This can be achieved, they suggest, by the consolidation of private property rights which will foster good stewardship since private land owners have more incentives than do government bureaucrats to take care of the land they own.
For instance, strong private property laws are often the best ways to encourage people to act in environmentally friendly ways. We tend to act less responsibly when we are not directly affected by our actions. Over the last few years, no social movement has epitomized this attitude better than the Tea Parties, who came into being in the wake of the financial meltdown in It is undeniable that economic issues are much more central to Tea Party activism than social ones.
In order to grasp the stakes of the climate war, it is useful to consider the words of the prominent environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott:. It will not suffice … simply to encourage people individually and voluntarily to build green and drive hybrid.
On the contrary, the only hope we have to temper global climate change is a collective sociocultural response in the form of policy, regulation, treaty, and law. It was to acknowledge the limits of free-market capitalism. In that regard, the climate denial movement clearly emerges as a case of ideological grandstanding. As a matter of fact, a significant number of American corporations, by definition dedicated to free-market economics, have already jumped on the global warming bandwagon.
The US Climate Action Partnership, set up by several major corporations in cooperation with various environmental organisations in , is a case in point. Their most zealous proponents are not prepared to surrender without putting up a fight.
Bush, has pointed out that the political controversy over man-made global warming is the most recent front in the so-called culture wars. The climate change denial movement sometimes appears as the extension of Cold War politics by other means. Deniers are prone to dismiss the theory of man-made global warming and all the attendant government schemes to mitigate it as a kind of socialist conspiracy hatched by the enemies of economic freedom.
George F. Will, in a Washington Post column, derided the threat of global warming as a convenient strategy used by big-government liberals like Al Gore and Barack Obama to reinforce what he perceives as the pre-eminence of statism in American life and to drive the last nail in the coffin of economic freedom. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but—even better—in the name of Earth itself.
During the presidential primary contest, each candidate had to pass a number of ideological litmus tests in order to prove his or her conservativeness on key issues like illegal immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
Curiously, denying man-made global warming or downplaying its consequences turned out to be one of the requirements foisted on the candidates. Mitt Romney, who eventually became the Republican nominee, remains a case in point. Neela Barnjee, reporter for the Los Angeles Times , has shown that, although Romney had been pro-active on climate policy at the beginning of his term as Governor of Massachusetts , he had no compunction about changing his position when he first decided to run for president in Once again, the climate controversy is just one arena of contention in the multifaceted effort to protect American corporations and business owners from government regulations.
Ideological intransigence also prompted Maine Senator Olympia Snowe to not seek a fourth term in John McCain, who unavailingly had co-sponsored several climate bills in the Senate before winning the Republican presidential nomination in , did not even mention global warming in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The rub for the Republican Party is that although market fundamentalism may play well during some Republican primaries across the country, it is unlikely to be a winner with the larger electorate in the general elections, which Mitt Romney found out in What may be more appealing to the general public, however, is the opposition to climate legislation in defence of the so-called American way of life. Nevertheless because of mounting scientific evidence 44 it is becoming increasingly untenable to deny reality, which has led conservative and libertarian think tanks to modify their tactics.
But then they throw in a variety of arguments that actually undermine the public appetite for action. First, they assert that the negative repercussions of a global rise in temperatures are being grossly overstated in order to alarm the public and decision-makers into accepting the environmentalist agenda. Second, nondenier deniers argue that actions to mitigate the effects of global warming will be economically destructive and environmentally insignificant.
Consider the testimony of Kenneth P. The commitment to adaptation rather than mitigation has been repeated endlessly in recent conservative and libertarian publications and statements on global warming. Consider, for example, their repeated claim that a unilateral approach to climate change by the American government would make no real difference, an argument often used to discredit efforts by Congress to impose mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across the nation.
Senators Robert Byrd West Virginia and Chuck Hagel Nebraska issued a resolution blocking the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, invoking the same line of argument. In his scathing indictment of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Steven Groves, of the Heritage Foundation, took exception to the fact that, under the terms of a Kyoto II climate change treaty, the United States would be required to help emerging economies, including China—its main economic rival, improve their environmental standards by sharing American findings in clean energy research.
Developing nations, including economic giants such as India and China, view climate change as a cash cow…and more. In the context of the economic difficulties faced by the American economy since and in light of the strong Chinese economy, it is at the very least problematic to require the United States to engage in serious measures concerning climate change action with no certainty that the Chinese will also be required to do their fair share.
