Rational Irrationality and Simulation in Environmental Politics: The Example of Climate Change

Do western publics make 'demands' for environmental policy that they have no desire to see enacted? The thesis that they do has been put forward recently by advocates of the 'post-ecologist' paradigm such as Ingolfur Bluhdorn. Taking the example of climate change, this article assesses survey results that provide indicative evidence that such 'simulative' demands may exist. I suggest that such demands are, however, best explained through conceptual tools available from game-theoretic and rational-actor models of political behaviour, in particular rational ignorance and rational irrationality, rather than with the societal-level accounts preferred by Bluhdorn and others.