The Environmentalist Vote/Campaign Issues Since 1972

[I Will Not Be Wrong]

How have environmental issues affected each Presidential election since 1972? I know voters who are most focused on these issues are a small percentage of the electorate, and that these issues are never the main points of a campaign. But for those that do vote on environmental issues (and those affected by potential drawbacks, such as coal plant closures), which states would they tend to live in? I know West Virginia would be an obvious example for those that have reacted negatively to environmental protections. I have read east Oregon has also. I am going to guess that Vermont and Colorado have many environmentally conscious voters?

[Agonized-Statism]

Regardless of how many jobs environmental protection can create with the right plan, the negative connotation of environmentalism and its association with the Democrat brand has probably done more damage to the party in rural areas than anything else. The 1990s northern spotted owl controversy, for example, may have made the difference between McGovern/Dukakis/Clinton/etc.'s margins in the Northwest and 21st century Democrats'. I suspect that's another reason why the presidential map has looked pretty static since the candidacy of Gore, the arch-environmentalist of his day.

The battleground created by environmentalism- which shouldn't even exist in the first place IMO- is those involved in the oil and gas, agriculture, meat, construction, and forestry industries versus college-educated environmentalists. Fuel to the split between the white working class and more affluent urban whites that had already started in the 1960s.

[darklordoftech]

I’m sure single-issue environmentalists have voted Democratic that far back.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

Regardless of how many jobs environmental protection can create with the right plan, the negative connotation of environmentalism and its association with the Democrat brand has probably done more damage to the party in rural areas than anything else. The 1990s northern spotted owl controversy, for example, may have made the difference between McGovern/Dukakis/Clinton/etc.'s margins in the Northwest and 21st century Democrats'. I suspect that's another reason why the presidential map has looked pretty static since the candidacy of Gore, the arch-environmentalist of his day.

The battleground created by environmentalism- which shouldn't even exist in the first place IMO- is those involved in the oil and gas, agriculture, meat, construction, and forestry industries versus college-educated environmentalists. Fuel to the split between the white working class and more affluent urban whites that had already started in the 1960s.

How do you think the environmentalist movement should've acted in the 60s and 70s to minimize polarization along that battleground? And what do you think can be done now?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

It goes without saying that voters who describe themselves as environmentalists voted Democrat in every election since 1972. Do I have any evidence for this? No, but I can't imagine it wouldn't be the case. Although before 2000, the partisan lines would have been a little more blurred, since America hadn't yet polarized around this issue.

In the 70s and 80s, environmentalism was generally associated with hippie/counterculture/granola types, and I think some boomers still have that association that makes environmentalism unappealing to them (except for the ones who actually were granola boomers, of course). But it wasn't just "save the turtles", soft environmentalism had a lot of mainstream appeal to blue-collar workers and suburbanites alike who were worried about air and water pollution (see: Cuyahoga River fire). Nixon established the EPA, and Reagan had implemented environmentalist measures as California governor, so clearly even conservative Republicans were supportive of some environmentalist measures.

In the 90s and 00s, there was an "Al Gore-ification" of this issue. Global warming started to enter the public consciousness, and technocratic liberals like Gore started to take this issue seriously. This is where the partisan lines start to get drawn more firmly. Cleaning up polluted rivers is one thing, but actually reducing emissions threatened people's livelihoods - especially farmers, ranchers, miners, truckers, and some factory workers. Farmers and ranchers were already Republican for the most part, but blue-collar people like miners and factory workers grew skeptical of the Democrats on this issue. Meanwhile, college-educated (sub)urbanites who previously might have only supported limited measures, now started to support more comprehensive measures, and started leaning left.

In the late 2010s and into the present, there has been a rise in more explicitly left-wing socialist politics, and they have integrated environmentalism into their ideology. What Al Gore was to 1990s-era environmentalism, AOC is to 2020s-era environmentalism. This has meant an even greater ideological polarization.

[Agonized-Statism]

How do you think the environmentalist movement should've acted in the 60s and 70s to minimize polarization along that battleground? And what do you think can be done now?

It's heading in the right direction actually, because I think it would take an embrace of sweeping social and economic reforms and public works projects. So long as this country belongs to the capitalists and especially so long as nothing gets done about special interest lobbying, there will always be well-funded and well-marketed pushback from industry leaders, but that can be overcome with unity behind a decarbonization plan that leaves no one behind- more so as climate change wreaks havoc. My biggest suggestion would be to tie it all together as a new national mission for a directionless America- promote American soft power via the deployment of skilled citizens around the world, the sale of American-made clean energy and climate-resilient infrastructure products to developing countries, and international collaboration on clean energy innovation. Our answer to the Belt and Road Initiative.

There has to be a rejection of neoliberalism and a renewed faith in the ability of a group of people to come together for a common good. No more "just learn to code" or "just buy an electric car", no more passing along the responsibilities of environmentalism to atomized individuals from the big systems that need to be changed.

On the problems of '60s and '70s environmentalists, this article sums it up pretty well: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-american-environmentalism-failed/

"The new environmental organizations were created explicitly to take advantage of the evolving regime of environmental laws enacted during the Nixon administration that gave citizens a solid foothold in the enforcement of environmental regulations. Yet despite the seemingly democratic purpose of such legal tools as public participation and citizen suits, the public interest organizations failed to promote widespread, bottom-up citizen involvement. [...] Moreover, building their membership through direct mail solicitations instead of political organizing and direct action, the public interest organizations appealed to the white, middle-class, suburban constituency that blossomed during the 1960s but was not inclined to engage in hands-on activism. [...] Often ad hoc and singular and always community-driven, grassroots issues and strategies have largely failed to percolate up to the higher echelons of the environmental establishment. The result has been a wide gulf between local environmentalists and their professional counterparts."

Then and now, it's important for professional environmentalists to focus their problem-solving strategies on local environmental issues and value local civic networks in addressing environmental harms. The decentralized nature of the Green Party is sort of a response to that problem IMO. Republicans aren't wrong when they describe professional environmentalists as ivory tower coastal elitists who think they know what's best for you, who want to force the masses to eat bugs and live in pods. Most of all, environmentalists went wrong around that time when they hitched their wagon to the overpopulation hysteria- environmentalism since that time connotes sinister population control schemes, and that stuff needs to be ditched from the green world yesterday. Also something the new generation is doing right, I've been noticing more warnings about eco-fascism from younger environmentalist content creators.