Environmental concern at the intersection of corporate rhetoric, ecological relations, and "anti-environmentalist-ism" in a Wyoming coal community"

The divisiveness that often characterizes environmental issues is due in part to the political and polarizing process of defining what it means to be an “environmentalist.” Scholars have defined and measured... [ view full abstract ]

The divisiveness that often characterizes environmental issues is due in part to the political and polarizing process of defining what it means to be an “environmentalist.” Scholars have defined and measured “environmental concern” and similar constructs for decades, while environmental activists, the fossil fuel industry and the conservative movement have shaped these concepts discursively to suit their interests. Rarely have the perspectives of individuals in rural resource extraction communities been incorporated into this social and power-imbued process of meaning-making. Consequently, academic and popular definitions and metrics may systematically fail to capture the full range of environmentally sound behaviors and concerns enacted in rural communities, and may lead to missed opportunities for collaboration between environmental groups and rural communities along previously unforeseen axes of similar views. Specifically, sociologists have long noted clear correlations between political orientation and environmental concern, which can lead some to underestimate the environmental sensibilities of conservative individuals in rural places. Yet the correlation often depends on how concern is operationalized. Moreover, conceptualizations focusing on a single, politically polarized issue (climate change) or paradigm (New Ecological Paradigm) as a litmus test for concern can cause scholars to mischaracterize environmental perspectives of individuals in rural resource extraction communities. The potential benefits of discovering previously overlooked types of environmental concern, alongside the material reality of local and global environmental challenges, suggest carefully and openly examining environmental perspectives in rural communities both with attention to the social processes involved in their definition, and in the context of rigorous ecological data. Interviews in a rural Wyoming coal town revealed nuanced environmentally sensitive attitudes and values alongside a common alienation from the “environmental” movement. These data are interpreted in a critical materialist framework, and are considered in light of hegemonic ideological influences of coal mining companies as well as contemporary definitions of “environmental concern” and popular conceptualizations of “environmentalists.” The environmental perspectives of coal miners and citizens from rural Wyoming may represent an environmental sensibility previously overlooked in academia and may offer new avenues toward crucial collaboration between environmentalists and rural resource extraction communities.