Ralph Nader Deserves A Hug: A Look at Politics and the Environment

This topic submitted by Sean Collins, James Flynn (flynn@muc.muohio.edu) at 11:59 pm on 5/3/01. Additions were last made on Friday, May 4, 2001. Section: Myers.

Abstract:
"Ralph Nader Deserves a Hug" tested the correlation between political affiliation and environment awareness and concern, specifically how liberalness or conservativeness contributes to one's relationship with ecology. Surveying was done by using a sample group of 120 Miami University students of varied political and environmental views, and results showed for that eight out of the nine values described by Kellert (detailed below), political views might have affected responses.

Introduction:
For many students, college marks a new period of their life that will bring about
lifelong change. One of these changes often is the blossoming of a student's interest in
politics or a change in the way they view their environment.
This previous year marked a landmark in American politics, with the controversial election of George W. Bush. Throughout the entire election, students on Miami seemed to have a heightened sense of what was going on in the political world around them.
One of the major issues in the election this year was the environment and the ways that each presidential candidate saw its importance in the future of the country. Particularly in regards to former Vice President and Presidental candidate Al Gore, who has a long history of environmental concerns and action.
Also for the first time since the early twentieth century, a third party, the Green party, arose and became a strong political force, arguably costing Gore the close election on the basis of the Green party's even stronger environmental platform by swaying constituents to their side.
With all of this in mind, it seems timely and extremely important to see how
college students identify with political parties, and especially to see whether or not they
conform to this new driving force in their life and how it relates to environmental concerns.
In Ten Theories of Human Nature, David L. Haberman and Leslie Stevenson
condenses Confucius' writing in the Analects, saying " a man should strive to enter politics simply because he knows this to be right, even when he is well aware that his principles cannot prevail." (33) To further this, we believe that as the more liberal the respondent is, the more environmentally conscious he/she is, because in the political system we live in the liberals, such as progressive democrats and Green Party members, have strong environmental views and we see no reason why typical college students views wouldn't reflect that.
However, we think we will see a lot of people conforming, because we live in
a rather strict two-party system, unlike a parliamentary system where many parties allow
people to pick a party that more correctly reflects their views, and people generally feel a
need to identify with that group and will accordingly adopt the majority of that parties
rhetoric, including their policy on environmental issues.

One of the last activities that Bill Clinton performed as president was to set aside 6 million acres of national forest and wildlife land. His vice president, Al Gore, also had a strong interest in the environment, and used this as a platform for his bid for the
presidency. By contrast, one of George W. Bush's first contemplation's as our current president was mining the Alaskan oil reserve - this from a man who has profited from Texas oil all of his life. Good thing he won Florida! In addition, the newly formed Green Party has such interests as nuclear disarmament and the embracing of industrial hemp, issues that have caused many of the more liberal-leaning Democrats to support this party.
The relevance here is that there seems to be a correlation between appreciating and being sensitive toward the environment and political party affiliation. It's probably not as black and white as "being a Democrat means saving the environment and being a
Republican means destroying it", because that's a little naive, but we'd like to see the extent of which that might hold true.
One resource we are used is the aforementioned Ten Theories of Human Nature,
as stated. We also got good stuff out of "What's Ahead in Environmental Policy?" by William H. Miller. This article discusses environmental policy and its relationship with industry, big business and other sources that can influence political parties (such as through campaign contributions, soft money, etc.).
In "The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere", Douglas Torgerson explores the relationship between environmentalism and political thought. In Peter Huber's "Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto", a hard-line conservative looks at how the environmentalists may have underestimated the condition, and that such things as drilling for oil in Alaska may not be that harmful.
But the most important resource we used was The Value of Life by Stephen Kellert, which discusses Nine Basic Value (NBV) systems (Utilitarian, Naturalistic, Ecologistic-Scientific, Aesthetic, Symbolic, Dominionistic, Humanistic, Moralistic, Negativistic) and their contexts in society, which includes relationships to biophilia, politics, and more. We took each of these values and assigned a logical political affiliation with them. Utilitarian was more of a conservative value, Naturalistic was both liberal and conservative, Ecologistic-Scientific was more of a liberal value, Aesthetic was a shared value, as was Symbolic, Dominionistic was a more conservative value, Humanistic was a liberal value, so was Moralistic, and Negativistic was a conservative value.
We decided to do this particular project because both Sean and I are interested in politics, and since this class and this project started around the beginning of a new president's term - a president of the opposing party and of rather questionable environmental ideals ("Hey, Jeb, how about dumping off the Florida coasts? That's cool, right?") - we thought it would be interesting to see how political affiliation tied in with environmental awareness and/or concern.
The inherent relevance of this study is to show whether or not being of a certain political party or mindset can help determine how you feel about the environment. This is important for all those interested in helping to preserve our ecology (for they might be better suited to a particular party where their ideas will be acted upon), as well as those in politics who might want to make environmentalism a part of their platform.

