The "tribal" views of climate change across people working in the field

December 1, 2022 7:21 AM

The most important thing about climate tribes is that they shift the conversation from passive, “true-believer” narratives towards active, action-oriented ones. I couldn’t help but notice that the aforementioned YPCCC climate typology is inherently passive. “How worried are you about climate change?” is a very different question from “What do you believe is the right approach?”

Nadia Asparouhova (previously) creates a framework to understand the diverse, complex, and sometimes conflicting objectives and narratives that shape different types of climate work and advocacy.

By reviewing blogs, videos, and publications, she identifies seven different categories (abundance/scarcity mindset, pro/anti economic growth, techo-optimist/techno-pessimist, optimistic/pessimistic future outlook, individualist/collectivist scope of concern) to identify seven "Climate Tribes":

- Energy Maximalism: Find cheap, plentiful scources of energy that move us past scarcity mindset.
- Climate Urbanism: Build dense, resilient networks of people by focusing on urban development.
- Climate Tech: Find low-hanging fruit and overlooked leverage points to make progress more quickly.
- Eco-Globalism: Reduce global carbon emissions by setting and enforcing targets.
- Environmentalism: Reduce our carbon footprint by learning to live within our limits and holding policymakers accountable.
- Neopastoralism: Revert society to a pre-industrial era, free from the harmful influence of technology.
- Doomerism: Prepare for the inevitable worst.

Each of these is broken down into some very insightful understanding of how different people see the world.

posted by rebent (20 comments total)

Yay, I'm happy to see this one back, I've been thinking about it ever since it was posted yesterday. You know what the perfect accompaniment to it would be? Like, a career guide based on which tribe you find yourself in. (Surely there must be a way to transfer my customer service skills and doomer mindset into something useful!)
posted by mittens at 7:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

As someone who worked in the climate advocacy field for most of my career, this was a real weird read. I’m not done, I’ll have to come back to it. But what I found surprising was her initial assumption that the field is full of “doomers.” Obviously the people who think we’re truly doomed aren’t spending their work days on this.
posted by lunasol at 7:55 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

Not sure why it's being reposted after deletion.

If it's staying this time, are we supposed to individually copy our comments from the last time it was posted and deleted?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:15 AM on December 1, 2022

This comes across as needlessly condescending, and also misses the bigger picture.

It's not that hard to find actual peoples (or "tribes", if you prefer) who are agitating for better climate policy. And they are deadly serious, because their existence is literally at stake.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:25 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I found this article really useful for shaping my own career goals. I am a "switcher" (as opposed to "incumbent"). I approached the field from a "doomer" perspective, i.e. "The world is falling apart and what's the point of working in any field besides climate?"

However, with this overview, I have been able to see that I *already* work in Climate, because of my work towards creating urban communities where people can build wealth. I didn't realize that Climate Urbanism was a thing.

However however, now I can see the beliefs of my bedfellows - I'm surprised at how much ReFi (Regenerative Finance) and Climate Tech are taking HUGE chunks of capital from Big Capital. This is money that is desperately needed in creating new, cost-effective housing solutions for our vast, sprawling communities. I'll have to learn how to get these chumps to employ me if I want to support my family, while making a difference in the world.

So that's my goal, now. No longer figuring out how I need to change myself to become someone who can save the world, but rather, find the right area to plug the person I already am into, so I can have a financial foundation for a reasonable life, while doing something more meaningful than making shareholders rich. It's an easier goal, and I'm excited.
posted by rebent at 8:27 AM on December 1, 2022 [6 favorites]

If it's staying this time, are we supposed to individually copy our comments from the last time it was posted and deleted?

Well, the stated deletion reason was 'Not the best framing and doesn't seem to be producing appropriate participation,' which would seem to suggest that copying comments from the first post might not be entirely productive.

I can see the point about framing--while I'm sure this was not the OP's intention, leading with 'What's your climate solution type?' might give off a sort of Buzzfeed-quiz vibe. This post, which gives an introduction to the methodology and names the categories, seems stronger.
posted by box at 8:29 AM on December 1, 2022

Split Pea Soup, respectfully, I wonder if you read the whole article.

