Skepticism about climate change is a cultural phenomenon that is being mainly ignored

Why do so many people reject the overwhelming scientific conclusion that human activity plays a major role in global warming and climate change? "That's a question we think journalists and academic researchers should be asking," says Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. "As this month's election may have illustrated, there is a skepticism and resentment toward elites and experts, and that makes it a more potent political issue – especially when journalists 'balance' stories by giving equal weight to climate-change deniers, who are vastly outnumbered in the scientific community."

The cultural nature of the issue is woefully ignored, says one social scientist. "The national discussion on climate change is brimming with economic models, scientific findings and wonky plans to fix it," Evan Lehmann of Environment & Energy News reports. "But something is missing: academic explanations of why people flout reams of scientific conclusions, bristle at the notion of cutting carbon and regard climate change as a sneaky liberal plot."

"The social sciences are glaringly missing," said Andrew Hoffman, an expert on the sociological aspects of environmental policies at the University of Michigan, where he is researching climate-change denial. "That leaves out critical questions about the cultural dimensions of both defining the problem and finding solutions." Hoffman notes that the research community dismisses the conservative movement, while social scientists are usually disengaged from public-policy debates. "Both of those are problematic," Hoffman said. "Within academia, the currency that matters is in A-level journals. And therefore, the chief thread has to be theoretical. This is an empirical phenomenon."

Hoffman claims the politics behind climate-change skepticism are similar to another conservative hot-button topic: abortion. "If, as we suspect, skeptics invoke climate frames that resemble abortion politics, this has serious policy implications," Hoffman and his colleagues wrote in a paper to be published in the journal Strategic Organization next summer. "As long as members of the skeptic movement are included in the policy debate and sway the opinions of some lawmakers, their discourse is critically relevant." Hoffman says reciting the scientific consensus about climate change won't address the cultural issues: "Simplistic notions that we merely have to present the science and we're done -- that ignores some of the deeper cultural elements at play such as freedom, privacy, proper role of government, our place within the environment, the balance between development and environmental protection."

Those are topics for journalists, not just academic researchers. The report about Hoffman is here, but a subscription is required. However, his paper is available on the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues website, here.