Climate patriots? Concern over climate change and other environmental issues in Australia

Abstract

Echoing the anti-pollution and resource conservation campaigns in the United States in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, some scholars advocate mobilising support for environmental issues by harnessing the notion of environmental patriotism. Taking action to reduce the impact of global warming has also been cast as a patriotic cause. Drawing upon quantitative data from a recent national survey, we examine the link between patriotism and environmental attitudes in Australia, focussing upon climate change. We find that patriotism has a largely neutral association with concern over environmental issues, with the exception of climate change and, to a lesser extent, wildlife preservation. Expressing concern over climate change appears to be unpatriotic for some Australians. Even after controlling for political party identification and other important correlates of environmental issue concerns, patriots are less likely than others to prioritise climate change as their most urgent environmental issue and less likely to believe that climate change is actually occurring.

Keywords

Australia climate change environmental issues patriots public attitudes scepticism

1. Introduction

Attitudinal research on environmental issues has been undertaken over more than 25 years in Australia. Researchers have examined the salience of environmental issues (e.g. Pakulski and Tranter, 2004; Papadakis, 1993), the importance of the environment as an election issue (e.g. Bean et al., 1990) and green and brown environmental issue priorities (e.g. Crook and Pakulski, 1995; McAllister and Studlar, 1999; Pakulski et al., 1998), while more recently, attitudinal research on environmental issues in Australia has tended to focus upon climate change (e.g. Fielding et al., 2012; Pietsch and McAllister, 2010; Tranter, 2011, 2013, 2014; Tranter and Booth, 2015). For example, Pietsch and McAllister (2010) found that while most Australians understand the notion of an emissions trading scheme and ‘are generally willing to pay for environmental protection, a large minority remains to be convinced of the merits of an ETS’ (p. 232). Similarly, while the majority of Australians claim to recycle more and use less water because of the environment, far fewer were willing to pay higher taxes, higher fuel prices or more for electricity in order to prevent global warming (Tranter, 2014).

The issues of global warming and climate change tend to polarise citizens in countries such as the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, according to their social background and to an even greater extent, on the basis of their political party affiliations and ideological position. Women tend to be more concerned about environmental issues than men are (Zelezny et al., 2000: 444–445), including climate change (Tranter, 2014). In the United States, men have higher scientific knowledge and scientific literacy than women, however, while women may be more likely than men to underestimate what they know, they are more knowledgeable than men when it comes to climate change (McCright, 2010: 68).¹ Educational attainment and employment sector are also associated with environmental issue priorities. Tertiary education is a key factor underlying environmental concern (Rootes, 1995: 227), with education effects dividing attitudes on climate change in the United States (Hamilton, 2010; McCright, 2010) and Australia (Tranter, 2011). The tertiary educated also prioritise green issues, such as logging and wildlife preservation over brown issues such as pollution and waste disposal (Pakulski and Tranter, 2004). Attitudes towards environmental issues, particularly climate change, are also influenced by the sources of information one accesses and level of trust in information providers, such as climate scientists or environmental organisations. Public trust in climate scientists was weakened severely following the so-called ‘climategate’ affair, where right-wing commentary alleged ‘warmist’ scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were conspiring to misrepresent climate data (Bricker, 2013; Leiserowitz et al., 2012), although these scientists were later exonerated of any wrongdoing (Lucas et al., 2015: 80).

In Australia, those located on the left of the political spectrum are often more concerned about environmental issues than the right are (Crook and Pakulski, 1995; Tranter, 2013). Related to, but distinct from, political ideology, perhaps the most important indicator of one’s stance on climate change in countries such as the United States (e.g. Hamilton, 2010, 2011; McCright, 2010; McCright and Dunlap, 2011), the United Kingdom (Poortinga et al., 2011; Whitmarsh, 2011), Australia (e.g. Fielding et al., 2012; Tranter, 2011) and cross-nationally (Tranter and Booth, 2015) is political party affiliation. Those affiliated with left-leaning parties (such as the Greens and to a lesser extent Labor) are far more concerned about climate change/global warming than right-leaning party identifiers (such as supporters of the conservative Liberal and National parties).² Greens and Australian Labor Party (ALP) supporters favour action on climate change, such as paying more for renewable energy, while Liberal and National party coalition identifiers are far more likely to oppose such actions (Tranter, 2014).

