I can only speak from my experience living in the 1980s US. At that time, if you publicly announced you supported "Saving the Whales" or "Protecting our Forest

I can only speak from my experience living in the 1980s US. At that time, if you publicly announced you supported "Saving the Whales" or "Protecting our Forests", it was a form of identity politics. You were announcing you were left of center and probably rejected traditional values etc. Because it was political, it was not necessary logical or beneficial. Some good came out of it such as maybe we should stop spraying pesticides everywhere and take another look if these pesticides were safe for human contact. Some of it was self-defeating. The left claimed they supported working people but some of their policies hurt working people like NIMBY.