Public opinion on environmental issues such as climate change,
deforestation, and toxic waste seems to fall along increasingly
partisan lines. But new research suggests that environmental
messages framed in terms of conservative morals — describing
environmental stewardship in terms of fending off threats to the
"purity" and "sanctity" of Earth and our bodies — may help to
narrow the partisan gap. A study from researchers at UC Berkeley
has found that while people who identified themselves as
conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment
than their liberal counterparts, their motivation increased
significantly when they read articles that stressed the need to
"protect the purity of the environment" and were shown such
repellant images as a person drinking dirty water, a forest
filled with garbage, and a city under a cloud of smog. Published
this week in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
for Psychological Science, the findings indicate that reframing
pro- environmental rhetori