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Theory, Culture & Society
DOI: 10.1177/0263276409356001
2010; 27; 100 Theory Culture Society
Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap
Undermining Climate Science and Policy
Anti-reflexivity: The American Conservative Movement’s Success in
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Anti-reflexivity
The American Conservative Movement’s
Success in Undermining Climate Science
and Policy
Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap
Abstract
The American conservative movement is a force of anti-reflexivity insofar as
it attacks two key elements of reflexive modernization: the environmental
movement and environmental impact science. Learning from its mistakes in
overtly attacking environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this counter-
movement has subsequently exercised a more subtle form of power charac-
terized by non-decision-making. We examine the conservative movement’s
efforts to undermine climate science and policy in the USA over the last two
decades by using this second dimension of power. The conservative
movement has employed four non-decision-making techniques to challenge
the legitimacy of climate science and prevent progress in policy-making. We
argue that reflexive modernization scholars should focus more attention on
similar forces of anti-reflexivity that continue to shape the overall direction
of our social, political and economic order, and the life chances of many
citizens. Indeed, better understanding of the forces and effectiveness of
anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience and adapta-
tion, especially in the face of global environmental problems like climate
change.
Key words
climate change
■ conservative movement ■ power ■ reflexive modernization
■ reflexivity
■
Theory, Culture & Society 2010 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore),
Vol. 27(2–3): 100–133
DOI: 10.1177/0263276409356001
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A
LLEGATIONS OF the George W. Bush administration’s misuse and
abuse of science have been offered, often with considerable support-
ing documentation, by journalists (Mooney, 2005; Shulman, 2006),
scientists (Bowen, 2008), science advocacy organizations (Union of
Concerned Scientists, 2004a, 2004b, 2008a, 2008b), civil rights advocacy
organizations (Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005), government whistleblowers
(Piltz, 2007) and policy-makers (US House of Representatives, 2003, 2005,
2007). Further, essays by the editors of such prestigious peer-reviewed
journals as Science (e.g. Kennedy, 2003), Nature (e.g. Nature Editorial
Board, 2006) and the New England Journal of Medicine (e.g. Drazen et al.,
2004) have raised major concerns about the effects of these alleged offenses
on the integrity of science and the efficacy of science advising for policy-
makers.
These publications paint a picture of the Bush administration as
having engaged consistently in a wide range of practices – censoring,
suppressing and even dismissing federal scientists; altering, distorting and
suppressing scientific findings for government reports; manipulating the
government’s science advisory system; and ignoring, distorting and selec-
tively using scientific evidence in policy-making – all of which can be
summarized as ‘abusing’ science. As shown in Table 1, the titles of recent
works in this area levy their charges quite bluntly and illustrate many of the
above themes. The sum total suggests a level of politicization of science
reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s Lysenko era. Contributions to this litera-
ture rely upon numerous case studies, journalistic interviews, and occasion-
ally large surveys of scientists in order to document what has occurred under
the Bush administration. Sometimes they also clearly discuss how it has
happened, but only rarely do they delve deeply into why it has happened –
beyond suggesting the obvious political motivations of the actors involved.
Our purpose is to employ sociological insights to help explain how and
why the American conservative movement (and its institutionalization with
the George W. Bush administration) has vigorously attacked certain types
of science at the turn of the 21st century. More specifically, we draw upon
leading conceptualizations of reflexivity and reflexive modernization, Allan
Schnaiberg’s (1980) distinction between production science and impact
science, and conceptualizations of power offered by Peter Bachrach and
Morton Baratz (1970), Harvey Molotch (1970) and Steven Lukes (1974).
We argue that the American conservative movement is a force of ‘anti-
reflexivity’ attempting to protect the industrial capitalist order of simple
modernization in two senses. First, this countermovement has emerged to
challenge the gains won by progressive social movements, particularly the
environmental movement – a key vector of reflexive modernization. Second,
the conservative movement has mobilized to challenge the legitimacy of
‘impact science’, another key force of reflexive modernization. Indeed,
challenging the legitimacy of impact science has been a vital strategy by
which the conservative movement has tried to undercut the environmental
movement (Jacques et al., 2008).