Methods:
In order to test our hypothesis, we needed to get a strong set of data as well as the opinions of everyday people. Otherwise, this whole thing wouldn't really make much sense. So, we ended up developing this survey:

...But that was kind of crappy and didn't really test our hypothesis the way we wanted it to, so we developed this second survey which we subsequently passed out and used:

1) Sex: Male _____ Female _____
2) Year in school: F __ So __ J __ Se __
3) Major: ____________________________
4) Political Party affiliation: ____________________________
5) Rank how conservative or liberal you feel you are: 1 2 3 4 5
(1 being more conservative, 5 being more liberal)
6) Rank your environmental awareness: 1 2 3 4 5
(1 not aware, 5 aware)
7) How closely do you identify with your party's environmental platform? 1 2 3 4 5
(1 identify, 5 do not)
8) How much has your environmental awareness/sensitivity changed since you started
affiliating with your political party? 1 2 3 4 5
(1 changed, 5 not changed)
9) I feel that animal testing is acceptable if it helps cure or treat human disease. T F
10) I find it calming to participate in outdoors activities such as whale watching, visiting zoos, fishing, hunting, etc. T F
11) I sometimes find the intracacies of nature fascinating and want to know more. T F
12) I am sometimes awed by the sheer beauty of such things as a sunset, a mountain landscape or the grace of the movements of a deer. T F
13) I feel nature can inspire creativity in humans, such as poetry, song, painting, etc. T F
14) I feel that humans are meant to tame and control nature. T F
15) I sometimes feel affinity & personal connection with nature, particularly animals. T F
16) I sometimes feel a personal responsibility for environmental problems. T F
17) I have a strong aversion to species that stereotypical have negative connotations, such sharks, snakes, scorpions, spiders, etc. T F

That one is much better and more appropriate to the NBV, don't you think? In this survey, each of the T/F questions are modeled in order after the values to give a good idea of people's opinions and feelings of them. Nice.
We completed 120 surveys of both main campus and Western majors, trying to get a good mix of both, as well as a varied mix of political affiliations (luckily there were a few scattered Green and even Libertarians out there - God bless 'em).
Besides placing the NBV on the survey, we wrote these specific questions
because we felt: 1) they adequately described people's political affiliations 2) they explored how their environmental affiliations were affected by their political affiliations 3) they give a general idea of people's feelings on the environment by specific example 4) many of these are current issues that have been/are being debated in political circles.
After completing the surveys, we ran them through Statview. We ran three forms of contingency tables - observed frequencies, expected values and a summary table. In addition, we categorized the responses into low and high liberal and conservativeness and well as a middle range.
Finally, surprisingly enough, the timeline that we posted onto the web long along was something that we actually stuck to quite well, with a few minor exceptions. If you don't remember it, we can't blame you, so here it is again:
* March 9 - copies of survey finished
* March 19 to April 17 - survey distribution
* April 10 - most surveys completed and data entry begun
* April 17 - all surveys completed and data entered in statview
* April 24 - finish data analysis, final report begun
* Week of April 29 - final report finished, posted to web.
After the surveys were completed, we didn't get to entering data until about a week after we said were going to. Sorry about that, but it's just because we're two lazy dudes.

Results:
All charts are attached in back or for the on-line check out: http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~collins1/junk.html
For the first value, Utilitarian (Question 9), there is a p-value of .0001. This shows that there is a significant difference between the random expected values and the values that we received. The reason for this is the significant dependence upon the rows and columns that we used in generating the tables. 24 out of 27 low liberals (conservatives) answered true, while 24 out of 59 high liberals answered true.
The Naturalistic value (Question 10) had a p-value of .382. This was the only question where the results showed that there was not a significant difference between the expected and observed. There is no significant dependence upon the rows and the columns and the patterns we saw in the expected and observed. 22 of 27 low liberals answered true as opposed to 53 of 58 high liberals.
The Ecologistic-Scientific value (Question 11), had a p-value of less than .0001. Therefore, there is a strong dependency between the rows and columns of the observed and the expected. 12 of 27 low liberals answered true against 53 of 57 high liberals.
The Aesthetic value (Question 12), much like the previous value, has a .0001 p-value. 14 of 27 low liberals answered true, while 55 of 59 high liberals answered true.
The Symbolic value (Question 13) had a p-value of .0142. 23 of 27 low liberals answered true against 59 of 59 high liberals (how about that!).
The Dominionistic value (Question 14) had a p-value of less than .0001. 18 of 27 low liberals answered true, while 0 of 59 high liberals answered true.
The Humanistic value (Question 15) had a .0043 p-value. 16 of 27 low liberals answered true, and 52 of 59 high liberals answered true.
The Moralistic value (Question 16) had a p-value of less than .0001. 7 of 27 low liberals answered true, while 55 of 59 answered true.
The Negativistic value (Question 17) had a .0010 p-value. 15 of 27 low liberals answered true, and 12 of 59 high liberals answered true.

