EcoTypes: Exploring Environmental Ideas and Discovering Deep Difference

Foundations and Conceptual Framework of EcoTypes

• Deep Environmental Difference and Paradox:

  • Environmental disagreements extend beyond superficial variations in personal preference or opinion; they reflect profound structural contradictions inherent in addressing complex environmental challenges.

  • Key environmental threats—such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental injustice—draw students to Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS) programs, yet these issues present escalating complexities that cannot be reduced to simple consensus.

  • Deep difference conceptualizes environmental complexity as paradox: an unsettled contradiction characterized by plural, legitimate truths that cannot easily be harmonized or synthesized into a single static consensus.

  • Rather than seeking to eliminate disagreement, deep difference acknowledges that opposing viewpoints often stem from valid, differentiated interactions with environmental reality.

• Creative Tension and Democratic Engagement:

  • Creative tension is defined as the productive give-and-take within democratic engagement that occurs when environmental complexity is embraced as a valuable resource rather than viewed as a deterrent to solution-making.

  • Navigating paradox allows participants to position themselves constructively within this creative tension, fostering more robust, resilient, and nuanced environmental policies and understandings.

• Scholarly Context and Connections:

  • Emma Brush (2020): Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, Brush identifies pluralism as the "inconvenient truth of environmental politics." She Advocates for "achieving disagreement"—establishing engaged, respectful discussion to uncover and understand the foundational bases of contention.

  • Jennifer Bernstein (2020): Bernstein critiques conventional attempts to quantify environmental worldviews, particularly instruments like the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), which assume a singular, unified set of environmental norms. She questions whether a unidimensional metric using survey methodology is appropriate for something as fluid and multidimensional as environmental concern.

  • Susan Caplow (2020): Classroom implementations of EcoTypes demonstrate that practicing conflict navigation and discussing fundamental disagreements provides students with actionable skills for articulating their own environmental frameworks.

  • Mark Neff and Zander Albertson (2020): Contemporary higher education often fails to prepare students for policy divides because students frequently self-select into homogeneous academic programs, severely limiting exposure to dialogue across deep differences.

• Definition and Scope of Environmental Ideas:

  • The term ideas is intentionally distinguished from individual attitudes or values. Environmental ideas are relational, cultural, and institutionalized within laws, moral codes, and physical landscapes.

  • Environmental ideas operate as ideologies—social concepts circulating through material practices and power relations. They represent collective meanings through which human societies make sense of, and interact with, the physical world.

  • The scope of environmental ideas expands beyond traditional ecological constructs to encompass broader societal dimensions, including Aesthetics, Change, Diversity, Domain, Ecosystems, Ethics, Future, Nature, Science, Social Scale, Society, Spatial Scale, Spirituality, Technology, and Time.

  • At educational institutions such as Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, environmentalism is approached not as a settled set of established solutions, but as an open-ended exploration of conceptual possibilities.

Structure and Methodology of the EcoTypes Survey

• Origins and Development:

  • EcoTypes was initiated in early $2017$ as a joint research and educational initiative following discussions at the Breakthrough Institute Dialogs in June $2015$ and June $2016$.

  • The initiative was informed by the publication of An Ecomodernist Manifesto (Asafu-Adjaye et al., $2015$), which advocated for a "good, or even great, Anthropocene" leveraging human knowledge and technology, and decoupling human well-being from environmental impacts.

  • In June $2016$, a foundational framework introduced six "axes of difference" (Domain, Nature, Scale, Science, Society, and Time) to typify contemporary environmental positions such as ecomodernism (e.g., progressive Time, orthodox Science, consensus Society, hybrid Nature).

  • Following a sabbatical development period in fall $2016$, survey items were juried and refined using alpha reliability analysis on pilot data alongside theoretical scholarship, yielding an initial $11$-axis survey deployed in spring $2017$. Annual revisions occurred before each academic year ($2017$\text{--}$2018$, $2018$\text{--}$2019$, $2019$\text{--}$2020$) based on feedback from Association for Environmental Studies & Sciences (AESS) conference workshops.

• Core Components of the Survey:

  • $15$ EcoTypes Axes: Each axis is calculated as the unweighted mean of four Likert-scale statements (scored from $-10$ to $10$), designed to capture opposing conceptual poles.