It's not that hard to find actual peoples (or "tribes", if you prefer) who are agitating for better climate policy. And they are deadly serious, because their existence is literally at stake.

This is covered extensively in the article. Your example is a group that believes we need to prioritize global regulatory solutions to solving climate. This is one of seven different viewpoints covered by the article. Also, I am "actual people," and so are the fintech bros, the neopastoral folks, the GIS analysts in Big Energy, and everyone else.
posted by rebent at 8:29 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

rebent, "peoples" and "tribes" are being used more specifically in that comment.
posted by sagc at 8:33 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can we just stop using the word “tribal” to describe division? It’s an insult to actual tribal peoples. People who are working hard to collaborate on solutions to the climate crisis they didn’t cause.
posted by Headfullofair at 8:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

Pretty big miss creating seven "tribes" (agree that is an awful framing here) without one that captures ecosocialism/climate justice/anticapitalist approaches
posted by alsoran at 9:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

> Your example is a group that believes we need to prioritize global regulatory solutions to solving climate. This is one of seven different viewpoints covered by the article. Also, I am "actual people," and so are the fintech bros...

No, see, I don't think the viewpoint I linked is just "one of seven different viewpoints". These are peoples who will perish from climate change. I don't think their viewpoint is equivalent to the fintech bros. Your comment is proving my point.

I live a privileged immigrant life in the US now, but my native coastal Odisha is under existential threat. Climate change isn't fun and games for my people.

The framing of the article is fucking offensive.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

So what do folks think about how this shifts to AI fears and Less Wrong toward the end? It seems like the end bit is mostly about the culture of tech careers and draws strong parallels between Less Wrong/AI types and environmentalists.
posted by Frowner at 9:20 AM on December 1, 2022

So what do folks think about how this shifts to AI fears and Less Wrong toward the end?

It's a little...scary? Like, it's great that careers exist to address existential problems, but if you funnel off workers to nonexistent existential problems, that's kind of horrible isn't it? I wasn't sure how to take her saying, "For both climate and AI safety, I was surprised by the lack of consensus as to what, exactly, was going to happen and when." It's not as though climate disasters are limited to a hypothetical thirty-year horizon, they're happening now! AI stuff...really isn't, unless Stable Diffusion and Midjourney have been plotting behind our backs or something.

It does feel like there's kind of a missing piece in her argument--she points out the 2018 sudden change in attitudes (at least as expressed in one poll) without really delving into how that change creates, is created by, or amplifies, or whatever, that shift between environmentalism-as-a-cause and climate-as-a-career. She's obviously a little more interested in...I don't know, start-up people, young people in new industries. And maybe that's because so much of the work previously was done academically, because the industries didn't exist, and universities aren't going to attract the same young go-getters who'd like to make a lot of money off this?

(I also want to thank everybody who pointed out the problematic nature of the "tribes" framing, as I'd totally missed that.)
posted by mittens at 9:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

I apologize for my mischaracterization of the subject matter in the deleted post yesterday. I agree with Headfullofair, the word tribal is distracting at best and perhaps wording closer to "The seven viewpoints of those working on solutions to the climate crisis" would be better to stay on subject.

In the short term the direct problems splitpeasoup mentions require more immediate action; for that COP27 created a loss and damage fund to help those least to blame and hardest hit by climate change.
posted by LiteS at 11:00 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

The People Cheering for Humanity’s End (ungated)

(Yes, it's doom-laden but fascinating. Feel free to skip.)
posted by chavenet at 11:42 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Haha, I was briefly head (and pretty much sole member) of a group called Nudists Opposing Winter
posted by Jacen at 12:01 PM on December 1, 2022

