The European Union’s new leadership has decided to invest much of its political capital in a plan to position Europe as the global leader in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. But if too many constituencies feel as though they are being sacrificed on a green alter, the plan will never even get off the ground.
BERLIN – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s ambition to lead a “geopolitical commission” is about to face its first big test. European heads of state are meeting to discuss her proposed European Green Deal, a sweeping project that could either unite the European Union and strengthen its position on the world stage, or generate a new intra-European political cleavage that leaves the bloc fractured and vulnerable.
The need for concerted action is clear. The Green Deal is a response to accelerating climate change, which poses an existential threat not just to Europe but to the entire planet. The problem does not observe national borders, and thus requires collective global action. But the transition to a carbon-neutral economy also offers far-reaching opportunities. With the right strategy in place, Europe can boost its own technological innovation and deploy carbon pricing and other fiscal policies to protect European labor markets from being undercut by lower-cost production in China and elsewhere.
Moreover, through the European Investment Bank, the EU already has a tool for mobilizing massive stores of capital for investments in infrastructure, research and development, and other essential areas. And, as Adam Tooze has argued, by issuing green bonds and other “safe assets,” Europe can secure greater economic independence from other powers and start to establish the euro as a global currency.
But alongside this positive vision are more dystopian scenarios in which the climate-policy debate creates geographic and socioeconomic divisions and fuels a populist backlash. Although climate change touches everyone, its effects are asymmetric, as are the costs of undertaking a transition to a carbon-neutral economy. The danger for Europeans is that the unequal distribution of the costs and opportunities will fuel a culture war between
east and west,
urban and rural, and so forth.
This European debate is an echo of a broader global challenge. Many Eastern European countries still depend heavily on coal for energy generation, and thus fear that the push for carbon neutrality is an underhanded form of protectionism by advanced economies like Germany. Poland’s energy minister, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, has dismissed as “a fantasy” the notion that Poland – which relies on coal for 80% of its electricity – could achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and estimates that the costs of such a transition would approach €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion).
But, in addition to the east-west divide, the Green Deal could also create political rifts within every EU member state. French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to position France as a global climate leader. But his government’s attempt to raise taxes on fuel last year backfired when millions of gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) took to the streets in protest in late 2018.
The European Council on Foreign Relations has conducted in-depth polling to understand policy preferences across Europe, and we have found climate policy to be a particularly divisive issue. On the surface, around two-thirds of Europeans in most countries polled think that tackling climate change should be a priority, even if it means curtailing economic growth. But up to one in four people do not think that climate change is a real threat, and are far more worried about Islamic radicalism and the rise of nationalism.
The gilets jaunes are not an isolated phenomenon. Recent elections have shown how a program like the Green Deal could become a useful punching bag for populists and parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and Rassemblement National (National Rally, formerly the National Front) in France.
Critically, once you move from asking people whether climate change is a problem to how it should be addressed, concerns about socioeconomic fairness and the distribution of costs prove hugely divisive. Even in the European Parliament, where 62% of MEPs were elected on green-inspired platforms, only 56% agree that the EU should be pursuing a rapid transition to a low-emissions economy. Moreover, only one-third of MEPs are prepared to take tough action against companies with large carbon footprints.
Generally speaking, then, there are two possible futures for European climate policy. The Green Deal could become Europe’s chief new cause, lending momentum to European integration and strengthening the EU’s global position vis-à-vis China and the United States. Or, it could become the next “refugee crisis,” a singularly potent issue that divides Europe between east and west, and that mobilizes populist forces within countries across the bloc.
To make the first scenario more likely, EU leaders need to listen less to moralists like the young climate activist Greta Thunberg, and more to pragmatic realistswho understand that paying off reactionary forces has long been part of the price of progress. The only way to shepherd the Green Deal to successful implementation will be to offer large fiscal transfers to the laggards, so that they, too, will have a stake in the clean-energy transition. Without European unity, there can be no effective European response to climate change.
Anyone who has argued with an opinionated relative or friend about immigration or gun control knows it is often impossible to sway someone with strong views.
That’s in part because our brains work hard to ensure the integrity of our worldview: We seek out information to confirm what we already know, and are dismissive or avoidant of facts that are hostile to our core beliefs.
But it’s not impossible to make your argument stick. And there’s been some good scientific work on this. Here are two strategies that, based on the evidence, seem promising.
1) If the argument you find convincing doesn’t resonate with someone else, find out what does
The answer to polarization and political division is not simply exposing people to another point of view.
In 2017, researchers at Duke, NYU, and Princeton ran an experiment where they paid a large sample of Democratic and Republican Twitter users to read more opinions from the other side. “We found no evidence that inter-group contact on social media reduces political polarization,” the authors wrote. Republicans in the experiment actually grew more conservative over the course of the test. Liberals in the experiment grew very slightly more liberal.
Whenever we engage in political debates, we all tend to overrate the power of arguments we find personally convincing — and wrongly think the other side will be swayed.
On gun control, for instance, liberals are persuaded by stats like, “No other developed country in the world has nearly the same rate of gun violence as does America.” And they think other people will find this compelling, too.