  • Grid-Group Cultural Theory Instrument: Derived from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP $2000$ Environment survey), an $8$-item scale places respondents into one of four cultural quadrants based on two social dimensions:

  • Group: Degree of social cohesion and collective identity.

  • Grid: Degree of social hierarchy, stratification, and role authority.

  • Quadrants: Individualist, Egalitarian, Hierarchist, and Fatalist.

  • Demographics and Background Variables: Captures institutional affiliation, academic class level, undergraduate major, self-rated environmental concern/knowledge/involvement, gender, race/ethnicity, age, childhood location, community size, economic class, and self-rated political orientation.

  • Online System Architecture: Hosted online at jimproctor.us/ecotypes, providing participants with personalized feedback reports, live dynamic results displays, deep-dive theoretical reference pages, and an abbreviated $15$-item Quick Themes Survey.

Empirical Findings and Statistical Analysis

• Respondent Sample Profile ($2018$\text{--}$2019$ Dataset):

  • Data collected between mid-August $2018$ and mid-May $2019$ yielded $1455$ total completions across $31$ US institutions of higher education (spanning liberal arts colleges to major public universities from Maine to Hawaii).

  • After removing $7\%$ of respondents who opted out of confidential data storage, the primary analytical sample size was $N = 1350$ (with an $N = 595$ sub-sample for the Ecosystems axis, which was added in January $2019$).

  • Academic Standing: $61\%$ lower-division undergraduates; $37\%$ declared environmental program majors (an additional $16\%$ reported "other/not applicable", potentially undercounting majors due to option confusion).

  • Gender and Ethnicity: $62\%$ female; $67\%$ White; $74\%$ middle class or above.

  • Political and Cultural Orientation: $67\%$ identified as somewhat liberal or very liberal. In grid-group cultural metrics, $60\%$ scored as Egalitarian (associated with a "nature ephemeral" perspective favoring the precautionary principle), while $23\%$ scored as Individualist.

  • Gender Association: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that gender identity had the most consistent, statistically significant ($p < .01$) association with EcoTypes themes: female identification correlated strongly with nonhuman Place, old Knowledge, and big Action.

• Descriptive Statistics across the $15$ EcoTypes Axes:

  • Axes are scored continuously from a minimum of $-10$ (left pole) to a maximum of $10$ (right pole). Mean values and standard deviations ($SD$) for $N = 1350$ (Ecosystems $N = 595$) are summarized below:

• Analysis of High-Variance (Divergent) Axes:

  • While axes such as Ethics (mean $-2.42$), Science (mean $2.43$), and Social Scale (mean $2.39$) displayed strong central tendencies, four specific axes exhibited exceptionally high standard deviations ($SD > 4.00$), reflecting bimodal distribution patterns and deep polarization among students:

  • Change ($SD = 4.11$): Divergence between incremental step-by-step improvements (Maniates & Princen, $2015$) and radical structural alterations driven by critiques of capitalism (O'Connor, $1994$; Klein, $2014$).

  • Future ($SD = 4.06$): Polarization between apocalyptic crisis expectations (Ehrlich, $1968$; Meadows et al., $1974$; Steffen et al., $2015$) and optimistic possibility outlooks (Cotgrove, $1982$; DeFries et al., $2012$).

  • Social Scale ($SD = 4.03$): Conflict between individual lifestyle modifications (Maniates, $2001$) and institutional policy restructuring (Steinberg, $2015$).

  • Spirituality ($SD = 4.05$): Division between sacred/referential spiritual foundations (White, $1967$) and secular/empirical management frameworks.

EcoTypes Themes Derivation and Structure

• Factor Analysis Methodology:

  • Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with orthogonal Varimax rotation was performed on the $15$ EcoTypes axes ($N = 595$ complete responses).

  • The analysis yielded a three-factor solution representing independent (orthogonal) dimensions of greatest variance among participants, capturing the core underlying themes of environmental thought.

• Theme Loadings and Variance Distribution:

• Detailed Qualitative Characterization of Themes:

  • 1. Place Theme (Nonhuman vs. Human):

  • Core Question: What world do we want, and what would be the place of nonhumans vs. humans?

  • Nonhuman Pole ($-$): Integrates wild Aesthetics, biocentric Ethics, stable Ecosystems, crisis Future, and pure Nature. Prioritizes the natural world as pre-existing human activity; skeptical of human interventions; views ecological futures with urgency and crisis.