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102 Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3)
Table 1 Selected reports and books criticizing the George W. Bush
administration’s activities regarding science and environmental protection
Reports of non-governmental organizations
Union of Concerned Scientists. March 2004. Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An
Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science.
Union of Concerned Scientists. July 2004. Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further
Investigation of the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science.
American Civil Liberties Union. 2005. Science Under Siege: The Bush Administration’s
Assault on Academic Freedom and Scientific Inquiry.
Union of Concerned Scientists and Government Accountability Project. February 2007.
Atmosphere of Pressure: Political Interference in Federal Climate Science.
Center for Biological Diversity. 2007. Politicizing Extinction: The Bush Administration’s
Dangerous Approach to Endangered Wildlife.
Government Accountability Project. March 2007. Redacting the Science of Climate Change:
An Investigative and Synthesis Report.
Union of Concerned Scientists. February 2008. Federal Science and the Public Good:
Securing the Integrity of Science in Policy Making.
Union of Concerned Scientists. April 2008. Interference at the EPA: Science and Politics in
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Reports of Congressional committees and government agencies
United States House of Representatives. 2003. Politics and Science in the Bush
Administration. Committee on Government Reform – Minority Staff. Special
Investigations Division.
United States House of Representatives. 2005. The Administration’s Assault on Climate
Change Science. Committee on Government Reform – Minority Staff.
United States House of Representatives. 2007. Political Interference with Climate Change
Science Under the Bush Administration. Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 2008. Investigative Summary Regarding
Allegations that NASA Suppressed Climate Change Science and Denied Media Access to
Dr. James E. Hansen, a NASA Scientist. Office of the Inspector General.
Trade books
Devine. 2004. Bush Versus the Environment.
Kennedy. 2004. Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals are
Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.
Pope and Rauber. 2004. Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration is Recklessly
Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress.
Lord. 2005. Dubya: The Toxic Texan – George W. Bush and Environmental Degradation.
Mooney. 2005. The Republican War on Science.
Orr. 2005. The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror.
Shulman. 2006. Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush
Administration.
Bowen. 2008. Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the
Truth of Global Warming.
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To do this, the American conservative movement has exercised a
subtle form of power characterized by non-decision-making and agenda-
setting – what Lukes (1974), following Bachrach and Baratz (1970) and
Molotch (1970), referred to as the second dimension of power. We demon-
strate this by focusing on the conservative movement’s challenge to
climate science and policy. We find that this movement has utilized four
non-decision-making techniques to prevent the US government from
making substantial progress on climate policy. Our article extends recent
scholarship on the political dynamics of climate change (Lahsen, 2005,
2008; McCright, 2007; McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003; Oreskes et al.,
2008).
Forces of Reflexivity and Anti-reflexivity
Much has been published in recent years on the concept of ‘reflexivity’ and
theories of ‘reflexive modernization’ (RM hereafter). Our task is not to offer
a critical analysis of conceptualizations of reflexivity or an exegesis of RM
theories.
1
Rather, we use general insights from two major, albeit different,
RM frameworks – Risk Society Theory (RST) (e.g. Beck, 1992) and Eco -
logical Modernization Theory (EMT) (e.g. Mol and Spaargaren, 2000) – to
gain theoretical purchase for explaining why and how the American conser-
vative movement has mobilized to challenge climate science and policy.
However divergent these two outlooks, both generally agree on the critical
forces driving RM.
2
RM is a distinct phase of society, where the modern itself is modern-
ized. Contingency and uncertainty loom, and institutions suffer from legit-
imacy crises brought on by their inability to solve the ecological and
technological problems of modernization effectively. RM scholars argue that
a heightened level of reflexivity is a necessary precondition for getting past
our current ecological and technological crises. In this sense, they define
reflexivity as a form of critical self-evaluation – a self-confrontation with the
unintended and unanticipated consequences of modernity’s industrial
capitalist order. RM scholars identify two prominent forces of reflexivity that
concern us here: impact science and social movements (Beck, 1992; Mol,
2000).
