The Trial Lawyer, Summer 2017

A recent article published in Ars Technica discussed several conservative leaders — ranging from religious figures to former Republican politicians — attempting to convince conservatives that climate change was an issue that needed to be addressed by everyone, not just the liberals in the United States. The article discusses various ways that these conservatives are trying to approach the issue, from citing biblical passages about protecting the earth, to educating conservative voters about the benefits of a carbon tax.

The Ars Technica article touched on a very important subject that is too often left out of discussions on climate change: Why is there such a strong divide between Republicans and Democrats about the dangers — or even the existence — of climate change?

Polls from recent years have shown that majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and those who don’t describe themselves as either Republican or Democrat all believe that climate change is real. But that’s only based on the question of acceptance of climate science; when you scratch below the surface, party divides become more and more apparent.

In fact, as The Atlantic recently explained, pollsters have found that the deeper they get into climate issues, the more likely respondents are to cling to their political party’s ideology: When you start proposing hypothetical policies, the numbers often fall. (50 percent of Americans support or strongly support a carbon tax, according to a study from the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College.) But when policies aren’t hypothetical — when they’re the status quo — Americans line up behind them. (Almost 70 percent support former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan; roughly the same number want the United States to stay in the Paris Agreement.)

If you include a partisan watchword in a question, people start answering through a different frame. They give the answer that matches their affiliation — their societal “team” — even if they may harbor doubts about it. There is a vast partisan disagreement, for instance, on the question of whether scientists near-unanimously agree that human industrial activity is causing global warming. (They do; nearly every study finds unanimity on this issue among scientists.

But only 13 percent of self-identified conservative Republicans think that’s the case, as compared to 55 percent of liberal Democrats.)

The most obvious, and easiest, answer to the question of why the Republican Party of the United States is more likely to deny the existence of climate change or to acknowledge but ignore it, is the money that the party receives from the fossil fuel industry. According to Open Secrets, the oil and gas industry gave more than $53 million to the Republican The Trial Lawyer x 63