The Yellow Vest protests that have convulsed France for the past few weeks, leaving chic Parisian neighborhoods smoldering, are making environmentalists nervous. Though the tax was favored by Parisians, who have access to efficient public transportation, it was seen as a provocation by struggling residents of the country’s rural and suburban areas. (“The taxes are rising on everything,” a rural retiree told a reporter from this newspaper. As with working-class support for the faltering coal industry in the United States, the question arises: Is environmentalism a boutique issue, a cause only the well-off can afford to worry about? In a landmark 1995 paper, the sociologist Ronald Inglehart observed an intriguing pattern in public support for the environmental movement.

Source: New York Times December 14, 2018 10:52 UTC