While acknowledging the importance of the correlates of environmental issue concerns mentioned above, we explore some posited but under-researched arguments that patriotism should be associated with public support for environmental issues. Some scholars have argued that the notion of patriotism, a concept employed in twentieth-century campaigns to raise awareness of energy conservation and pollution (Cozen, 2013; Todd, 2014), should be revived in the cause of contemporary environmental issues (e.g. Cafaro, 2010; Orr, 2004; Siegel and Morris, 2010), including climate change (e.g. Soutphommasane, 2009; Todd, 2014). We draw upon nationally representative survey data to examine the association between patriotism and public opinion on climate change and other environmental issues in Australia.

2. Patriotism and environmentalism

The word comes from the Latin root ‘patria’: fatherland or homeland. So patriotism would seem to indicate a general concern to protect the land and the people of one’s homeland, however extensively one defines them (Cafaro, 2010: 192).

Patriotism has been harnessed in attempts to garner support for a variety of environmental causes. Writing on the history of environmentalism in the United States during the twentieth century, Todd (2014: 104) demonstrates how patriots were called upon to establish national parks, to fight for nature preservation and smoke abatement and to support domestic conservation of energy and the recycling of waste materials during World War II. Wartime conservation posters have even inspired contemporary environmental activists to develop a Green Patriot Posters campaign designed to ‘help visualize global warming and sustainability issues’ (Cozen, 2013: 298).

Environmental patriotism for Todd (2014) is ‘the belief that a country’s greatness is defined by its environment’ (p. 6). As such, she maintains environmental patriotism ‘might function as a persuasive strategy for environmental advocacy’ and ‘a civic and national response to global environmental issues’ (Todd, 2014: 7, 6). Cafaro (2010) also claims ‘good patriotism’ as opposed to nationalistic forms of patriotism to be an environmental virtue, suggesting ‘environmentalism, rightly understood, is patriotism’ (pp. 186, 192).³ Others have argued that environmentalists should look beyond their local and even national attachments to embrace patriotism on a global level, to be citizens of the Earth (Wood in Eckersely, 2007: 183–184). However, while Eckersely (2007: 192) favours environmental patriotism with a ‘deep and intimate knowledge of, and attachment to particular places’, she cautions, ‘planetary patriotism appears to subvert rather than merely extend the conventional understanding of patriotism as love of one’s country’ because traditional patriots would argue patriotism is ‘rooted in the life of particular national communities’ (p. 184).

Proposing a liberal form of patriotism ‘committed to a national tradition based on a common set of values and shared historical experience’, Soutphommasane (2009: 61) acknowledges that while Australians may express patriotism as love for their country, this rarely extends to ‘concern for the environment’ (p. 110). However, he argues that patriotism may offer part of the solution to environmental problems as ‘putting climate change at the heart of a nation-building agenda is not only good economic sense, but also a natural extension of an Australian patriotic love of the land’ (Soutphommasane, 2012: 114).⁴ Sustainability advocates also stress the case for climate patriotism in the United States, through a combination of emission reduction and innovative practices. As Steffen (2012) proclaims, ‘[T]he choice is no longer between left and right, coasts and heartland, blue and red: the choice is between climate patriotism for all America … and failure’.

A recent White House (2015) report on the National Security Implications of a Changing Climate lists a variety of national security concerns, as well as concerns over the stability of regions abroad strained by climate change, with implications including mass migration and humanitarian crises, and the potential for increased terrorist activities (see also Gilman et al., 2011). The US Department of Defense specified the importance of linking patriotism with climate change in order to mitigate potential threats to national security. The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate produced a YouTube video entitled ‘Climate Patriots: A Military Perspective on Energy, Climate Change and American National Security’ (Sherry, n.d.; Huffington Post, 2010). The video features ex-military personnel and former Chairman of the US Armed Services Committee Senator John Warner, who argue that humanitarian disasters and political instability threaten national security while ‘energy independence, climate change and national security are interrelated global challenges’ (Pew, n.d.). These self-proclaimed climate patriots point out that the US military has been shifting towards the adoption of renewable sources of energy for some time. As Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn puts it, ‘we can be patriotic in not just our spirit and our talk … we can better support our troops by becoming more energy efficient and more sustainable by using other forms of energy …’ (Pew, n.d.).

