120. The Grip of Climate Culture – Andy West

Climate catastrophism displays all the core features of a cultural entity, says Andy West, author of The Grip of Culture. Other cultural entities are religions, ideologies, sometimes cults and even strong philosophies. The underlying behavior is identical. You can measure it, and that is what Andy has done. “This comes from a deep behavioral legacy from our evolutionary past. We are very susceptible to groupthink.” Andy’s most groundbreaking finding is that there is a close connection between religiosity and climate catastrophism. The correlation is almost perfect. But it is perhaps not intuitive: When unconstrained questions are asked about climate change, a large majority of people in religious countries will answer that it is dangerous, whereas a large majority of people in secular countries will be less worried. When constrained questions are asked, i.e. questions about the need to take action in different ways, the situation is exactly the opposite. A culture is always based on stories. If it were based on facts and truths, it would not be a culture. “If you want to glue millions of people together, it’s not good to use rationality, it is actually better to bypass it and use emotion. If you base it on rational arguments, people will have different opinions or different angles on it.” The further distanced from truth, the better cultures work. Especially if authorities are on their side. If someone questions the culture, “it’s bonkers”. End of argument. “Climate catastrophism detached from science a long time ago”, Andy says. Al Gore’s climate film An Inconvenient Truth from 2006 was a turning point. “It was completely full of classic cultural memes. I started to research what was behind. I quickly realized it had left science already then.” Are there elitist agendas? “Yes, but they’re not the prime cause. The prime cause is the culture, and the agendas have effectively taken advantage of the culture.” Andy points out that cultures are not bad per se. They are inevitable, and they can be either detrimental or beneficial. Civilizations are based on cultures. Without cultures, no team spirit. Isn’t the climate disaster narrative a useful crisis for leaders who want to exert control? “It’s not wrong, but it’s not exactly right either. Leaders have taken advantage of it as it has grown.” Andy has found that the US is a special case. It isn’t possible to just test two cultures, religion and climate catastrophism, in America as in most other countries. What complicates things is the Democrat/Liberal and Republican/Conservative tribalism “So the US effectively has four cultures. It ends up being a worst case scenario. Everybody is behaving culturally.” Will this new culture, climate catastrophism, come to an end, and if so, when and how? “It’s in all our institutions and all our policies. It’s in the heads of millions of people. It’s not going to go away easily or quickly. I think it will evolve and change over time, like it has already.” Andy's book Andy's X account Climate Etc blog