Steven Groves contends that under the terms of a Kyoto-style treaty, the United States would be marginalised and exploited by other nations:. A committee or committees of international experts—whose members may include representatives from overtly hostile nations—will have the final word on whether the US climate record is up to snuff.
Were the US Senate to ratify a Kyoto-style treaty, it would have to ensure governmental protection of American interests. It is not unreasonable, for example, to demand that emerging economies, and especially the BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa , not be exonerated from the tremendous efforts necessary to deal with climate change, although the priority of climate change deniers appears to be to find arguments to stall any measure to address climate change.
While they are quick to point out the futility of unilateral action on the part of the United States, they are also reluctant to endorse multilateral action. Taken together, these two positions give one the impression that taking no action continues to be the best course of action. The reason for this is that in matters of environmental policy, American fiscal conservatives and libertarians have tended to subjugate land health and high environmental standards to the imperatives of economic growth.
Bush White House, replied to a journalist who asked him in whether American people ought to make lifestyle adjustments in order to remedy energy challenges, that, to paraphrase George H. Bush, the American way of life was not negotiable:. That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.
This is an aspect of the debate particularly embraced by climate change deniers because it allows them to stand for the creation of wealth and higher standards of living for the American middle class. Senator James Inhofe wrote that his mission was to protect the average consumer from higher prices and regulations in a article in Human Events.
Even though there is little doubt that such an approach will lead to a dead end, it does make political sense in the short term: branding themselves as the intransigent advocates of the American way of life allows climate deniers to attack their adversaries from a position of strength. In The Assault on Reason , Al Gore seems to imply that the American dedication to high consumption and economic growth will not need to be called into question, that quite the opposite holds true:.
The opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which as human beings we are naturally vulnerable.
Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War , begs to differ. To reduce the amount of CO 2 pouring into the atmosphere means dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuel being consumed. Even under the best scenarios, this will involve something more like a revolution than a technical fix. Raising public awareness about global warming is one thing, and it is hard enough, but convincing the public to change its behavior in order to avert global warming is quite another.
To be sure it would be unfair to state that President Obama did nothing to address the climate crisis. It also begs one crucial question: were Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel right in thinking that the public would not have accepted the passage of a cap-and-trade bill? Given a choice between doing more about the environment and anything else, the environment wins.
If in fact most Republicans were dead set against the Waxman-Markey Bill, a significant number of Democrats also proved lukewarm about the bill if not downright hostile to it. Climate change deniers also illustrate the strong ideological forces that have been shaping Republican politics over the last few decades. The generally accepted scientific explanation for global warming significantly damages the soundness of the ideological pro-market position which the American conservative movement has been embracing since the Reagan era and the end of the Cold War.
In effect, conceding defeat in the climate war would have devastating repercussions on the intellectual bearings of many conservative officials and activists.
So far, for the most part, with a few notable exceptions like former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman and Arizona Senator John McCain, it has been a defeat too hard to swallow. While the scientific case of climate deniers has now been seriously discredited, their economic arguments will certainly continue to carry a lot of weight in American politics in the years to come.
Broadly defined, the ideology of the proponents of strong climate action points to a willingness to adapt to the limitations imposed on modern civilisations by ecosystems and the biosphere.
Yet, their reluctance to be more straightforward about the major cultural and behavioural changes that would inevitably stem from more ecologically-sensitive climate policies demonstrates that the implications of the policies they advocate are not completely developed.
In addition, their irenic 74 perception of the international community and its potential for well-coordinated, effective climate-related action does not bode well for the future. When it comes to laying out international measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, US proponents of strong climate-related action place a disproportionate burden on developed countries like the United States.
Although from a historical and moral perspective this approach may seem justified, global warming remains first and foremost a global problem impossible to solve without the full participation of all countries, including developing countries.
Paris: Plon, Allin, Craig W. There is so much difference between theologically conservative white Christians and other theologically conservative Christians, oftentimes. RV: I totally agree. What are the most important factors which shape how evangelicals view climate change?
In my experience, the biggest thing that would otherwise chop kind of good ecological theology off at the neck was generally political ideology. I was doing these focus groups shortly after An Inconvenient Truth came out. There were a lot of Al Gore associations with climate change and the sense that this is part of a broader progressive agenda. Even at that time, I think the sort of partisan baggage around and around the climate was already quite strong.
