American political polarization on the issue of climate change, specifically the predominant notion that environmental protection is a left-wing cause, has never felt intuitive to me. The people in my life who were most integrated with, knowledgable about, and invested in caring for the natural world – hunters, fishers, and farmers – were all also life-long conservatives. Knowing first-hand the extent to which these individuals revered the natural landscape that surrounded us in rural Virginia, I reconciled this perceived disconnect by presuming their commitment to the environment, which I witnessed as implicit in their rural ways of life, took a back seat to other political preferences and agendas. I had never considered, however, that rural existence and identity could, in-and-of-itself, be constructive of an ideology opposed to climate change policy.
A December 2022 Associated Press news report, "Rural voters 'in the trenches on climate, leery of Biden," complicated my understanding of rural Americans' relationship to climate policy. The story focuses on Raquel Krach, a rice farmer in a rural area of the Sacramento Valley, who has been unable to grow full crop yields due to ongoing drought. Despite confidently attributing the increasing prevalence of such adverse natural phenomena to the effects of climate change, Krach feels she cannot even discuss the issue of climate change policy with her rural neighbors given its deeply divisive nature within her community. The report contextualizes Krach's rural neighbors' antagonistic relationship to climate policy within a broader trend by which rural communities are less supportive of federal climate change mitigation action relative to their urban counterparts, even when analyzed internally within political parties.
The existence of an urban-rural divide with regards to attitudes towards climate policy is particularly surprising given the ways in which rural communities are on the forefront of many climate issues. As the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Third National Climate Assessment highlights:
Warming, climate volatility, extreme weather events, and environmental change are already affecting the economies and cultures of rural areas.
More specifically, because rural socioeconomic ways of life are heavily dependent on natural resources that are being impacted by climate change and less diversified in terms of sources of socioeconomic stability, the livelihoods, infrastructure, and quality of life of many rural communities across the country are being jeopardized by climate shifts we are already seeing.
Drought and lack of available water, such as that posing challenges to Krach's farm, provide just one illustration of climate change's many iterations and corresponding implications for rural communities. Other ways in which climate change-influenced disasters continue to have an outsized impact on Rural America include increasingly frequent wildfires (previously discussed on this blog here, here, here, and here), flooding (here and here), and coastal erosion.
A 2020 study, "Understanding Rural Attitudes Towards the Environment and Conservation in America," produced by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, confirmed both the existence of an urban-rural divide with regards to attitudes towards climate policy, as well as what I knew from personal interactions: this divide was not the product of rural Americans caring less for the environment. To the contrary, the study found that rural Americans definitively do value environmental protection and have strong place-oriented values embodied by environmental stewardship and an ongoing connection to nature.
Instead, the Nicholas Institute study posits the divide is largely the result of rural Americans' negative attitudes towards the government and, particularly, their distrust of federal environmental policy and regulation they feel has not taken into account the needs of rural constituencies and, consequently, led to bad outcomes for their communities. Similarly, the study identifies rural Americans' anti-climate policy disposition as emerging from skepticism of large environmental advocacy groups they see as pushing top-down regulation that serves the agenda of global climate activists, but not necessarily their small towns. Thus, the study demonstrates the ways in which for rural Americans being pro-environment, but anti-environmental policy is not inherently contradictory.
Understanding rural Americans' aversion to climate change mitigation policy, despite in many ways bearing the brunt of climate change's most tangible impacts, has import beyond just being of theoretical interest. Rural Americans are essential to the success or failure of much environmental policy implementation. More specifically, as spotlighted in a 2021 paper, "Understanding Rural Identities and Environmental Policy Attitudes in America," by Emily Diamond:
Conservation of ecosystems, water, and wildlife, the production of energy – renewable and non-renewable – and many other environmental issues depend on the actions taken by rural residents; gaining rural buy-in for environmental regulations can lead to greater success in their implementation.
Given the critical importance of rural communities to climate policy implementation, policy-makers and activists should take seriously the recommendations of the Nicholas Institute study to: (1) collaborate with local constituents, particularly trusted community leaders, such that rural stakeholders are positioned to have an active voice in local resource management and the broader solution, (2) build state and local government partnerships into policy to mitigate federal distrust and bolster overall efficacy, and (3) leverage rural Americans' existing environmental values both by honing in on the importance of environmental stewardship for the purposes of acting on behalf of future generations, and by focusing on specific local issues, such as protecting clean water sources, rather than on climate change and global emission reduction more universally.
2 comments:
This has always been interesting for me to think about as well, since it seems like such a contradiction on its face. I found an article (https://grist.org/opinion/how-to-get-rural-americans-involved-in-climate-crisis/) that tries to analyze this problem, which asserts that climate action seems to be more of a messaging problem than a policy problem for many rural Americans. The article seems to come to a similar conclusion that you do- many rural people seem to reject measures meant at combating climate change, simply because of notions that some high-up in the government is trying to tell them what to do. When in reality, these people recognize the underlying problems and want to fix them as well. It seems that well meaning people are using “urban” terminology to describe a problem that transcends the urban-rural divide, and scaring rural people off in the process. How could messages about the seriousness of climate change be packaged in a way that appeals more to rural areas? I think that your first conclusion point on engaging local leaders is definitely the best immediate way to make this happen. It could not only give the movement to address climate change a more familiar, trustworthy face, but also be significant in making people question the massive amounts of misinformation out there about climate change in general.
Thank you for this insightful post! I agree with you: I've always found that rural people in my life are some of the most environmentally conscious people. However, now that I think about it, they also only really care about local environments. Bring up climate change and all the environmentalism ejects from their body.
I also agree with all of the causes you listed. Urban people severely underestimate the animosity in rural communities for the federal government. That, coupled with a genuine ignorance to climate science, makes aversion to climate policy understandable. The saddest part is that climate change will likely hit rural communities the hardest since they tend to lack investment and infrastructure. We gotta get rural communities on board with green energy ASAP!
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