The poll you linked indicates that Republicans in the Mountain West are more concerned with the environmental than Republicans in the rest of the country. There is a 27 p.p. partisan gap on the energy vs environment question (p. 17) - much less than the 55 p.p. partisan gap for the country as a whole. The partisan gap for whether “a public official’s position on conservation issues will be an important factor in determining their support” is 22 p.p. (p. 13), with clear majorities in both parties. Climate change is somewhat less of a concern than other issues, which I would guess is because it is more partisan, but not by that much (p. 21).
In the Mountain West, it looks like there is some partisanship for environmental issues, but only the amount we would expect for a generic issue in the US, or for environmentalism in another country. This is consistent with environmentalism being extremely partisan on average over the entire country. The Mountain West is less than a tenth of the country’s population and has an unusually impressive natural environment.
Environmentalism started to became partisan around 1990. Nixon & Reagan both spoke of the environment in these terms.
Actually, my read of the data is that the mountain west is not more environmentally conscious than the rest of the US.
The mountain west poll does not include national numbers, so I have no idea where your national comparisons are coming from. If I did, I’d check for same year/same question, but because I don’t know where they’re from I can’t.
The mountain west appears neither significantly more nor significantly less partisan on any of the climate change related questions than the rest of the US.
My main point, which I don’t think you’ve contradicted (even if I accept that the mountain west is unique), is that you’re making an argument about “environmentalism” partisanship by using primarily “climate change” polling data. The charts from the 2013 paper you’ve posted sort of confirm this take–climate change is obviously a uniquely partisan issue.
The intro to your sequence states the following:
The partisanship we see today is unusual, compared to other issues, other countries, or even the US in the 1980s.
Basically, I have not seen evidence that this is true for issues beyond climate change (or other countries!), and I think your sequence would benefit by explicitly comparing
the partisan split of non-climate-change environmental issues (e.g. rain forest protection) to
the partisan split of non-environmental issues (e.g. taxation)
Global warming is highly partisan, and the proposed solutions to it are extremely polarizing. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is probably single-handedly responsible for shifting the GOP to deny it exists. The taint spread to other issues. A whiff of any environmentalism raises hackles that would not have been raised otherwise.
Environmentalists have used environmental laws that were initially bipartisan to throw wrenches into development favored by GOP.
Partisan sorting. Republicans who were concerned about the environment in 1990 are dead, changed positions, or are no longer Republicans, just like anti-abortion Democrats from 1990 are dead, changed positions, or are no longer Democrats.
A lot of the emphasis is on climate change, which has become partisan than other environmental issues. But other environmental issues have become partisan as well. Here’s some data from a paper from 2013 by D.L. Guber, “A cooling climate for change? Party polarization and the politics of global warming.”
The poll you linked indicates that Republicans in the Mountain West are more concerned with the environmental than Republicans in the rest of the country. There is a 27 p.p. partisan gap on the energy vs environment question (p. 17) - much less than the 55 p.p. partisan gap for the country as a whole. The partisan gap for whether “a public official’s position on conservation issues will be an important factor in determining their support” is 22 p.p. (p. 13), with clear majorities in both parties. Climate change is somewhat less of a concern than other issues, which I would guess is because it is more partisan, but not by that much (p. 21).
In the Mountain West, it looks like there is some partisanship for environmental issues, but only the amount we would expect for a generic issue in the US, or for environmentalism in another country. This is consistent with environmentalism being extremely partisan on average over the entire country. The Mountain West is less than a tenth of the country’s population and has an unusually impressive natural environment.
Environmentalism started to became partisan around 1990. Nixon & Reagan both spoke of the environment in these terms.
Actually, my read of the data is that the mountain west is not more environmentally conscious than the rest of the US.
The mountain west poll does not include national numbers, so I have no idea where your national comparisons are coming from. If I did, I’d check for same year/same question, but because I don’t know where they’re from I can’t.
Take a look at this cool visualization of different state partisan splits from 2018: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/partisan-maps-2018/
The mountain west appears neither significantly more nor significantly less partisan on any of the climate change related questions than the rest of the US.
My main point, which I don’t think you’ve contradicted (even if I accept that the mountain west is unique), is that you’re making an argument about “environmentalism” partisanship by using primarily “climate change” polling data. The charts from the 2013 paper you’ve posted sort of confirm this take–climate change is obviously a uniquely partisan issue.
The intro to your sequence states the following:
Basically, I have not seen evidence that this is true for issues beyond climate change (or other countries!), and I think your sequence would benefit by explicitly comparing
the partisan split of non-climate-change environmental issues (e.g. rain forest protection) to
the partisan split of non-environmental issues (e.g. taxation)
Several things are at work.
Global warming is highly partisan, and the proposed solutions to it are extremely polarizing. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is probably single-handedly responsible for shifting the GOP to deny it exists. The taint spread to other issues. A whiff of any environmentalism raises hackles that would not have been raised otherwise.
Environmentalists have used environmental laws that were initially bipartisan to throw wrenches into development favored by GOP.
Partisan sorting. Republicans who were concerned about the environment in 1990 are dead, changed positions, or are no longer Republicans, just like anti-abortion Democrats from 1990 are dead, changed positions, or are no longer Democrats.