I don’t know. I came from Reagan-Republican fundamentalist Christians, & it always seemed to me that respect for the natural world (God’s Creation, after all) should be a basic moral issue, transcending political questions. I mean, people can disagree over capitalism or communism, but how can you be indifferent to the extinction of species?
Here’s what I’ve put together over the course of my life; some of this is specific to US politics, some isn’t:[ul][li]Many of the masses of the Religious Right don’t care about the environment, because they don’t care about anything other than saving their souls from hell. They believe that not only their own lives, but the entire physical universe, is “a passing vapor.” Many’s the time I was warned not “to worship the creation instead of the Creator.” All this despite their scripture saying that the world is created by God, & loved by God.[/li]
(I really philosophically broke with these people when I came to understand the meaning of the word “worship.” I now believe that not to worship—that is, value—God’s work is to fail to worship him. But I digress.)
[li]Another worldview that fails to encourage biophilia & eco-consciousness is Descartes’s fallacy of a mechanistic universe, in which all non-human behavior is the workings of unconscious phenomena. Both the Hedonistic Utilitarianism of Bentham & Mill, & the “reason confers rights” morality of Kant, are built on this idea (obviously false to those of us who actually observe animals). When I took philosophy in college, my teacher said that Utilitarianism & Kantianism were the only two alternatives taken seriously by Philosophers. Oy.[/li]
Conservatives in the USA will tend to put more weight in the crackpots—excuse me, Thinkers—of the “Age of Reason” than those of the last century. Modern environmentalists are seen as dirty hippies, & many take on Cartesian thought out of knee-jerk conservatism (& the fact that they’re sometimes not even taught there are alternatives).
[li]Many people on both Right & Left don’t care enough about the environment, because they see the world in a self-serving “politico-economic” model, rather than a realistic biological model. The “environment” is to them just that: an environment in which humanity, which they see as the only important reality, exists. It will always be on the fringe of their moral universe, until it hits them directly.[/li]
[li]And many people in power are worse, & not just on the Right. Power is accrued by the acquisitive, for whom there is no guarantee of either scruple or wisdom. Many would honestly ask, “Why care about anything except yourself?” So for some, including those who buy political influence, “Science” is just a thing you can make money from. If it doesn’t produce wealth, it doesn’t matter.[/li]
(Put in the proper context, that last sentence seems clearly to describe an immorally selfish worldview. Put it in a economist’s mouth, & it’s a “principle” espoused as scientific & valid. Scary.)
[li]On another level, anyone “struggling to get by” in society may have apparently sound personal reasons for being more concerned with his own future than with something outside himself. They’ll protest that they’re not robber barons, & it’s not their fault. But they’re tripped up by their own ambitions—& maybe, for some, the nature of capitalist economics has them in genuinely difficult straits.[/li]
(So you have to get to these people on a personal level. It really is a matter of teaching people about wisdom. Sometimes you just need to make do with less & appreciate the outside world more.)
[li]And perhaps most importantly, the Left (in the USA at least) is theoretically defined by ideas like rights, principle, compassion, & openness to those unlike ourselves. The Right is theoretically defined by non-interference in business (which can be read as Avarice).[/li]
I’m not saying that to be mean. That’s how they define themselves. If the Left introduces a good & just idea, the Right reflexively fights it as unnecessary. Of course the wealth accrued by businesses is unnecessary, but you never hear that, do you?
[li]The simplest & sickest reason is that the GOP wants to be different from the Democrats in any way that will win votes. I’m not sure, but I think the Republicans shifted heavily into anti-environmentalist backlash during the Reagan years precisely because of the rise of environmentalism as both movement & public policy. More precisely, all those suspicious of environmentalism jumped out of the Democratic Party & ran to the GOP, where they started propagandizing the rest of the GOP to believe in the sacredness of “property rights”. The GOP saw a great potential constituency there, & let it happen.[/li]
(For any evil, there’s a fool advocating it.)[/ul]
Please note, I’m not saying the Left is naturally environmentalist, just that it has politically welcomed greens, where the right has turned away from them in the last generation. If a society defines Left as “progressive/humanistic” & Right as “conservative/religious” the political affiliation of environmental conservationists could as easily go the other way.
