Interest Groups

This week I will share more about interest groups, specifically those related to the environment. I chose to research more about environmental interest groups because I am involved with Team ECO at school and was interested to learn more about groups that care about the environment. Interest groups are a group of people who have a shared goal of influencing public policy, and they do this through advertising, lobbying (influencing public officials such as legislators), and litigation (a lawsuit against an individual or organization). For environmental interest groups, an example of a liberal group is the Sierra Club and a more conservative group is the Heartland Institute.

The Sierra Club's mission statement includes promoting responsible use of Earth's ecosystems. More details about the Sierra Club is that they aim to protect the wilderness and support cleaner energy. To do so, they help with several acts: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. One of the most recent things that have accomplished is setting up funds to help Puerto Rice recover from Hurricane Maria, and will give 100% of the funds to recovery efforts. One of the artifacts found on the Sierra Club website was a video trying to encourage people to stop Scott Pruitt from using public land for fossil fuels. This represents what Sierra Club believes in because it benefits the environment more that business. However, there is of course bias present in the video. They ignored the benefits that could come from Pruitt's decision. Perhaps the land is not suitable for any building development or have any wildlife present so it would be reasonable for people to make economic benefit from it. Additionally, the video also uses rhetoric by using extremely suspenseful and mysterious music. The type of background music used to similar to that in movies or tv shows when something bad is about to happen. This implies that only bad things can come from Pruitt's decision.

The conservative environmental group, Heartland Institute, focuses more on air/water pollution, public health, and energy policy. On their website, they pride themselves in having significant amounts of publications that have influenced 45% of state officials' opinions or a change in public policy. One other main thing that they believe is that there is no evidence of climate change. An artifact from this website was an article centered around this idea. They claimed that, “1,534 U.S. adults … 48 percent, saying Earth is warming due to human activity, while 51 percent believe warming and other changes are either due to natural causes or there is no solid evidence Earth is warming at all.” This is aligned with the conservative group's beliefs because it puts emphasis on how there is a greater percentage of American who do not believe climate change is causes by humans. Similar to the liberal interest group, Heartland Institute's article also has bias present. Though showing the statistics of the survey, they fail to mention why these people believed that climate change is not real. Also looking at the survey conducted, their sample size was relatively small of only around 1,000 people compared to the 300+ million people in the United States.

Both the liberal and conservative interest groups have very different beliefs when it comes to the environment. Most notable differences is that Sierra Club (liberal) focuses primarily on protecting the Earth, while the Heartland Institute (conservative) wants a free-market, meaning that the government is less involved in people's lives. There are similarities in that both interest groups do care for helping people in times of disaster. Whether it was the Las Vegas shooting or recent hurricanes, they encourage people to support and donate. They also both use recent politics to gain support for their organization. In terms of the purpose of the artifacts for each interest group, Sierra Club tried to get people to take action for what they believed in, while Heartland Institute was more to inform people. The bias for the artifacts I chose to study were different in technique. The liberal group used visuals and sound to persuade the audience while the conservative group used statistics.

Though both very different interest groups, they both have strong beliefs regarding the environment. Interest groups can influence a person's political beliefs because depending on the websites that people are on, they be influenced, either consciously or subconsciously. By looking at what various interest groups believe in, we can get a better understanding of the different perspectives that people have.

Thanks for reading again and tune it for next week when I research and discuss about political parties.