Beyond Tribal Thinking
My tribe needs resources and deserves them more than any other tribe, especially yours.
TL;DR
We do not act on climate because we don’t trust each other. Environmentalism has become tribal theatre with each side signalling virtue, none willing to cede moral ground. Facts do not matter when identity is at stake. The uncomfortably intelligent will realise that consensus is a fantasy. Eight billion primates will not unite under a single flag, no matter how green. But tribes can still adapt. Let them. Design climate systems that reward performance, not agreement. Compete on outcomes. Punish failure. Honour success. That is how evolution works. And it might be the only way we do.
As a teenager growing up in the suburbs of North London, I was mad keen on soccer. Every Saturday afternoon, rain or shine, I would play in the park with my mates from up the street and, when I got older, attend as many games as I could at White Hart Lane, Stamford Bridge, or Highbury to watch my team. I was the crazy kid wearing the Leeds United scarf.
To understand just how crazy, I need to tell you that I lived in Palmers Green, a short walk from Tottenham Hotspur territory. My tribe should have been Spurs fans, or at a push Arsenal supporters, but not northerners from 300km up the M1. It turns out I had never even been to Leeds, but I supported their soccer team because they were the best, having won the league in the 1973-74 season, when I was 12 years old. My allegiance was from a perception of excellence and, perhaps, an early desire to be contrary.
No surprise that later I enrolled in a university with the motto "Do Different" and joined another tribe.
All humans are tribal. We evolved to cling to the group, suspicious of outsiders, because survival demanded it. This tribal orientation is a crucial aspect of human cognition rather than a flaw or aberration. We identify with our tribe, show fierce loyalty, and, as in my young soccer supporter days, it does not even matter if you are not physically with other members; you still cheer for the tribe.
These loyalties, while inspiring many noble behaviours, can also mean that we can sacrifice sound reasoning and good judgment for group belonging and commitment. Tribes can sometimes do things their members might not. And when different tribes interact, they rarely agree thanks to underlying value differences and associated communication barriers that factual information alone cannot overcome. Native American communities prioritise values around careful listening, moderation in speech, and observation, which present a stark contrast to the communication patterns of mainstream Western society. Tribes misunderstand each other. That is what they are built to do.
In Western democracies, we also have tribal politics with very specific interpretations of how to use nature.
To the left, environmental degradation is the spawn of industrial capitalism. Corporate greed is dressed up as growth and inequality disguised as opportunity. Left-leaning movements advocate for regulation, public investment, and international agreements to mitigate environmental harm and transition to more sustainable systems. In practice, this becomes renewable energy, carbon pricing, biodiversity conservation, and frameworks like the Green New Deal. Environmental justice, which links ecological health with social equity, is also a key concern of the left, especially among progressive factions.
The political right approaches environmental issues through the lens of individual liberty, free markets, and national interests through economic growth, energy independence, and reduced regulatory burden. This tribe will argue that innovation and market mechanisms can address environmental challenges more efficiently than government mandates. This translates into scepticism toward climate science or resistance to international agreements perceived as infringing on national sovereignty or imposing economic costs. However, segments of the right, especially local or traditional conservatives, still advocate for conservation, stewardship, and protection of land and heritage.
These positions are not fixed, and there are notable exceptions. Green conservatism, eco-libertarianism, and bipartisan conservation efforts suggest the potential for overlap. Nevertheless the environment has become a partisan flash point in many liberal democracies, with left and right framing both the causes of and solutions to ecological problems in different terms.
But we should pause for a moment to remember some hard truths.
All tribes live in a shared reality. A finite planet, plundered for its resources, that is straining to cope with 8 billion voracious humans and their tribal tendencies. That shared reality is constrained by thermodynamics. The Earth is an open system that dissipates energy to maintain local order, but the rate at which humans accelerate entropy now exceeds what ecosystems can reabsorb. Complexity collapses when energy is stripped faster than it can be cycled.
But there are tribes nonetheless, so this essay explores how political polarisation functions as a barrier to collective environmental action. And not just because we disagree, but through a deeper psychological mechanism that binds belief to belonging. Drawing on insights from social psychology, cultural cognition, and communication studies, we will explore how tribal thinking influences perception, filters evidence, and reinforces in-group solidarity, in spite of a shared reality.