Conservatives, meanwhile, often go to this formulation: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
What both sides fail to understand is that they’re arguing a point that their opponents have not only already dismissed but may be inherently deaf to.
“The messages that are intuitive to people are, for the most part, not the effective ones,” Robb Willer, a professor of sociology and psychology at Stanford University, told me in 2015.
Willer has shown it’s at least possible to nudge our political opponents to consider ideas they’d normally reject outright. In 2015, in a series of six studies, he and co-author Matthew Feinberg found that when conservative policies are framed around liberal values like equality or fairness, liberals become more accepting of them. The same was true of liberal policies recast in terms of conservative values like respect for authority.
Willer has shown it’s at least possible to nudge our political opponents to consider ideas they’d normally reject outright. In 2015, in a series of six studies, he and co-author Matthew Feinberg found that when conservative policies are framed around liberal values like equality or fairness, liberals become more accepting of them. The same was true of liberal policies recast in terms of conservative values like respect for authority.
So, his research suggests, if a conservative wanted to convince a liberal to support higher military spending, he shouldn’t appeal to patriotism. He should say something like, “Through the military, the disadvantaged can achieve equal standing and overcome the challenges of poverty and inequality.” Or at least that’s the general idea.
In a recent effort Willer and a co-author found, in a nationally representative sample, that conservatives would be more willing to support a hypothetical liberal candidate for president if that candidate used language that reflected conservative values. For instance, conservatives who read that the candidate’s “vision for America is based on respect for the values and traditions that were handed down to us…” were more likely to say they supported him than when the candidate’s message was framed with liberal buzzwords.
How to sway the other side: Use their morals against them
Willer’s work is based on moral foundations theory. It’s the idea that people have stable, gut-level morals that influence their worldview. The liberal moral foundations include equality, fairness, and protection of the vulnerable. Conservative moral foundations are more stalwart: They favor in-group loyalty, moral purity, and respect for authority.
Politicians intuitively use moral foundations to excite like-minded voters. Conservative politicians know phrases like “take our country back” get followers’ hearts beating.
What moral foundations theory tells us, however, is that these messages don’t translate from one moral tribe to the other. “You’re essentially trying to convince somebody who speaks French of some position while speaking German to them,” Willer says. “And that doesn’t resonate.”
Willer cautioned that it’s still extremely difficult to convert a political opponent completely to your side, even with these techniques. “We found statistically significant effects,” he says. “They’re reliable. But in terms of magnitude, they are not large.”
The chart below shows how well the moral reframing worked for each policy area in Willer’s study. To be clear, there’s only so much that reframing in terms of values can do: It can’t turnan anti-Obamacare conservative into a proponent, but it can soften his stance and get him to listen to counterarguments.
said, ‘Bob, what’s with the letter?’ ” Attorney General William Barrrecounted in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “ ‘Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call me if there’s an issue?’ ” Bob—that is, Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election—had sent Barr the letter on March 27th, three days after Barr had released his own letter purporting, in four pages, to convey the principal conclusions of Mueller’s more than four-hundred-page report. Mueller had been fairly clear about what was, as Barr put it, with the letter: Barr’s statement “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.” And, in its wake, there was “now public confusion.” Barr told Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, that the letter had prompted him to call Mueller, on speaker phone, while several people, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, were in the room with him. As Blumenthal questioned Barr about his subsequent exchange with Mueller, Barr picked up what appeared to be a copy of Mueller’s letter and gave it a sour scan. “The letter’s a bit snitty,” he said. “I think it was probably written by one of his staff.”
“Snitty” is a word of relatively recent origin; Merriam-Webster traces the appearance of the underlying noun, “snit,” to 1939. It echoes something of the meaning of snipe and snip, and even snitch—of pettiness and petulance. It hardly seems right as a way to describe the concerns that Mueller—a man with a long and distinguished career in law enforcement—had about a possible blow to public confidence in his investigation, or in the Justice Department, or in both. And yet the complaint perfectly expresses the culture of the Trump Administration. Calling people “snitty” is a way of accusing them of being weak, mewling, and rule-bound, with a pathetic belief in fairness. It’s the bully’s retort upon being called out—expressing the same resentment that might, say, lead a President to commit what the Mueller report refers to as potentially “obstructive acts.” “Snitty” is used to conjure up the image of people whom one would rather ignore stamping their feet—which may be why Barr joined it with the supposition that the letter Mueller signed was written “by one of his staff.”
The question of what “staff” might be capable of was, it seems, already on Barr’s mind. After the Senate hearing, it emerged that he had decided not to appear at a parallel hearing in the House, scheduled for Thursday, supposedly because he objected to being questioned by lawyers on the committee staff rather than by the representatives themselves. The committee is responding with a flurry of subpoenas; the issue of the Trump Administration’s evasions of congressional oversight is not a new one, and it won’t go away. But Barr does a particularly bad job of hiding his disdain. At one point, Blumenthal asked him if anyone had taken notes of the “what’s with the letter” call. Barr confirmed that some people had done so. “May we have those notes?” Blumenthal asked.
