Sociologists and others have studied whether democracies are becoming more ideologically polarized over climate change. However, research has yet to investigate if a newer form of division—affective polarization, or citizens’ hostility toward opposing party members—shapes major polluters’ carbon (CO2) emissions. Building on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, integrated with neo-institutional and stakeholder perspectives, we argue that high levels of affective polarization enable power plants to emit greenhouse gases at a higher rate than those operating in less polarized contexts. To test our argument, we analyze a novel dataset of over 20,000 power plants in 92 democratic countries. Controlling for conventional predictors of emissions, we find that power plants in democracies marked by high affective polarization emit CO2 at significantly higher rates. Also, in contexts of heightened interparty hostility, government-owned power stations emit more carbon, climate policies are less effective at curbing plants’ emissions, and plants pollute more where strong political constraints susceptible to gridlock are in place. These results are robust across different modeling specifications, suggesting that partisan animosity likely creates institutional conditions that insulate power plants from stakeholder and regulatory pressure, thereby undermining democracies’ ability to limit emissions from some of the world’s largest carbon polluters.

Why do people in climate-vulnerable regions of Kenya and Namibia express more hope for the future than many in Germany, despite facing greater environmental threats? Drawing on ethnographic research and the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, we make two arguments. First, in contrast to structural theories, we see hope as tied not to economic security but to experiences of “captivity” or constraint. In Germany, the second half of the 20th century was marked by a diminished sense of captivity, and this led to a diminished capacity for hope. Second, in Kenya and Namibia, climate change is experienced concretely, through failed rains or livestock losses. The concrete experience of climate change allows people to respond, in Marcel's words, with “techniques of liquefaction,” which imagine an alternative future within a given framework of goals, and “acts of transcendence,” which reorient aspirations toward a radically different future. By contrast, in Germany, climate change is often perceived in the abstract, through scientific discourse and the media, fostering feelings of despair and powerlessness. We suggest that reengaging with climate change on a human scale and embracing socially creative or religious forms of transcendence may help reawaken hope.