Corresponding to their distinction between primary modernization (the
modernization of tradition) and reflexive modernization, RM scholars also
identify a crucial shift in the institution of science. In the first phase,
conceptualized as primary scientization (according to RST scholars) or
‘science as part of the problem’ (according to EMT scholars), scientists –
largely in the physical and engineering sciences – worked within the indus-
trial capitalist order to invent and innovate products and technologies. As
a result, scientists were implicated in the creation of many chemical, tech-
nological and ecological risks in our society. In other words, through their
participation in industrial capitalist organizations, scientists contributed to
many major problems we now face. In the second phase, reflexive scienti-
zation (according to RST scholars) or ‘science as part of the solution’
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(according to EMT scholars), new fields such as environmental science,
technology assessment and conservation biology emerge that identify,
examine and attempt to ameliorate the negative effects of earlier scientific
endeavors (Beck, 1992; Mol and Spaargaren, 2000).
Three decades ago sociologist Allan Schnaiberg (1980) offered a
similar distinction between two types of science: ‘technological-production’
science and ‘environmental-social impact’ science. Especially after the
Second World War, the dominant mode of science was oriented toward
providing knowledge that generated innovative technologies that increased
industrial capitalist production. This science in the service of production,
or ‘production science’, has expanded the hegemony of economic produc-
ers by giving them more control over resources (environment) and people
(workers and consumers). However, the decades after the Second World War
saw the gradual rise of other areas of science more oriented toward identi-
fying the negative impacts of science and technology (as discussed in
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). This ‘impact science’ challenged the
assumption that production science inevitably led to advancement and
progress for society.
Writing in the late 1970s, Schnaiberg (1980) identified the numerous
ways that production science dominated impact science, with the eventual
result that ongoing negative effects of high-technology production were
systematically ignored or downplayed. In recent decades, the impact
sciences have become increasingly institutionalized, especially in academia
and government agencies. Various strands of environmental science, in
particular, have moved from ‘frontier’ to ‘core’ scientific standing (Dunlap
and Catton, 1994), producing knowledge used by environmental policy-
makers, organizations and activists.
Social movements comprise a second major force of reflexivity within
the era of RM. Social movements – especially environmental movements –
help raise public consciousness of unintended and unanticipated effects of
the industrial capitalist social order, while providing a vision of the social
transformations needed to address them. EMT scholars are quick to point
out that mainstream environmental movements are crucial to the process of
ecological transformation as they are the major carriers of heightened
concern for ecological crises (Mol, 2000). RST scholars further assert that
social movements play a central role in RM, through spreading awareness
of low-probability, high-consequence risks and by bringing together
disparate individuals via seemingly ad hoc participation in public events to
challenge these risks (Beck, 1997). Thus, both EMT and RST scholars view
social movements as crucial for helping the public and policy-makers
confront the negative effects of industrial capitalism.
During times of fundamental societal change, some sectors of society
– for ideological and/or material reasons – mobilize to challenge the shift.
While RM scholars (Beck, 1997; Mol, 2000) do acknowledge that forces of
anti-reflexivity mobilize to defend the industrial capitalist social order
against the open-ended transformations of RM, they downplay their impact.
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We argue that the American conservative movement is a highly potent force
of anti-reflexivity.
In the 1970s, the American conservative movement mobilized
economically (as an ideological foot soldier of corporate America cham-
pioning reduced regulations and tax burdens), politically (promoting
private property rights and challenging welfare state social services) and
culturally (decrying the secularization of America, the alleged demise of
the nuclear family and threats to the industrial capitalist order more
broadly) as noted by numerous scholars (e.g. Diamond, 1995; Himmel-
stein, 1990; Stefancic and Delgado, 1996). Heavily funded by conserva-
tive families, their foundations and corporations, the American conservative
movement (a network of conservative foundations, think-tanks, media
outlets and public intellectuals) first gained national political power with
the ascendancy of the Ronald Reagan administration in the early 1980s.