While environmentalists and others advocate patriotism to drive action on environmental issues, we suspect that the association between those identifying as patriots (in terms of love of one’s country) and attitudes towards acting on climate change is unlikely to be positive in Australia. While she was researching attitudes towards asylum seekers rather than environmental issues, Betts (2005) found that Australian patriots ‘feel a strong attachment to their country’ (p. 38) but are less likely to hold university degrees or to be employed in professional occupations. As education and professional occupational status are both positively associated with environmental concern in Australia (Tranter, 1996), we expect patriots may be less likely than others to champion the environment. As Betts (2005) puts it, patriots ‘may indeed be moved by environmental values but, if they are, they are in a minority’ (p. 38). Nevertheless, with appeals to environmental and climate patriotism emerging from a variety of sources, we explore this association empirically using survey data from Australia. We ask, to what extent do patriots express concern over environmental issues, particularly climate change? While patriotism in Australia is not as pervasive as it is in the United States (Eckersely, 2007: 199), we expect Australian patriots to be less likely than others to prioritise climate change as an urgent environmental issue and less concerned about the risks associated with climate change.

We examine recent national survey data to determine the most important environmental issues for Australian adults. Our attention is then focused upon climate change, in an examination of Australians’ beliefs in the veracity of climate change, and perceptions of the risks climate change will pose to their lives. We operationalise a patriotism scale to assess claims that action on climate change can be considered a ‘patriotic’ issue while controlling for important social and political background correlates of environmental issue support. The main research questions orienting this article are as follows:

How do patriots prioritise environmental issues in Australia?

To what extent do patriots believe that climate change is occurring and that it will pose a threat to their way of life?

3. Data and method

We analyse data from the 2013 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA). The AuSSA commenced in 2003 and until 2011 was administered as a biennial survey. Since 2011, survey data have been collected each year, administered in four survey waves. AuSSA samples are drawn systematically from the most recent Australian Electoral Roll. The 2013 AuSSA has a sample size of 1636 and a response rate of 34.7% (Blunsdon, 2015).

We commissioned a module of environmental questions for the 2013 AuSSA and from these questions operationalised several dependent variables. The environmental issue priority questions we included in the AuSSA comprise a set of Likert type questions (5-point scales ranging from very urgent to not at all urgent) that rate 12 environmental issues: ‘In your opinion, how urgent are each of the following environmental concerns in this country?’ (in order of appearance in the survey: pollution, climate change, waste disposal, marine conservation, logging of forests, soil degradation, destruction of wildlife, extreme weather events, nuclear power, loss of biodiversity, mining, overpopulation). The 12 environmental issues consist of nine items that have appeared in previous Australian Election Study and AuSSA surveys – the destruction of wildlife, waste disposal, pollution, soil degradation, logging of forests, climate change, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation and nuclear power. We also designed three contemporary environmental issue questions that to our knowledge have not appeared previously in major Australian social surveys to measure extreme weather events, marine conservation and mining. Respondents were then asked to rank the 12 issues in terms of their urgency: Which two of the above environmental issues have worried you personally the most in the last 12 months? Which is the most urgent? And which is the second most urgent? The six most urgent responses to the ranking questions were used to construct a series of dichotomous 1/0 issue-dependent variables, analysed using binary logistic regression.

Two additional dependent variables are analysed. Beliefs in the veracity of climate change are measured using the question, ‘On a scale of 1–10, where 1 is don’t believe at all and 10 is completely convinced, how convinced are you that climate change is actually happening?’⁵ while perceived threats posed by climate change are measured with the question, ‘How serious a threat do you think climate change will pose to you or your way of life in your lifetime?’ (responses: very serious, fairly serious, not very serious, not at all serious).⁶ The climate scale is analysed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, while the ordinal ‘threats’ dependent variable is suitable for analysis with ordinal logistic regression (Agresti and Finlay, 1997).

