The United States is more partisan overall than most other countries, but it is not an outlier. There are other countries with similar levels of overall partisanship,[5] but almost no partisanship in their support for environmentalism: France[6] and South Korea.[7] There is no correlation between overall partisanship and partisanship in environmentalism.[8]
Interestingly, both France and South Korea are notable for their atomic power plants. Knowing the direction of causation is seldom easy, but maybe anti-nuclear activism turned the issue partisan?
It’s strange reading all of these comments discussing what actions by environmental groups led to partisanship, without anyone discussing the extensive lobbying and financial influence of the fossil fuel industry and other polluting industries. It’s like trying to discuss the orbital motions of the planets based on the gravitational impact of their moons, but without acknowledging the existence of the Sun.
From the introduction to the last post in this sequence:
Environmentalists were not the only people making significant decisions here. Fossil fuel companies and conservative think tanks also had agency in the debate – and their choices were more blameworthy than the choices of environmentalists. Politicians choose who they do and do not want to ally with. My focus is on the environmental movement itself, because that is similar to what other activist groups are able to control.
The motivation for this report was to learn what the AI safety movement should do to keep from becoming partisan. ‘Meta doesn’t lobby the government’ isn’t an action the AI safety movement can take.
I think that this is a coincidence. Japan has low partisanship for environmentalism and has less nuclear power than most developed countries (along with low overall partisanship). The association would be between three things: (1) low partisanship for environmentalism, (2) high overall partisanship, and (3) lots of nuclear power plants. There aren’t enough countries to do this kind of correlation.
Interestingly, both France and South Korea are notable for their atomic power plants. Knowing the direction of causation is seldom easy, but maybe anti-nuclear activism turned the issue partisan?
It’s strange reading all of these comments discussing what actions by environmental groups led to partisanship, without anyone discussing the extensive lobbying and financial influence of the fossil fuel industry and other polluting industries. It’s like trying to discuss the orbital motions of the planets based on the gravitational impact of their moons, but without acknowledging the existence of the Sun.
From the introduction to the last post in this sequence:
The motivation for this report was to learn what the AI safety movement should do to keep from becoming partisan. ‘Meta doesn’t lobby the government’ isn’t an action the AI safety movement can take.
I think that this is a coincidence. Japan has low partisanship for environmentalism and has less nuclear power than most developed countries (along with low overall partisanship). The association would be between three things: (1) low partisanship for environmentalism, (2) high overall partisanship, and (3) lots of nuclear power plants. There aren’t enough countries to do this kind of correlation.