“No,” Barr replied.
“Why not?” Blumenthal asked.
“Why should you have them?” Barr said.
Who do these senators think they are? Barr’s own recollection of the call was an exercise in blame. According to Barr, Mueller said that he was “concerned about the way the media was playing this” and wanted his executive summaries released in order to “avoid some of the confusion that was emerging.” Barr continued, “I asked him if he felt that my letter was misleading or inaccurate, and he said no, that the press—he felt that the press coverage was.” At this point, Barr has shown himself to be enough of an unreliable narrator that it makes sense to wait and learn if this is also Mueller’s recollection. (Mueller does not specifically mention the press in his letter.) But it is worth asking what Barr is saying here about the press: the coverage, up until then, was based only on his four-page letter. If the coverage was inaccurate or misleading, how might that have happened—was the press making things up? Barr doesn’t appear to mind implying that reporters either are incapable of basic reading comprehension or just act in bad faith. Earlier in the hearing, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, also raised what he called “the news-coverage issue” and asked Barr, “What were you supposed to do about that?” Noting that the report was now out, the senator called the whole matter moot and added, “None of us can control what the news publishes or prints, except the media.” Nor should anyone—but it would be helpful, sometimes, if the press had truthful material to work with. And Congress might do something about that.
Liberals and conservatives believe in different sets of moral values. That’s why, social psychologist Robb Willer says, appealing to the other side’s values — not your own — might change more minds.
BERLIN – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s ambition to lead a “geopolitical commission” is about to face its first big test. European heads of state are meeting to discuss her proposed European Green Deal, a sweeping project that could either unite the European Union and strengthen its position on the world stage, or generate a new intra-European political cleavage that leaves the bloc fractured and vulnerable.
The need for concerted action is clear. The Green Deal is a response to accelerating climate change, which poses an existential threat not just to Europe but to the entire planet. The problem does not observe national borders, and thus requires collective global action. But the transition to a carbon-neutral economy also offers far-reaching opportunities. With the right strategy in place, Europe can boost its own technological innovation and deploy carbon pricing and other fiscal policies to protect European labor markets from being undercut by lower-cost production in China and elsewhere.
Moreover, through the European Investment Bank, the EU already has a tool for mobilizing massive stores of capital for investments in infrastructure, research and development, and other essential areas. And, as Adam Tooze has argued, by issuing green bonds and other “safe assets,” Europe can secure greater economic independence from other powers and start to establish the euro as a global currency.
But alongside this positive vision are more dystopian scenarios in which the climate-policy debate creates geographic and socioeconomic divisions and fuels a populist backlash. Although climate change touches everyone, its effects are asymmetric, as are the costs of undertaking a transition to a carbon-neutral economy. The danger for Europeans is that the unequal distribution of the costs and opportunities will fuel a culture war between
This European debate is an echo of a broader global challenge. Many Eastern European countries still depend heavily on coal for energy generation, and thus fear that the push for carbon neutrality is an underhanded form of protectionism by advanced economies like Germany. Poland’s energy minister, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, has dismissed as “a fantasy” the notion that Poland – which relies on coal for 80% of its electricity – could achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and estimates that the costs of such a transition would approach €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion).
But, in addition to the east-west divide, the Green Deal could also create political rifts within every EU member state. French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to position France as a global climate leader. But his government’s attempt to raise taxes on fuel last year backfired when millions of gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) took to the streets in protest in late 2018.
The European Council on Foreign Relations has conducted in-depth polling to understand policy preferences across Europe, and we have found climate policy to be a particularly divisive issue. On the surface, around two-thirds of Europeans in most countries polled think that tackling climate change should be a priority, even if it means curtailing economic growth. But up to one in four people do not think that climate change is a real threat, and are far more worried about Islamic radicalism and the rise of nationalism.
The gilets jaunes are not an isolated phenomenon. Recent elections have shown how a program like the Green Deal could become a useful punching bag for populists and parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and Rassemblement National (National Rally, formerly the National Front) in France.
Critically, once you move from asking people whether climate change is a problem to how it should be addressed, concerns about socioeconomic fairness and the distribution of costs prove hugely divisive. Even in the European Parliament, where 62% of MEPs were elected on green-inspired platforms, only 56% agree that the EU should be pursuing a rapid transition to a low-emissions economy. Moreover, only one-third of MEPs are prepared to take tough action against companies with large carbon footprints.
Generally speaking, then, there are two possible futures for European climate policy. The Green Deal could become Europe’s chief new cause, lending momentum to European integration and strengthening the EU’s global position vis-à-vis China and the United States. Or, it could become the next “refugee crisis,” a singularly potent issue that divides Europe between east and west, and that mobilizes populist forces within countries across the bloc.
To make the first scenario more likely, EU leaders need to listen less to moralists like the young climate activist Greta Thunberg, and more to pragmatic realists who understand that paying off reactionary forces has long been part of the price of progress. The only way to shepherd the Green Deal to successful implementation will be to offer large fiscal transfers to the laggards, so that they, too, will have a stake in the clean-energy transition. Without European unity, there can be no effective European response to climate change.