The AuSSA also contains a variety of social and political background and attitudinal questions that are known correlates of climate change and other environmental issues. While we did not design these, or the patriotism questions described below, they enable us to operationalise several relevant independent variables for analysis. Several independent variables are 1/0 dummy coded variables, such as sex (women = 1), education level (degree = 1) and three dummy variables constructed for political party identification from the question ‘Do you usually think of yourself as close to any particular political party, and if yes, which party is that?’ (Australian Greens = 1, ALP = 1, no party ID = 1. The reference category for dummy variables consists of Liberal and National party identifiers, coded 0). Dummy variables are also constructed for scientists and environmentalists from the following question: ‘Who is your main source of trustworthy information about environmental issues?’ (responses: environmental organisations, scientists, journalists, friends or family, work colleagues, other). Age is a continuous variable measured in years, while a variable measuring attitudes towards immigration is included for two reasons. As mentioned above, some patriotic accounts for garnering support for action on climate change argue that large numbers of people in some countries will be displaced as a result of changing climatic conditions. The immigration variable therefore serves as a control for those who prioritise climate change because of perceived concerns over the impact of migration. Second, it controls for those who prioritise overpopulation because of concerns over the number of migrants entering Australia.⁷ ‘Do you think the number of immigrants to Australia nowadays should be …’ (response categories: increased a lot + increased a little + remain the same as it is + reduced a little = 0; reduced a lot = 1).

The ‘patriot scale’ was constructed from the following four questions (with each item coded 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree)): ‘How much do you agree or disagree that strong patriotic feelings in Australia …’

Strengthen Australia’s place in the world;

Lead to intolerance in Australia;

Are needed for Australia to remain united;

Lead to negative attitudes towards immigrants in Australia.

After items 1 and 3 were reversed, the scale achieved a reliable Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .77, with higher scores on the scale representing more patriotic feelings. The age and patriot scales are centred at their respective means. In some of the analyses below, the climate scale described above is used as an independent variable, in which case it is also centred at its mean. Descriptive statistics for all variables are presented in Online Appendix (available at: http://pus.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data), and data are analysed using SAS version 9.2.

4. Analyses

We begin by gauging environmental issue salience using both rating and ranking questions. The rating and ranking questions tend to paint somewhat different pictures of environmental concern in Australia (Table 1). Marine conservation, destruction of wildlife, waste disposal and pollution were rated either ‘very urgent’ or ‘urgent’ by approximately 80% of the sample. Soil degradation and logging of forests were seen to be urgent by around 70%, with climate change at 63%. Issue salience declined still further for extreme weather, biodiversity, mining and overpopulation, then sharply to nuclear power at only 41%. However, when it comes to prioritising environmental issues in terms of how much they worried respondents over the past 12 months, Australians tend to concentrate upon two issues – climate change and pollution. Climate change was narrowly selected as the most urgent environmental issue, chosen most frequently as the top priority issue and equal top of the second choice list, although pollution was chosen by very similar proportions of the sample. Climate change has of course been the subject of substantial media coverage (both positive and negative), while pollution has been an important issue since the 1980s (Pakulski and Crook, 1998). Responses then drop away sharply, although we were somewhat surprised by the proportion of people who claimed to be most worried about overpopulation in the last 12 months. While it is an issue sometimes raised by environmentalists, population is generally placed in the too hard, or at least, politically too contentious basket even by the Australian Greens. Our results show the overall urgency of a range of environmental issues. However, social and political background characteristics tend to differentiate responses considerably on these questions and are considered in the next section using regression analysis.

Table 1.

Urgency of environmental issue concerns (%).

	How urgent	Most urgent	Second most urgent	Combined %
Climate change	63	22	11	33
Pollution	78	20	11	31
Overpopulation	51	10	10	20
Marine conservation	81	7	12	19
Extreme weather events	60	8	10	18
Destruction of wildlife	80	7	11	18
Waste disposal	79	6	9	15
Mining	56	5	6	11
Logging of forests	70	4	6	10
Soil degradation	71	3	5	8
Nuclear power	41	4	3	7
Loss of biodiversity	58	2	5	7
Other	–	3	2	5
N		(1485)	(1480)

Source: Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2013).