I sort of hate attempts to group viewpoints into fake “tribes” …. Ahh now I also see the problem with the naming. People are way more complex than that. If someone agrees we need to try All The Things , what tribe are they in ? Having said that, the Environmentalists are correct . Definitely not the energy maximalists. Clean energy is great, but our current economic and social structures (and growth rate) with clean energy instead of fossil fuels still ends badly. If we keep trying to grow population- or capitalism-wise, we still end up with massive inequality, water scarcity, food scarcity, pollution, waste issues, loss of biodiversity, conflict, etc. Climate is a pretty immediate problem, but growing thoughtlessly with solar is almost as bad.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:29 PM on December 1, 2022

i'm part way through reading this piece and not sure its worth my time to finish but i'm happy to comment :)

1) however we divide up the climate workers viewpoints, rest assured industry has a strategy for hamstringing or coopting these groupings getting them at cross purposes and for protecting their business model. In doomerism, sometimes it is very obvious that pessimism is used to dissuade from action, but all of these groups have similar short-circuits that shunt their activity away from stopping the polluters and making the polluters pay to fix the harm they have done.

2) as a doomer, doomers coexist in each of those groupings, because doomerism is a prohibited or penalized viewpoint in many spaces. Many places require " I'm for the jobs the asteroid brings." to be the party line.

4)A fun way to categorize non-doomers is to see if their coping/viewpoint requires A) perpetual motion B) a time machine C) a new continent/planet D) voluntary global consensus E) a knife in a gunfight.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 5:03 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ain't clear Nadia Asparouhova's "tribes" help much, like denialists remain significant too, but..

I'll single out energy maximalism as being physically impossible, but economic growth is physically impossible more broadly. Instead our energy usage shall shrink dramatically, and our economy is this energy use so it'll shrink too, but the faster we shrink the better for humanity overall.

Individualist vs collectivist winds up way too coarse a distinction, like yeah there maybe some common vibe between eco-tech entrepreneurs and anti-urbanists, but it's small collectivism flavors not individualism, and afaik not similar enough to be useful.

I've never heard of Gen Dread before, but XR, Just Stop Oil, and Greta Thunberg are clearly neither doomers nor individualists. You're not a doomer if you're actively trying to fix the problem, like by protesting. You're not an individualist if you're protesting for collective action against fossil fuels. You cannot fit these guys into even Mann's overbroad doomer categorization.

There are important albeit unproven arguments that global collectivism shall never work, and/or would actually be harmful, ala the maximum power principle, which do not constitute doomerism either, because once you acknowledge the risks of global collectivism then you begin looking for unilateral solutions without global consensus.

There are many techno-optimists proposing SRM designs who also disbelieve in global collectivism, and prefer unilateralism, but afaik they'd dislike the maximum power principle guys insinuating their SRM cannot consume the global economy, so they're different too.

We're hundreds of years away from strong AI anyways, but worse right now we build better AIs like GPT-3 by feeding them gigawatts, so really our whole AI push shall collapse within a couple decades. Any real progress towards strong AI depends upon humanity first reinventing less power hungry computation, which likely adds another few hundred years, given that innovation seemingly slows down without excess energy.

AI existential threats guys like like Nick Bostrom really just provide ego-stroking for billionaires, entertainment for others, and distraction for oil companies.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:27 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think climate urbanism winds up way different than she describes too. There are surely techno-optimists and economic growthers there, but all the interesting climate urbanists I follow never pushed economic growth, most/many accept its impossibility, and never come off too optimistic, but do pursue abundance in a way.

I think climate urbanism typically means just doing non-flashy tech correctly, like public transit, argivoltaics near cities, etc. It hard being optimistic when you've such a front row seat for rent seeking wrecking everything.

Asparouhova does not really understand resilience or how complex systems fail. It kinda mirrors others' criticisms of her writing from the previously link too. And my above remarks that individualism is illusion and its the scale of collectivism that matters.

At their core terms like "optimism" represent a ponzi scheme mentality where if enough people just believe then everyone gets a pony. We should be excited about avenues open to us, and avoid being depressed about closed ones, but we only fix real problems by understanding the visible solution space and making compromises.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:29 PM on December 6, 2022