows that in the United States, climate change activists have been working to diversify their ranks, the trust needed for truly large-scale environmental coalition building is wearing thin.

Thus a different interpretation of the Yellow Vest protest may be warranted. Without a concerted effort to address inequality — which some in the environmental movement consider someone else’s department — the bold policy changes needed to slow global warming risk never getting off the ground.

Neil Gross is a professor of sociology at Colby College.

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