Column 1: ‘In your opinion, how urgent are each of the following environmental concerns in this country?’ (very urgent + urgent). Columns 2 and 3: ‘Which two of the above environmental issues have worried you the most in the last 12 months? Which is the most urgent and which is the second most urgent?’.

Social background and environmental issue priorities: Regression analyses

In Table 2, we take the top six issues ranked as most urgent and examine their social and political bases using binary logistic regression analysis. The benefit of this multivariate approach is that it allows us to examine the net effects of the patriot scale upon dependent variables, after holding constant the other independent variables in each model. We present odds ratios (ORs) to represent the associations between our independent and the dependent variables.⁸ The independent variables control for social background – sex, age, degree, no religious affiliation, location in a large city and respondents’ main source of information about environmental issues (scientists and environmental groups contrasted with other information sources). Political party identification is represented by three dummy variables representing Labor, Greens and the non-affiliated (contrasted with the Liberal/National coalition reference category). Coefficients are presented to show effects for the patriot scale when it is included in regression model without controls (i.e. bivariate associations) and with controls added (Table 2).

Table 2.

Most urgent environmental issues? (odds ratios).

	Climate	Pollution	Overpopulation	Marine	Weather	Wildlife
Women	1.5**	0.9	0.8	0.8	1.4	1.3
Age (years)	0.996	1.01**	0.99	0.97***	0.98**	0.99
Degree	1.6***	0.7*	0.97	1.0	1.3	0.8
Non-religious	1.2	0.9	1.1	0.9	0.97	1.4
Live in big city	0.9	1.4	1.3	0.7	1.1	1.2
Main source of environmental information
Trust scientists	1.8***	1.1	0.8	1.3	0.7	1.03
Trust environmental organisations (trust ‘other’ reference category)	1.6*	1.2	0.97	1.3	0.7	1.03
Political party ID
Labor	3.3***	1.04	0.6*	0.5*	1.2	0.9
Greens	3.8***	0.8	0.6	0.1*	0.5	0.9
None (coalition reference category)	1.8**	1.1	0.8	0.7	0.8	1.4
Immigration reduced a lot	0.5**	0.9	6.4***	1.2	0.6	1.1
Patriot scale (without controls)	0.86***	1.04	1.04	1.03	1.006	1.10**
Patriot scale (with controls)	0.92***	1.03	0.98	1.02	1.03	1.11**
Nagelkerke R²	.16	.03	.14	.06	.04	.03
N = 1636

Source: Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2013).

p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

To begin, the Nagelkerke R² of .16 for climate change and .14 for overpopulation indicate that the model fit is substantially better for these dependent variables than for any other in Table 2. The reasons for this are apparent, with several independent variables showing substantive and statistically significant effects for climate change, but very few for the other environmental issues. The patriot scale distinguishes attitudes on environmental issues priorities, but only for climate change and wildlife preservation. As expected, ‘patriots’ are less likely to select climate change as an important issue. The bivariate association for patriots on climate change, with an OR of 0.86 is far stronger than the OR of 0.92 after the social and political background controls are added, but still highly statistically significant. This suggests patriots are less likely than others to prioritise climate change over other environmental issues in Australia, after controlling for social background and even more importantly, political affiliations. However, patriots are more likely than others to prioritise wildlife preservation (OR = 1.11 with controls added). In the absence of further data, we can only speculate about the latter finding, but it perhaps reflects a patriotic attachment to certain nationally symbolic fauna, similar to the ‘outdoorsmen’ Schultz and Zelezny (2003: 132) found expressing conservative values of patriotism regarding wildlife habitat protection.

Also of note here is that women are more likely than men to prioritise climate change (OR = 1.5), although no other significant gender effects are apparent. Similarly, the tertiary educated (OR = 1.6) prioritise climate change, while the education effect for pollution is negative. Those who trust scientists or environmental organisations as a source of environmental information are more likely than others to prioritise climate change, although the information variables are not significant predictors for any other environmental issues. As expected, political affiliation is a far stronger predictor of climate change than it is for other urgent issues. Labor (OR = 3.3), Greens (OR = 3.8) and non-identifiers (OR = 1.7) are all more likely than coalition party supports to prioritise climate change. Statistically significant results for the political variables are also apparent for overpopulation and marine conservation. However, Labor identifiers are less likely than coalition supporters to choose overpopulation (OR = .6) or marine conservation (OR = .5), with Greens (OR = .1) far less likely to choose overpopulation than coalition supporters.

