Politics of climate change belief

Abstract

editorialEarlier this year, Donald Trump appointed Myron Ebell, a known climate science denier, to oversee the US Environmental Protection Agency transition (he later chose another sceptic, Scott Pruitt, to run the agency), and said that he would 'cancel' the Paris climate agreement. By the end of his second week as president-elect, it was announced that under Trump funds from NASA's Earth Science Division would be redirected to deep space exploration projects, effectively eliminating a worldrenowned centre for climate change research (see ref. 1 for a complete overview of Trump's actions). This is notable given that, as discussed in our November News Feature 2 , climate change was not central to the US presidential campaigns, and is not an issue that motivates electoral decisions. Moreover, it is not clear how such actions speak to the concerns that motivated Trump voters. Instead, these actions reinforce and provide a striking example of the political polarization of climate change. Indeed, the justification given for defunding climate change research at NASA is to abolish "politicized science".A meta-analysis published in this journal last year showed that ideology and political orientation were among the strongest predictors of climate change belief 3 . However, there is a stark contrast between the politics of climate change belief and the politics of climate mitigation behaviour. For example, Florida went to Trump, but also voted to allow the expansion of solar power. The disconnect between political polarization on climate change and support for clean energy cannot be attributed to unusual voter behaviour in an unconventional election cycle. The states that produce the greatest proportion of their electricity from wind 4 , and the top windenergy producing congressional districts 5 , are all led by Republicans. In fact, many Republicans support policies that promote development of clean and renewable energy not because they reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but because of potential economic benefits. This begs the question of whether the success of climate change communication is actually hampered by mentioning climate change at all. "Climate change" was said exactly once in each of the three presidential debates. In each case, Hillary Clinton was discussing the economic benefits of growing clean energy, and then gave what were arguably 'shout outs' to climate change as another reason clean energy policies are important. (The closest any question came to referring to climate change was a question about energy policy and remaining "environmentally friendly".) When asked directly about the Paris agreement in an interview with The New York Times in late November, Trump quickly pivoted from whether or not he believes in human-caused climate change to the importance of ensuring that American companies are competitive, essentially saying his belief in climate change depends on the corporate cost of such a belief. On the one hand, climate change sceptics respond more positively when addressing climate change is fr...