Climate Change: Follow the money behind global warming denial
It always seemed to me that it was just too easy for corporate interests, especially big oil, to promote denial and skepticism about global warming. In this day of easy access to information on the internet, I could quickly look up the funding of scientists who were publishing studies that refuted climate change theories, and I found that they almost always were receiving substantial money from big oil. Somehow companies were succeeding in "buying" this issue, but how? In the past corporate interests, even backed by tons of capital, could not always convince the public to go along with them. What was different in this case?
The more I looked into this the more it became clear. First let me say that my next sentence is NOT about those who are fiscally conservative due to a well reasoned understanding of economics, and its not about those who are socially conservative because that is where their morals and ideals led them - I fully respect those groups. But there is a group of "conservatives" who seem to be inflexible, less insightful, and powerfully driven by a need for certainty and cognitive closure in their world. This group also seems to be overly concerned about a big brother-like takeover by government. It is the latter group that easily falls prey to the PR campaigns of corporate interests who push the idea that global warming is a massive unknown that is not certain, cannot be described in black/white terms, and may need government intervention. These ideas push the buttons of the underlying conservative psychology of this subgroup and makes them seek out the comfort of denial.
Again, I am not putting down conservatives who come to their leanings through rational means and are otherwise flexible and open in their beliefs. But there are many on the right who seem dependent on needs for predictability and certainty, and this group does not seem to want to consider the entire issue of climate change, nor the way that corporate interests are manipulating things. There is much more about this issue at two of my blogs: Conservative Psychology and The Climate Change Journal
The more I looked into this the more it became clear. First let me say that my next sentence is NOT about those who are fiscally conservative due to a well reasoned understanding of economics, and its not about those who are socially conservative because that is where their morals and ideals led them - I fully respect those groups. But there is a group of "conservatives" who seem to be inflexible, less insightful, and powerfully driven by a need for certainty and cognitive closure in their world. This group also seems to be overly concerned about a big brother-like takeover by government. It is the latter group that easily falls prey to the PR campaigns of corporate interests who push the idea that global warming is a massive unknown that is not certain, cannot be described in black/white terms, and may need government intervention. These ideas push the buttons of the underlying conservative psychology of this subgroup and makes them seek out the comfort of denial.
Again, I am not putting down conservatives who come to their leanings through rational means and are otherwise flexible and open in their beliefs. But there are many on the right who seem dependent on needs for predictability and certainty, and this group does not seem to want to consider the entire issue of climate change, nor the way that corporate interests are manipulating things. There is much more about this issue at two of my blogs: Conservative Psychology and The Climate Change Journal