Widening the Gap: Evidence of ‘Asymmetric Polarization’ in US Environmental Attitudes

Climate change is a global issue that requires coordinated action from all countries worldwide in order to ameliorate and adapt to climate change. However, such coordination faces significant political barriers, particularly when climate change becomes a partisan issue. In the U.S., partisan polarization has impeded policy outputs, due to the persistence of significant disagreements over the existence of climate change and appropriate policies to address this issue, hinging largely upon political ideologies or identities (Leiserowitz 2006; McCright and Dunlap 2011a, b; Guber 2013; Mayer et al. 2017). These sharp partisan differences in environmental attitudes in the U.S. began to emerge in the 1990s , and have continued to ever since (McCright et al. 2014; Dunlap et al. 2016). The current polarization in environmental attitudes is rooted in concerted efforts by elite conservative actors to shift public opinion, most prominently through right-wing media outlets and conservative think tanks. As such, it is no surprise that enormous political polarization exists in the US surrounding issues related to the environment (i.e. attitudes, behaviors, policy support, energy preferences, trust in regulatory governance, belief in science). Polarization of environmental attitudes is not entirely unique within American political discourse. Polarization of individual political attitudes and party voting appears to be at the highest in modern American history. Recent evidence suggests that the growth in polarization may not be equal across party lines, and is therefore rather ‘asymmetric’: Republicans have been found to shift much further to the right over recent years, while Democrats have remained more centrist, or have experienced comparatively more moderate shifts to the left (Hacker and Pierson, 2005; Mann and Ornstein, 2012; Skocpol and Williamson, 2012). Evidence from McCright et al. (2014) suggests a similar pattern of asymmetric polarization within environmental attitudes and party positions in the US as well. As such, this paper investigates the shifts in environmental attitudes in the US over the past 25 years for evidence of ‘aysmmetric polarization’. Utilizing data from the General Social Survey and Pew Research Center, we find that indeed, individuals identifying with the Republican party have become more polarized in their environmental attitudes than their Democratic counterparts. Democrats have shifted to slightly more ‘pro-environmental’ attitudes, while contrastingly, Republicans have decreased markedly over the past two decades. These findings build upon the developing literature surrounding asymmetric patterns of polarization, and have implications for issues of collective action and coalition building.