So, to the first premise…
Political polarisation is a significant barrier to addressing shared ecological challenges because environmental issues have become entangled with identity politics.
Political polarisation means that agreement on facts, priorities, and policy solutions becomes increasingly rare. Once considered a shared concern, environmental issues have become politicised and subsumed into broader ideological battles. As a result, attitudes toward climate change, conservation, and sustainability align more closely with partisan identity than with scientific consensus or local environmental realities. This makes it difficult to generate bipartisan support for climate action or ecological reform, even in the face of clear evidence or local impact.
In the U.S., climate change denial is more common among conservatives, not necessarily because of scepticism about the science, but because acceptance of climate change is associated with liberal or progressive identity. This dynamic reinforces echo chambers, discourages compromise, and turns ecological responsibility into a battleground for asserting loyalty to one’s in-group. And I profess my tribal loyalty before anything else.
Policymakers face pressure to conform to party lines rather than seek practical solutions, while activists risk alienating potential allies by framing ecological issues in ways that trigger partisan resistance. Even scientifically sound, economically viable, or locally beneficial environmental initiatives are easily dismissed out of hand. This deeply polarised environment makes long-term, systemic ecological reform increasingly difficult, precisely when it is most urgently needed. But entropy does not wait for agreement. It proceeds regardless of belief, dissolving structure wherever maintenance fails. The longer we stall, the steeper the energy debt we accumulate.
The U.S. Green New Deal, proposed in 2019, exemplifies how climate policy has become a partisan flashpoint. Although it aimed to address climate change while promoting economic justice, Republicans widely rejected it as an example of radical leftist overreach, framing it as an attack on capitalism and American values. Rather than fostering cross-party collaboration, it hardened ideological divides, with climate denial and the negative kind of scepticism increasingly serving as a cultural identifier for conservative voters. No small irony that it was still a neo-liberal growth paradigm. Maybe it was the colour that conservatives objected to.
Similarly, climate and energy policy in Australia has been a volatile issue across multiple governments. The carbon pricing scheme introduced by the Labour government in 2012 was repealed just two years later by the Liberal-National coalition, who framed it as a “carbon tax” damaging families and businesses. Public perception became deeply polarised, with climate policy seen not as a response to ecological risk, but as a left-wing agenda item, stalling meaningful action even as Australia faced worsening droughts, bushfires, and coral bleaching. A decade later, and policy still had not settled.
While the EU broadly supports climate action, internal divisions reveal identity-driven tensions. The European Green Deal has met resistance in some Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Hungary, where nationalist governments argue that aggressive decarbonisation threatens their sovereignty and economic development. In these contexts, environmental goals are portrayed as elitist Western impositions, deepening East-West political rifts and complicating unified EU climate strategies.
My tribe needs resources and deserves them more than any other tribe, especially yours.
The next premise is that these tendencies have taken hold and moved us away from evidence…
Environmental positions have shifted from being grounded in evidence to becoming markers of group identity rather than empirical positions.
A 2023 Pew survey found that only 21% of conservative Republicans accepted the evidence compared with over 85% of liberal Democrats. In Australia, Lowy Institute polling shows that climate risk is recognised by 83% of Labour voters but only 36% of Coalition voters. Scientific literacy barely shifts these numbers. Party lines, regional loyalty, and religious framing predict attitudes far more reliably than exposure to evidence. Climate change has become a cultural marker, where allegiance is measured by what you deny as much as by what you affirm.
MIT research on Facebook’s 2021 internal leaks showed that divisive content drove 60% more engagement than neutral reporting. Outlets on both sides of the spectrum now serve their tribal customers with customised myths. Depending on your tribe, you get solar panels as salvation or the ‘carbon tax’ as tyranny. These badges of belonging are not arguments; they are uniforms. Once evidence is recast as a cultural emblem, it ceases to make any attempt to persuade.
