What Climate Change?: Understanding Incentives for Denial

“The President’s climate change agenda has only siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” – Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
Over half of Republicans in the House and 70 percent of Republican senators join Inhofe in the same song of climate change denial, claiming that it is no “real” problem. The corresponding percentage of scientists is a whopping three. Yet Inhofe and supporters, politicians with higher educations and intricate understandings of important issues, flatly reject the testimonies even of scientific organizations themselves. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) even goes so far as to officially claim, “Man-made global warming remains unsettled science,” directly denying the fact that it simply is not.
There remains no question that a subset of the political right denies climate change in some respect, whether they dispute that it is man-made or that it exists at all. But from where does the gap between consensus among scientists and belief among politicians emerge? Monetary influence plays a part, to be sure, but some experts have pointed to a more overarching explanation: the reality of climate change presents a fundamental challenge to the economic system on which generations of Americans now stand.
Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes has studied the history of climate change in great detail and found that it interacts with the American psyche through several social incentives. Oreskes stated in an interview with the HPR that the disconnect between public and scientific perception of climate change comes not from a misunderstanding, but a “deliberate campaign to confuse the subject.” She believes that the fossil fuel industry, the principal target of climate change legislation, provides a monetary incentive for professional deniers to supply a steady stream of doubt to the market of political discourse.
Perhaps more fundamental, however, is the incentive to buy that doubt. Public denial of anthropogenic climate change, present in nearly half of Americans, rests on two key phenomena. The first lies in the psychology of climate change. While local weather variations on small time-scales have little, if any, relevance to global climate change, individuals tend to interpret such variations to both support their existing beliefs—either for or against climate change—and to project an inaccurate connection between these observations and year-to-year trends. Without enough public trust in science, there is no force to rectify incorrect perceptions. The propagators of doubt can utilize this to undermine public acceptance of the scientific consensus.
The second reason for public denial explains why the incorrect perception is so prevalent in the first place: a major contributor to climate change, the fossil fuel industry, has been the very engine of modern prosperity for many generations of Americans. To Oreskes, the reality of climate change remains a “bad news story” for much of society. Life in the past two centuries, Oreskes argued, “has been like a great big banquet,” in which “climate change is the bill, and no one wants to pay it.” The easier answers for many Americans are to argue, “someone else ate the food … [or] deny that there is a bill at all.” A strong media focus on China’s lack of commitment to mitigating climate change supplies the first response, while the aforementioned congressional deniers trumpet the second.
As long as the fossil fuel industry continues to propagate misleading statements and Congress injects doubt into the political system, Americans will have the societal incentive to absorb it and align with it. Why give up what has gotten the country so far? Combine this with a distinctive American distrust of government and thus environmental regulations that expand the government’s role, as well as unprecedented partisanship on the issue, and much of the country is left with a recipe for both perpetual denial and inaction.
On the other hand, some influential Republicans like Bob Inglis, George P. Schultz, and even Mitt Romney are attempting to bring the conversation of conservative, market-based climate solutions to the table. While the efforts are not yet so significant as to sway the House or Senate, perhaps a growing political initiative among concerned Republican representatives will finally break the cycle of fake doubt with a 2016 hopeful. With the fate of the environmental future in the balance, America looks forward to the primaries to determine if the GOP’s offer will embrace the harsh reality of modern science and the next step for America’s energy future.