  • Human Pole ($+$): Combines crafted Aesthetics, anthropocentric Ethics, dynamic Ecosystems, possibility Future, and hybrid Nature. Centers human flourishing and accomplishment; accepts and celebrates human transformation of physical systems; maintains an optimistic outlook regarding future potential.

  • 2. Knowledge Theme (Old vs. New):

  • Core Question: What old vs. new ways of knowing will help us build the world we want?

  • Old Knowledge Pole ($-$): Merges ideal Domain, heterodox Science, sacred Spirituality, technophobic Technology, and past Time. Values inherited wisdom, ancient traditions, and spiritual reflections; remains cautious toward technological expansion and empirical innovation.

  • New Knowledge Pole ($+$): Synthesizes material Domain, orthodox Science, secular Spirituality, technophilic Technology, and future Time. Emphasizes modern scientific methodologies, empirical evidence, technological progress, and future-oriented innovations.

  • 3. Action Theme (Small vs. Big):

  • Core Question: What action at small vs. big scales will help us build the world we want?

  • Small Action Pole ($-$): Combines incremental Change, low priority Diversity, individual Social Scale, consensus Society, and local Spatial Scale. Advocates for localized, bottom-up, individual-level, non-confrontational civic actions.

  • Big Action Pole ($+$): Connects radical Change, high priority Diversity, institutional Social Scale, conflict Society, and global Spatial Scale. Focuses on institutional reform, systemic political restructuring, global coordination, and active engagement with political conflict.

Practical Frameworks for Engaging Across Deep Difference

• Three Options for Navigating Environmental Disagreement:

  • Option 1: Agree: Seeks common ground and compromise to establish a single, shared consensus truth. Common in environmental dispute resolution (O'Leary & Bingham, $2003$; Dukes, $2004$) and reconciliation/"win-win" ecology (Rosenzweig, $2003$).

  • Option 2: Disagree: Assumes a singular truth opposed by falsehood. Participants fight for their perspective against opposing viewpoints viewed as invalid or harmful; exemplified by activist protests and confrontational advocacy (Fisher et al., $2005$; Rootes, $2007$; Olzak & Soule, $2009$).

  • Option 3: Engage: Rejects both single-consensus harmonization (Agree) and adversarial rejection (Disagree). Encourages direct interaction across deep difference based on the recognition of plural, complementary truths.

• Quantum Complementarity and Bohr's Paradox:

  • Physicist Niels Bohr formulated the principle of complementarity in quantum mechanics, observing: "The opposite of a truth is a falsehood. But the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth."

  • Applied to environmental philosophy, complementary truths represent understandings that are individually accurate yet inherently incomplete, arising from distinct, differentiated modes of interacting with reality (Plotnitsky, $1994$, $2014$).

  • Engaging across difference entails recognizing that conflicting positions on Place, Knowledge, and Action often reflect profound, complementary truths rather than mere errors in logic or moral failings.

• Applied Engagement and Knowledge Coproduction:

  • Practical Scenario Applications: EcoTypes offers application modules across six environmental topics: activism, climate, conservation, food, health, and sustainability.

  • Climate Scenario Case Study: In climate discussions, positions range across renewable transitions, nuclear bridge fuels, and systemic civilizational crises. Rather than debating purely on technical grounds, engagement explores underlying tensions between new Knowledge ecomodernists (orthodox science, technophilic, future time) and old Knowledge ecoprimitivists or anarchists (ideal domain, heterodox science, sacred spirituality, past time).

  • Theoretical Roots: Connects environmental technology questions to Martin Heidegger ($1977$) and traditional/religious systems of meaning to Max Weber ($1963$).

  • Coproduction of Knowledge Framework: Derived from Sheila Jasanoff ($2004$) and applied across environmental management sectors (Meadow et al., $2015$; Miller & Wyborn, $2018$; Djenontin & Meadow, $2018$). Environmental knowledge is neither purely objective (detached physical facts) nor purely subjective (social construction; Berger & Luckmann, $1966$; Proctor, $1998$; Hacking, $1999$). Truth emerges at the interactive "cusp" connecting knowing human subjects with physical objects of knowledge (Hayles, $1995$).

  • Collaborative progress relies on maintaining creative tension across deep differences to coproduce sustainable environmental futures.