When environmental issues are filtered through identity politics, empirical data loses persuasive power outside the bounds of like-minded groups. This makes consensus-driven policy difficult, even when the scientific basis is strong and the ecological consequences are clear. The reframing of environmentalism as a cultural stance rather than a response to measurable risk undermines efforts to treat ecological threats as common, cross-cutting concerns. In such a context, building broad-based support for sustainability requires not just presenting better evidence but understanding the identity narratives that now shape environmental opinion.
Every tribe thinks it deserves more, especially yours.
Arguably, evidence has little to no power in this new system of communication and tribal affiliation. Which prompts the next premise…
Traditional media and social platforms systematically amplify tribal divisions, even though there is unexplored common ground on environmental issues across political divides.
The business model of media is conflict. It used to be ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ and now ‘rage on the page’ because outrage pays better than accuracy, and nothing feeds the beast like a loyal, angry tribe. The media sells tribal stories with framing that discourages nuanced discussion and reinforces group identity by portraying environmental positions as us-versus-them choices rather than complex policy challenges with potential for consensus.
Social media intensifies this dynamic. The companies know that algorithms surfacing content that provokes outrage or validates users’ existing beliefs keep people on their platform. In this environment, environmental discourse becomes highly stylised, with “green” or “anti-green” stances serving as cultural markers. Nuances such as conservative support for regenerative agriculture or progressive interest in market-based emissions trading receive far less visibility than more ideologically charged narratives. As a result, a pragmatic, evidence-based middle ground is drowned out by louder, more polarising voices.
Your tribe threatens mine by existing.
Yet research and polling consistently show that there is common ground. Many conservative-leaning constituencies support environmental stewardship rooted in values like localism, responsibility, and intergenerational duty. It is, after all, in the original value set of conservatism. Similarly, liberal audiences appreciate the economic and national security arguments for renewable energy and resource resilience. However, this shared terrain is rarely highlighted because it doesn’t drive clicks, ratings, or viral reactions in the way that conflict does. The result is a distorted public discourse that misrepresents both the nature of the divide and the possibilities for cooperation.
If the conflict is at least partially artificial, logic would have the following premise hold…
Effective communication will only happen when tribal values are understood across different groups, because fact correction cannot overcome bias and dissonance.
People process information through the lens of their existing values, identities, and worldviews. When new information conflicts with these mental frameworks, especially those tied to group belonging, it triggers defensive reasoning or outright dismissal. This phenomenon, known as motivated reasoning or identity-protective cognition, explains why fact-based corrections about climate science, biodiversity loss, or environmental policy fail to shift opinions, particularly when those facts appear to threaten an individual’s cultural or political identity.
This research insight has profound implications for environmental communication. Presenting more graphs, reports, or expert testimony is unlikely to persuade those who perceive the message as aligned with an opposing group. Instead, communicators must understand and engage with the moral and cultural values that guide different groups. Emphasising environmental stewardship as protecting God’s creation resonates with religious conservatives, while highlighting national security risks of climate instability might appeal to defence-minded centrists. In both cases, the message is more effective not because the facts change, but because the framing aligns with the audience’s identity and values.
Cross-tribal communication begins with values. People hear signals of belonging before they hear evidence. Scientific integrity still matters, but raw evidence has to be translated into moral language that the tribe already trusts. We are talking about God’s creation for evangelicals, national security for defence hawks, intergenerational duty for conservatives, and economic resilience for progressives. Confrontation hardens identity walls, so the task is to find some resonance. If we ignore what matters to the tribe, evidence dies on arrival.
Evidence that fact correction cannot overcome bias and dissonance comes from research on how humans process information that conflicts with their existing beliefs. Cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, creates a psychological drive to resolve this uncomfortable state by changing one of the conflicting elements.
The Interactive Acculturation Model reminds us that communication is never one-way. Tribes change each other in contact. The point is not to transfer facts from one side to another, but to create a space where values are recognised and shared. It sounds obvious until you notice how rarely it happens.
Shared values are the bridge. Recognise them, and you open the conditions for trust. Ignore them, and even accurate evidence gets discarded. People hear belonging before they hear data. Indigenous traditions understand this well. In such cultures, sincerity counts more than speech, while dominance corrodes trust. Social identity theory tells the same story because every tribe carries its own code of meaning, symbols, and expectations. The task is not to bulldoze those codes with facts but to translate them. Make the unfamiliar recognisable to expand the circle without demanding anyone abandon their tribe.
