28th
Why Conservatives Are Global Warming Skeptics
Why does the global warming debate, which should be a scientific question, fall so neatly along political lines (Freeman Dyson, notwithstanding)?
It’s interesting to me that conservatives, in particular, are so skeptical about it. I think when you cut right to the core it comes down to the fact that global warming is the perfect crisis for the liberal worldview. Just perfect.
It’s a catch-all crisis whose culprits are: Modernity, the automobile, meat, the 1st world, luxury, self-indulgence, etc. etc.
Thus global warming is seen by conservatives as beeing too pat, too conveniently tied up in a bow for the liberals. And given most people’s lack of ability to debate the issue with facts, — “But 99.9999% of climate scientists agree,” is not an argument — the natural heuristic is to be skeptical.
It works in both ways, of course, when it comes to science. I suspect that a large reason the message about AIDS prevention took a long time to get through to city-dwelling gays in the 80s and 90s is that the connection between an unorthodox sexual lifestyle and a disease just seemed too conveniently designed for conversative critics.
Christian conservatives had been railing against homosexuality for a long time, just like liberals have been bashing cars and meat and in-flight travel. So who wants to listen to them even if they have an argument based on “science”?