In general, we can state that controlling for social and political background, patriotic attitudes divide the Australian public over the prioritisation of environmental issues. Patriots are less likely than others to be concerned about climate change, although somewhat more likely to be concerned about wildlife preservation.

We have shown that the association between patriotism and environmental issue priorities is strongest for climate change. To examine the association between patriotism and climate change further, we analyse a dependent variable that measures beliefs in the veracity of climate change on a 0–10 how convinced are you that climate change is actually happening scale (Table 3). The mean response of 6.8 suggests most Australians tend to believe that climate change is occurring. The results in Table 3 are OLS regression coefficients. Two models are presented to show the bivariate impact of patriotism (Model 1) and the impact of patriotism with controls added (Model 2). The adjusted R² estimates the percentage of variation in the dependent variable that is accounted for by the variables in each model.

Table 3.

How convinced are you that climate change is actually happening? (OLS).

	1	2
Intercept	6.81	4.66
Women		0.56***
Age (years)		−0.010*
Degree		0.66***
Non-religious		0.27
Live in big city		0.32
Main source of environmental information
Trust scientists		1.19***
Trust environmental organisations (trust other reference category)		1.17***
Immigration reduced a lot		−0.72***
Political party ID
Labor		1.83***
Greens		2.29***
None (coalition reference category)		0.85***
Patriot scale	−0.20***	−0.11***
Adjusted R²	.06	.22
N = 1636

OLS: ordinary least squares.

Source: Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2013).

Dependent variable question ‘On a scale of 1–10, where 1 is don’t believe at all and 10 is completely convinced, how convinced are you that climate change is actually happening?’

p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Once again, we see a negative association between patriotism and climate change. Those who score higher on the patriotism scale tend to score lower on the climate change scale. The adjusted R² of .06 for Model 1 suggests patriotism accounts for approximately 6% of the variation in the climate change dependent variable. While in absolute terms this is a weak effect, in the context of survey data, this represents a relatively important association that remains, although is weakened, when controls are added. As in Table 2, many of the effects for the control variables have expected signs, such as gender, education, trust in scientists and environmental organisations, and political party identification. Of greater interest here is the immigration variable. The negative effect on climate change among those who want immigration numbers ‘reduced a lot’ may tap concerns about the displacement of people living in low-lying areas, as sea levels rise. Concern over immigration has a separate effect to patriotism, with patriots less likely than others to believe climate change is occurring, even after controls are added.

Table 4 examines the perceived threat of climate change to Australians’ way of life. An additional variable is also included in Model 3 to control for believing that climate change is occurring. The results are cumulative ORs as the dependent variable is ordinal in structure (Agresti and Finlay, 1997). Patriots (OR = .92) are once again less concerned about the future risks of climate change (Model 1), although the effect of patriotism is mediated by political party identification and other background variables so that it is only statistically significant at p < .1 in Model 2. With the addition of the belief in climate change scale in Model 2, the impact of patriotism evaporates. Similar signed effects to those found in Table 3 are apparent for sex, age, trust in scientists and trust in environmental groups and political partisanship. Partisanship has a strong impact on the threat dependent variable, although partisan differences are weakened substantially with the introduction of the climate change scale in Model 3. Patriotism is a far more important predictor of believing climate change is occurring than it is for differentiating attitudes on the threat posed by climate change.

Table 4.

How serious a threat will climate change be in your lifetime? (odds ratios).