The evidence largely supports the premise. As our societies become increasingly diverse and polarised, the ability to communicate effectively across tribal boundaries becomes ever more crucial. By recognising the fundamental role that values play in shaping perception and identity, we can develop more sophisticated and effective approaches to intergroup communication that respect differences while building common ground.
So, there are mechanisms that offer some hope, which in turn prompts the next premise…
Deliberative democratic approaches could transcend polarisation on environmental issues, but probably will not.
Deliberative democracy is a political concept built around discussion, reasoned debate, and consensus-building in the decision-making process. Unlike traditional forms of democracy that focus on voting and the aggregation of individual preferences, deliberative democracy holds that the legitimacy of a political decision comes from the quality of the public discourse that precedes it. This means inclusive, informed, and respectful dialogue among citizens to address complex public issues. It is an appealing antidote to polarisation, especially on environmental challenges that require collective action. Models like citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, and deliberative polling have shown that when diverse groups engage in structured, evidence-based dialogue, they find common ground and can arrive at thoughtful, pragmatic solutions.
Ireland showed what happens when ordinary citizens are trusted with the climate brief. Its Citizens’ Assembly produced recommendations so ambitious that they were written straight into national policy. Legitimacy came not from party lines or lobby groups, but from a hundred people drawn by lottery who had to look one another in the eye before making their case.
France went further. In the wake of the Yellow Vest protests, President Macron convened 150 citizens to design climate solutions ‘without filter’. They proposed 149 measures, including criminalising ecocide, rewriting the constitution, and taxing high-emission industries. Many of these made it to the Élysée Palace intact, proof that citizens’ assemblies can cut through vested interests and put hard options on the table.
Scotland gave deliberation legal teeth. Its Climate Assembly, created under the Climate Change Act, gathered over a hundred citizens between 2020 and 2022. Their mandate was to recommend fair and effective climate action. What emerged was not consensus-by-compromise but ordinary people insisting on a just transition, binding government to its own targets.
In South Australia, the question was nuclear waste. A 350-person citizens’ jury sifted evidence, interrogated assumptions and voted no. The risks were too great, the trust too thin. Despite the government’s interest, the project was buried. Consent proved more powerful than policy.
Despite their promise, such deliberative mechanisms face steep barriers to widespread adoption. First, they require political will and institutional redesign, which many elected officials resist, especially in adversarial systems where power hinges on short-term partisan victories. Second, deliberative processes are resource-intensive, time-consuming, and perceived as technocratic or disconnected from everyday political urgency. Finally, public trust in democratic processes is eroding in many countries, and low civic literacy or engagement that limits both participation and effectiveness. The very polarisation deliberation seeks to remedy, also undercuts its legitimacy in the eyes of the sceptical public or partisan media.
Deliberative models also challenge entrenched media and political norms. They prioritise slow, reflective reasoning over rapid, emotional reaction, which sits uneasily within the fast-paced, conflict-driven environment of contemporary politics and media. While pilot programs and local successes abound, scaling these initiatives to the level needed for systemic transformation remains improbable under current conditions. While deliberative democracy could offer a way out of the environmental polarisation trap, the structures and incentives that dominate most political systems make it unlikely to be widely implemented in the near future.
Deliberation mimics the structure of complex adaptive systems with diverse nodes interacting, testing hypotheses, and evolving feedback. It’s messier than command, but more resilient. However, their influence depends heavily on the surrounding political culture, media framing, and institutional openness to reform.
We don’t want resources. We want to win.
When faced with information that contradicts deeply held beliefs, people choose to reject the new information rather than update their existing beliefs. This leads to what psychologists call belief perseverance, the maintenance of a belief despite new information that strongly contradicts it. This tendency explains why simply presenting people with correct information fails to change minds on emotionally charged or identity-linked issues.
The tension between tribal belonging and our shared ecological reality is one that we cannot simply resolve through more facts or better deliberation. Rather than attempting to transcend our tribal nature, which is an impossible task given our evolutionary history, we might instead cultivate a more mindful relationship with it.