Conclusion:
For the following values, (all of them expect naturalistic), we were correct in our hypotheses.
For the Utilitarian, we hypothesized we felt more conservatives would have these views. Results show we were correct, because a higher percentage of conservatives selected true than liberals. We felt that in the American political scene today more conservatives than liberals try to use the environment for their own good. One of the best examples is when George W. Bush had thoughts of drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. Also, animal liberation groups tend to be considered more radical liberals, and therefore, opposed to animal testing.
For the Naturalistic value we hypothesized that it would be a trait shared by both conservatives and liberal equally. This hypothesis was correct because both had high percentages of those who answered true. We felt that most people regardless of political affiliations have some type of experience with nature. Examples of experiences were hunting, whale-watching, and visiting zoos.
The Ecologistic-Scientific value was projected to be more liberal, which turned out to be correct. Not even half of conservatives polled answered true. This was more of an educated guess, but we felt that most environmentalists tend to be liberals. It was our assumption that environmentalists are more likely than most people to admire the true intricacies of nature.
For the Aesthetic value we thought both groups would identify. We were not exactly correct, because while there was a high percentage of liberals who selected true, just over half of the conservatives selected true. This was another trait where we felt that people regardless of ideology would admire nature for its aesthetic beauty. We feel as if part of the reason why conservatives might have answered false to this one is in the wording of the question. Most people are probably not awed, and if they are they tend to be more environmentally aware and more liberal in their ideology.
For the Symbolic value, we felt liberals would be more inclined to associate themselves. While this was true, many conservatives selected true as well. Perhaps this is a case of where it was to hard to deny that nature does inspire a lot of people, no matter how one may personally feel about the outdoors.
For the Dominionistic value, we thought this was very conservative ideal, and indeed over 2/3 of the conservative selected true, while 0 liberals felt this way. Once again it is prevalent in American politics where conservatives take actions to try to control the environment.
Humanistic we felt would be more of a liberal value. This was generally correct because most liberals selected true while just over half of the conservatives selected true. While we feel as if we mostly correct, people in general tend to give human traits to animals, regardless of their politics.
For the Moralistic value, we felt this was more of a liberal trait. The results show 55 of 59 liberals selected true, while only 1/4 of conservative selected true. It is a very liberal view to feel as if one is personally responsible for environmental destruction. This probably largely accounts for the results we obtained.
And finally, we felt the Negativistic value would be more of a conservative value. 12 of 59 liberals and just over half of conservatives answered true, meaning conservatives were more inclined to agree with this value. We made an educated guess that conservatives see the environment a little more negatively, due political policies. But with nearly half saying that they did not have a strong aversion to 'scary' animals, maybe most people just grow out of this type of view.

In our hypothesis we thought that there would be a direct link between political affiliation and environmental concern, and we used Kellert and his Nine Basic Values to test this. In every one of the values except the Naturalistic, there is a good chance that your political affiliation plays a role in the subject's answers. For the naturalistic, the pattern between the expected and the observed shows that the subject's political ideology most likely did not have an effect of their answer to the question. Even though we guessed correctly that both would identify with this value, it was not because of their political affiliation.
What does this all mean? It seems that people tend to pick, at least to a certain degree, political parties fairly represent their political ideals. Either that, or they confirm their environmental and ecological views more to that of their parties, because the data that we collected and the statistics that we complied show that people's politics and environmental views coincide usually quite well.

Works Cited:
1) Abraham, Rick. The Dirty Truth: The Oil and Chemical Dependency of George W. Bush. New York: Mainstream Publishers, 2000.
2) Gore, Al. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. New York: Plume, 1993.
3) Haberman, David L. and Stevenson, Leslie. Ten Theories of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
4) Huber, Peter. Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto. NY: Basic Books, 2000. 224pp.
5) Kellert, Stephen. The Value of Life. Washington, D.C., Island Press, 1996.
6) Torgerson, Douglas. The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

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