	1	2	3
Women	–	1.4***	1.2
Age (years)	–	0.985***	0.987***
Degree	–	1.1	0.8*
Non-religious	–	0.9	0.8*
Live in big city	–	1.3	1.1
Main source of environmental information
Trust scientists	–	1.7***	1.1
Trust environmental orgs.	–	2.8***	1.9***
(Trust ‘other’ reference category)	–	1	1
Immigration reduced a lot	–	0.79^	1.04
Political party ID
Labor	–	3.4***	1.7***
Greens	–	5.1***	2.1**
None	–	1.5***	1.0
(Coalition reference category)	–	1	1
Patriot scale (6–20)	0.92***	0.97^	1.02
Climate change scale (0–10)	–	–	1.69***
Nagelkerke R²	.02	.11	.47
N = 1583

Source: Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2013).

Dependent variable question: ‘How serious a threat do you think climate change will pose to you or your way of life in your lifetime?’

^p < .1; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

5. Discussion and conclusion

A systematic sample of Australian adults rated their most urgent environmental issues as marine conservation, destruction of wildlife, waste disposal and pollution. Air and water pollution and waste disposal are classic brown issues of concern to Australians since at least the 1980s (Crook and Pakulski, 1995), while destruction of wildlife is a green issue arguably of greater salience for environmental groups than the general public (Pakulski et al., 1998). Marine conservation emerged more recently, to our knowledge for the first time included in an Australian academic survey here. However, when respondents were asked to rank the environmental issues that concerned them the most in the last 12 months, climate change emerged on top.

Social and political indicators of environmentalism have been studied extensively, and environmental issue support has several known correlates. In Australia, these include level of education, age, gender, political ideology (left-right) and political party identification (Tranter, 2014). While other environmental issues tend to be less circumscribed politically, beliefs in the veracity of climate change and the threat it poses to future generations are divided politically in Australia as they are elsewhere (see, for example, Hamilton, 2010; Jaspal et al., 2015; McCright and Dunlap, 2011; Tranter, 2011; Tranter and Booth, 2015; Whitmarsh, 2011). We found that Australians who identify with the Greens or the ALP are far more likely than Liberals or National Party supporters to prioritise climate change as an urgent environmental issue. Alternatively, coalition supporters tend to view marine conservation and overpopulation as more urgent than ALP supporters do, a finding that requires further research. Importantly, we show that partisanship effects on climate change remain, even after controlling for beliefs in the veracity of climate change.

Patriotism and climate change

As mentioned earlier, Todd (2014) has documented several environmental campaigns initiated by US governments during the twentieth century, calling upon patriots to establish national parks, reduce pollution, conserve energy and recycle waste materials for the war effort. Cafaro (2010) has advocated environmental patriotism, as has Eckersely (2007), although the latter is not uncritical of this approach. Advocates of climate change as a patriotic cause are also quite diverse and find support among some unlikely allies. The US military has called upon ‘climate patriots’ to counter threats to national and resource security posed by climate change (e.g. Pew, n.d.). Sustainability campaigner Alex Steffen (2012) has also urged action from climate patriots to address the impact of climate change in the United States, while in Australia, Soutphommasane (2009) claimed patriots should support action on climate change as it ‘adds urgency to a patriotic obligation of learning to live within the constraints of the land’ (p. 111). Yet after controlling for several known environmental issue correlates, we present empirical evidence to show that despite calls for patriots to support environmental causes, patriots are less concerned than others about environmental issues, particularly about climate change.

The notion that environmental issues should be supported by patriots has been criticised on conceptual grounds. Eckersely (2007) stresses that ‘strong loyalties to particular places, territories, or nations that are felt to be ours gives rise to isolationism and indifference to places, territories or nations that are not ours’ (p. 196). In a review of Todd’s (2014) book on environmental patriotism in the United States, Svoboda (2014) claims,

… now more politically divided than at any time since the 1890s … Americans routinely question each other’s loyalties … on issues of far more immediate concern than climate change; thus reframing environmental issues in patriotic terms is not likely to have much effect (p. 551).