The conclusion is that we may not transcend tribal thinking. Eradicating it is impossible, given that every human who has ever lived identified with one tribe or another.
We have been fighting human nature when we should have been harnessing it. After watching countless environmental campaigns struggle against tribal psychology, I have started to wonder. Are we approaching this backwards? Instead of trying to transcend tribal thinking, what if we deliberately designed environmental movements as genuine tribes?
Think about it.
The most successful environmental initiatives succeed precisely because they create a strong in-group identity. Surfers protecting their breaks. Hunters are conserving wildlife habitat. Local communities are defending their watersheds. These are the voices of people in tribes with clear territorial interests and proud cultural identities.
The uncomfortable insight is that tribal competition might be more effective than universal cooperation. Make environmentalism tribally competitive. "We're better stewards than those wasteful people over there." This isn't about creating hatred, but about channelling our evolutionary drive for group status toward ecological outcomes. The Amish didn't become low-carbon because they studied climate science; they became low-carbon because simple living defines their tribal identity.
The practical implication challenges everything we assume about environmental communication. Instead of seeking universal agreement, we might focus on building stronger environmental tribes that take pride in their ecological performance relative to others.
We could extend this further.
Suppose the entire premise that we need broad agreement on environmental issues reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how change happens. My experience in policy consulting taught me that waiting for consensus means waiting forever. There is always a polemic that attracts people to one side or the other.
Perhaps different tribes should pursue completely different environmental strategies based on their values, and we should let results determine effectiveness rather than seeking impossible agreement. This would be recognition that forcing ideological uniformity might be less effective than allowing genuine diversity of approaches.
Consider how this might work practically.
Conservative communities could embrace environmental stewardship through property rights, traditional conservation, and technological innovation. Progressive communities could pursue degrowth, regulation, and collective action. Indigenous communities could expand traditional ecological management. Rather than arguing over which approach is "correct," we'd have multiple experiments running simultaneously.
The beauty of this approach lies in its acceptance of human diversity while maintaining accountability through outcomes. If one tribe's environmental strategy produces better ecological results, others might voluntarily adopt elements of it, not because they were persuaded by argument, but because they witnessed success.
This challenges our democratic assumption that major issues require majority consensus. Sometimes, allowing principled disagreement creates more innovation than forcing artificial unity.
This will easily extend to geography.
What if we acknowledged the reality that different regions will adopt radically different environmental approaches based on their unique tribal values, and stopped trying to impose global uniformity? My travels across diverse political and cultural landscapes suggest that this might not just be inevitable but also beneficial.
Let Texas pursue technological solutions and carbon capture. Let California embrace regulation and degrowth. Let Europe experiment with circular economies. Let developing nations prioritise lifting people out of poverty while building clean infrastructure. Rather than fighting over whose approach is "correct," we'd have multiple large-scale experiments running simultaneously.
Tribal divergence is already shaping climate policy. Regions respond to what their cultures will tolerate, not what science demands. Uniformity isn’t just unrealistic—it’s counterproductive.
Variation is strength. Different tribes face different ecological conditions. Their values, resources, and risks differ, too. Some experiments will fail, and some will flourish. Those that adapt best will attract capital, people, and legitimacy. In thermodynamic terms, distributed variation slows systemic collapse. It allows energy dissipation to be spread across adaptive pathways rather than being bottlenecked through a brittle monoculture.
This is evolution under pressure. Environmental collapse will not wait for consensus. Instead, it will punish unfit ideas. Let that be the sorting mechanism.
The great delusion of climate politics is the belief that unity precedes action. In truth, the fixation on agreement paralyses movement. While we hold hands in diplomatic circles, the biosphere burns.
We don’t need planetary harmony. We need a design that channels tribal loyalty toward functional outcomes. Let the tribes compete on environmental performance. That might just be our best chance.
Let the tribes compete on environmental outcomes. Let results, not rhetoric, determine which approaches deserve to spread. Ultimately, the atmosphere doesn't care about our political sensibilities—it only responds to what works. And what works might look nothing like the environmental movement we've been trying to build.
And Leeds United? Well, their glory years passed, and my support for them waned. My tribal allegiance was fluid.
And that is a thought to take away.