Polarization Politics And Hopes For A Green Agenda In The United States

Author ORCID Identifier

Michael Clark: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8330-6950

April Clark:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6161-1353

Publication Title

Environmental Politics

ISSN

9644016

E-ISSN

17438934

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In the past, support for environmental protection in the United States was relatively nonpartisan. That situation began to change in the late 1970s with partisanship playing an increasing role in attitudes and behavior regarding the environment. Despite the growing importance of environmental issues, Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, express greater skepticism about climate change, global warming, and environmentalism in general. We take advantage of a new method of estimation to gauge the degree of partisan and ideological variability in environmental concern across birth cohorts and time, while also testing the role of compositional and contextual causes of this variability. This contributes to our understanding of large-scale changes in environmental attitudes, and the degree to which partisan identification and political ideology is to blame for lack of environmental concern and efforts to promote a green agenda.

First Page

719

Last Page

745

Publication Date

8-14-2019

DOI

10.1080/09644016.2019.1654238

Keywords

environmentalism, generational, Opinion change, period, polarization, trends

Department

Department of Political Science

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