This critique is also relevant to the Australian case, given the deep political divide over climate change in Australia (Fielding et al., 2012; Tranter, 2011; Tranter and Booth, 2015). However, as we have shown, when it comes to believing that climate change is occurring, patriotism and political partisanship effects are distinct. The problem for advocates of climate patriotism, at least in Australia, is that the association between patriotism and beliefs in the veracity of climate change is negative. Patriots are less likely to believe that climate change is actually occurring and, to a certain extent, less concerned about the threats they are likely to face from climatic change. With the exception of the risks associated with climate change, we found patriotism to be negatively associated with climate change attitudes after holding constant social background and political party identification. This is important because scores on our patriotism scale vary substantially according to political party affiliation, with separate analyses (not shown here) indicating that Liberal and National coalition party identifiers score far higher than Labor or Greens partisans on the patriot scale.⁹

The negative associations between patriots and climate change attitudes that we found seem to emerge because our patriotism scale is a better measure of traditional notions of patriotism than of Todd’s (2014) environmental patriots or Soutphommasane’s (2012) global justice patriots. Our operationalisation of patriotism is more circumscribed, with the patriots it measures tending to be nationally rather than globally focussed. Yet these measurement issues aside, we do not dismiss the notion that action on climate change may be supported by patriots. An inclusive approach to combating climate change is clearly necessary, so encouraging the formation of a broader coalition of support for action among those who may hold contra value positions is essential for behavioural change on climate action (Kahan et al., 2012).

We argue that the call for patriotic action on climate change is more convincing if patriotism is conceptualised as globally rather than nationally focussed, reminiscent of Kant’s ‘world’ as opposed to ‘local’ patriotism (Kleingeld, 2003: 299). Indeed, Todd (2014) advocates an environmental patriotism that ‘offers an expanded sense of homeland in order to promote global consciousness: to be patriotic beyond the nation, to be a patriot of the planet’ (p. 104). Todd’s notion of environmental patriotism is not inconsistent with cosmopolitanism. In fact, patriotism per se is not the opposite of cosmopolitanism, with patriotism conceptualised by Fichte as a dimension of cosmopolitanism (Fichte in Strath, 2012: 78). Turner (2002) also maintains that making a ‘sharp contrast between patriotism and cosmopolitanism’ is ‘too severe’ (p. 56). He states, ‘[W]hile nationalism does not easily cohabit in the world of cosmopolitan diversity, patriotic cosmopolitanism is not a contradiction in terms, because the republican tradition regards patriotism as a training ground for cosmopolitanism’ (Turner, 2002: 59). In a similar vein, for Kleingeld (2003), while many who identify as patriots may not see themselves as cosmopolitans, the obverse does not necessarily hold. Cosmopolitans identify with ‘their continent or … world as a whole’, they have national and ethnic allegiances, but also identify ‘with neighbouring countries, citizens, and regions of the world’ (Norris, 2003: 289). The cosmopolitan ‘who puts right before country, and universal reason before the symbols of national belonging’ certainly seems consistent with an application of ‘universal reason’ required to enlist action on climate change (Nussbaum, 1994). Nussbaum (2000) also argues for a cosmopolitan solution to ecological crises, while Tranter and Skrbis (2014) have shown cosmopolitans to be more likely than nationalists to believe climate change is occurring.

Support for action on climate change sits more comfortably with those who express a global, cosmopolitan focus and emphasise concern for those living outside their national borders. Those we refer to as patriotic cosmopolitans are likely to ‘work to protect the places and people within our particular circles of concern, without dismissing the value of those outside these circles’ (Cafaro, 2010: 190). Those who value such a form of climate patriotism, whether embracing our nomenclature or not, will surely agree that globally focussed action is necessary to address the global impact of climate change. The challenge is to also convince those ‘patriots’ who disagree.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, 2013–2015, ‘Leadership and the Construction of Environmental Concerns in Australia’ (DP130102154).

Notes

Author biographies

Bruce Tranter is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. With Jan Pakulski he is co-author of The Decline of Political Leaders in Australia (Palgrave 2015). His publications appear in a variety of journals including the British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, Journal of Sociology, Environmental Politics, Environment and Planning A, Environmental Communication, Leadership Quarterly and Nations and Nationalism.

Libby Lester is Professor and Head of Journalism, Media and Communications at the University of Tasmania. Her books include Media and Environment: Conflict, Politics and the News (Polity 2010) and Transnational Protests and the Media (co-edited with Simon Cottle). Recent research has appeared in Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Press/Politics, International Communication Gazette and Environmental Communication.

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