Have psychologists found a better way to persuade people to save the planet?

Recent studies linking people's views on social inequality to how they think and act on environmental issues could prove crucial to changing their behaviour

In the 1990s, psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a scientific theory to account for all the prejudice and violence in the world. Social dominance theory, which attributes sexism and racism (among other isms) to the way humanity organises its social structures, can be used to explain everything from opposition to welfare policies to why we go to war.

Put simply, the theory states that people with power will always seek more of the desirable things in life (as they see it) at the expense of their subordinates.