3
This countermovement has sought to oppose RM – and to reassert the
dominance of industrial capitalism from the era of simple modernization –
by directly challenging progressive social movements and the use of impact
science.
While Pellizoni’s (1999) assessment that RM scholars typically ignore
power and anti-reflexivity is generally accurate (see also Murray, 2009), both
Beck (from RST) and Mol (from EMT) do acknowledge the existence of
power and anti-reflexivity within RM. For instance, Beck sees RM as ‘an
unfinished and unfinishable dialectic of modernization and counter-modern-
ization’ (1997: 35), whereby he defines counter-modernity as a ‘constructed
certitude’ that ‘absorbs, demonizes and dismisses the questions raised and
repeated by modernity’ (1997: 63). In this way, forces of counter-modernity
leverage power over forces of RM to try to reassert the industrial capitalist
social order. Furthermore, Mol admits that forces of reflexivity ‘will be – and
in fact are in most countries – surpassed in number and influence by
counter-activists: increasingly well-organized groups, coalitions and move-
ments of anti-environmentalists’ (2000: 52). Indeed, Gleeson (2000)
anticipates our argument by claiming that countermovements (such as anti-
environmentalism) exploit science (we would say ‘impact science’) and
scientific uncertainty to minimize or silence the critiques of industrial
capitalism promoted by environmental movements. Gleeson terms anti-
environmentalism ‘anti-reflexive’ before arguing that ‘anti-environmentalism
is now a counter-modernizing force because it undermines the ability of
modernization to adapt and sustain itself in the face of self-generated
threats’ (2000: 124, original emphasis).
We have thus far argued why it is reasonable to call the American
conservative movement a force of anti-reflexivity. We claim that this counter -
movement has emerged to reassert the certitude of the industrial capitalist
social order of earlier modernization, which was shattered by forces of RM.
The American conservative movement challenges progressive social move-
ments (especially the environmental movement) and the increasing use of
impact science (while continuing to be supportive of production science).
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Before we discuss our case study of how the American conservative
movement has mobilized to challenge climate science and policy, we first
describe a key form of power this countermovement has successfully
employed.
The Second Dimension of Power
Steven Lukes (1974) identifies three dimensions of power in a classic text
on the subject. Drawing on the works of pluralists such as Robert Dahl,
Lukes (1974) argues that actors exercise the first dimension of power by
protecting their subjective interests during direct conflicts over selected
issues in public decision-making. Using the work of Peter Bachrach and
Morton Baratz, Lukes claims that actors exercise the second dimension of
power by confining the scope of decision-making to only those issues that
do not seriously challenge their subjective interests. Citing the work of
Matthew Crenson, Lukes argues that actors exercise the third dimension of
power by preventing observable conflict from arising in the first place by
shaping people’s perceptions, beliefs and subjective interests via ideology
and propaganda. We argue that the American conservative movement has
challenged climate science and policy via an effective use of second
dimension power. We focus primarily on that dimension here.
Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz (1970) and Harvey Molotch (1970)
made the initial contributions to scholarship on the second dimension of
power. They focused on actual and potential issues, overt and covert
conflict, and decision-making and non-decision-making. We summarize the
main points of the second dimension of power, before turning to some recent
works in this tradition.
Crucial for scholars of the second dimension of power is the idea that
political systems develop a ‘mobilization of bias’, in that some issues are
included within the system and others are excluded. Bachrach and Baratz
define the mobilization of bias as ‘a set of predominant values, beliefs,
rituals, and institutional procedures (“rules of the game”) that operate
systematically and consistently to the benefit of certain persons and groups
at the expense of others’ (1970: 43–4). The primary method for sustaining
a given mobilization of bias is ‘non-decision-making’, whereby a ‘non-
decision’ is ‘a decision that results in suppression or thwarting of a latent
or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the decision-maker’ (1970:
44). Thus, the essence of the second dimension of power is that actors
prevent a decision that may directly challenge their interests by agenda-
setting or creating a non-decision.
