When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic
waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are
intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley,
suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about
the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off
threats to the “purity” and “sanctity” of Earth and our bodies.
A UC Berkeley study 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.