RV: I did mine in , So, five years later. What I traced out in the book is how politics and religion became sort of fused together. And that starting around probably and , there was this campaign that leaders in the Christian Right initiated to portray skepticism that the climate is changing due to human activities as the more biblical position on climate change. Evangelical Christians uniformly believe that they should care for the environment and be good stewards.
But for them that was really disconnected from concern about climate change. And I think that politics has a lot to do with it. When you look at how the surveys change over time, evangelicals — from the earliest surveys I can find were [from ] — already more skeptical than the general public. But that gap started increasing, and that may be due to the efforts to portray skepticism as the more Biblically sound approach to climate change. Since you brought up end times, the question that inspired my research was whether end-time beliefs were responsible for environmental apathy, because a lot of environmentalists bring that up.
That drive for Christians to get out to vote, return to public life, and reclaim America. A lot of the people that I talked to believe that America used to be a Christian nation, or should be a Christian nation. So they feel that becoming politically active is part of their mission to reclaim what was lost. And that was, from what I saw, a more powerful driver than end-time beliefs.
KW: I agree. Somehow that trope became really popular among progressives and environmentalists. Because climate change has become so entwined with politics, is it dangerous or socially risky for some evangelicals to speak about climate change? RV: I saw a lot of evidence of that. Part of being a part of the evangelical community is showing that you keep good theologically conservative company, and environmentalism is associated with being liberal. In America, theological liberalism and political liberalism are kind of viewed as the same thing.
So it does raise questions if you become interested in the environment. This is not just a set of beliefs that you are holding as an individual. I think there were certainly leaders in the evangelical community who I wrote about in Between God and Green who had some very real backlash from the power brokers on the evangelical right. Robin makes a good point about Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. If you look at self-identified Democrats or self-identified progressives in the U.
Twenty-somethings and somethings look very similar. But if you look at folks who are self-identified Republicans, or politically conservative, there is a distinct age gap between somethings and somethings. And this is where Young Evangelicals for Climate Action is playing strategically. The other thing I thought was interesting … Megan Mayhew Bergman, who writes for the Guardian , did a series of pieces about the South and climate change, and she found some interesting kind of gender gap stuff.
RV: There is a paper called Cool Dudes that talks about why climate change skepticism is such a white male phenomenon. I was just trying to think back over my focus group: I had a lot of outspoken women. I heard them being skeptical as well. KW: When I was looking at this topic, there was more high profile evangelical leadership engaged visibly and loudly on the topic. I think it was quite significant when RichardCizik was ousted from the National Association of Evangelicals.
He was the chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals in D. The idea was that evangelicals were going to add to the momentum that was already building.
Since they were politically conservative, they were going to make it undeniable that action needed to be taken. Previous Pew Research Center studies have found only a modest effect of religion on attitudes about environmental protection.
For example, a Pew Research Center telephone survey of U. Hispanic Catholics, like Hispanics in general, are more likely to say the Earth is warming due to human activity. White evangelical Protestants stand out as least likely to have this view. However, in multivariate statistical modeling, the major religious affiliation groups did not differ from the religiously unaffiliated in views about climate change. Political party identification and race and ethnicity are stronger predictors of views about climate change beliefs than are religious identity or observance.
The Pew Research Center survey asked respondents to pick which of three options best described their views about climate change. Pew Research asked this same question in and found that about the same share of U.
Views about climate change vary by religious affiliation and level of religious observance. The Pew Research survey also asked half of the respondents about their views on climate change using a more nuanced series of questions. First, respondents were asked for their views about whether there is solid evidence the average temperature of the Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. Similarly, the major religious affiliation groups did not differ from the religiously unaffiliated in views about climate change.
Hispanic Catholics, followed by the religiously unaffiliated, are especially likely to perceive scientists as generally agreeing that the Earth is warming due to human activity. There are no differences in perceptions of scientific consensus on this issue by frequency of church attendance. A multivariate logistic regression, not shown, found neither religious affiliation nor frequency of attendance significantly predict perceptions of scientific consensus about climate change. A multivariate logistic analysis controlling for political and demographic factors, not shown, finds both evangelical and mainline Protestants of any race more likely than are the religiously unaffiliated to support more offshore drilling.
Frequency of church attendance is not a significant predictor of views on this issue with other factors controlled. The general public is closely divided when it comes to opinions about nuclear power.
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