Serene tea: understanding contemporary conservative environmentalism in the United States using a mixed methods approach

Abstract

Climate change will require action that transcends political divides, yet environmental politics in the US appear as polarized as ever. This thesis investigates conservative environmentalism using a mixed methods approach. Quantitatively, I find that liberals are increasingly uniform in their pro-environmental attitudes post the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, while conservatives have substantial amounts of intra-ideology dispersion on environmental spending. I interview self-identified conservative environmentalists and progressive environmentalists to explore this dispersion. Conservative environmentalists unite in their staunch belief of market-driven solutions to ecological degradation but diverged between a market-based ecological modernization framework or a more libertarian free market environmentalism. The conservative interviewees shared focus on increasing market access and outcomes of conservation contrast with progressive interviewee's market skepticism and support for intersectional processes aimed at socially equitable, system-altering solutions that jointly address combined "wicked" ecological and social problems. Practically, two contrasting solutions to ecological degradation were salient: conservative interviewees sought to relegitimize the current social system; progressive interviewees seek to restructure the current social system.