Since the early 1970s, many analysts have contributed to scholarship
on the second dimension of power, particularly as it relates to environmen-
tal problems or technological controversies (see McCright and Dunlap,
2003: 351–2). These scholars highlight such processes as consciousness-
lowering activities (Schnaiberg, 1994), manufacturing uncertainty (Michaels,
2006), diversionary reframing (Freudenburg and Gramling, 1994), scientific
certainty argumentation methods (Freudenburg et al., 2008), environmental
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skepticism (Jacques, 2006; Jacques et al., 2008) and the social construc-
tion of non-problematicity (Freudenburg, 2000; McCright and Dunlap,
2003). Our case study draws upon and extends these earlier analyses.
We argue that the American conservative movement has mobilized
against the environmental movement largely by attacking the impact science
upon which the environmental movement’s claims and resulting environ-
mental policy proposals are based. After discussing the conservative
movement’s general ‘environmental skepticism’ (Jacques, 2006; Jacques et
al., 2008), we detail how this countermovement has employed key non-
decision-making techniques associated with the second dimension of power
to challenge American climate science and policy.
The American Conservative Movement’s Environmental
Skepticism
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the environmental community (environ-
mental movement actors, sympathetic scientists and environmental policy-
makers) helped create our nation’s current environmental policy
infrastructure. While many key actors were liberals or centrists, some notable
ones (e.g. President Nixon) were right of center. Yet, with time, an ideologi-
cal and partisan divide has emerged in the United States over environmen-
tal protection and environmentalism. Self-identified conservatives and
Republicans have become increasingly less supportive of environmental
protection compared to their liberal and Democratic counterparts, and this
divide has been more notable among elites, such as members of Congress,
than among the general public (Dunlap et al., 2001). This partisan/ideolog-
ical gap has become especially pronounced in the last 15 years, creating a
chasm among Congressional members. American conservatives typically
strongly defend a modernist worldview about humans and nature that some
have called the Dominant Social Paradigm (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1984).
The Dominant Social Paradigm includes core elements of conservative
ideology, but also faith in science and technology, support for economic
growth, and faith in material abundance and future prosperity, and is thus a
vital element of the mobilization of bias used to defend the capitalist system.
The modern American conservative movement demonstrated its anti-
environmental orientation in the late 1970s by supporting the Sagebrush
Rebellion aimed at opening federal lands to private use in the American
West (Switzer, 1997). In the early 1980s, conservative movement activists
in the first Ronald Reagan administration (including some with Sagebrush
experience) attempted to repeal environmental regulations and reduce the
enforcement capability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
the Department of the Interior. However, this action generated significant
Congressional resistance and public opposition, reflected both in an
increase in public support for environmental protection and a huge rise in
memberships of environmental groups like the Sierra Club (Dunlap, 1991).
Indeed, both Secretary of the Interior James Watt and EPA Director Anne
Gorsuch were forced to resign (Switzer, 1997).
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Conservative activists learned it was unwise to attack environmental
protection directly (exercising the first dimension of power), as Americans
are in fact supportive of environmental protection and see it as a govern-
mental responsibility. By the mid-1990s the conservative movement
changed tactics and began to challenge the seriousness of environmental
problems, not only by attacking the ideas and actions of environmentalists
but also, and more importantly, the impact science providing the basis for
environmentalists’ claims. Thus, conservative movement actors learned to
be more subtle and use the second dimension of power to prevent major
decisions on environmental policy-making that might threaten their conser-
vative interests. Conservatives go to great lengths to mask their efforts to
weaken environmental protection by attacking the scientific evidence
concerning environmental problems, (mis)labeling their initiatives with
terms like ‘Clear Skies’ and ‘Healthy Forests’, and in general following
conservative Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s advice to portray themselves
as environmentally friendly (Pope and Rauber, 2004).
A catalyst for this recent wave of the conservative movement’s anti-
environmentalism was the 1992 Rio Summit, which thrust global environ-
mental problems on to the world stage and the US national agenda (Jacques,
2006). With the fall of the USSR and the emergence of global environmen-
tal problems (and global environmentalism), the US conservative movement
substituted the ‘green scare’ for the disappearing red one (Jacques et al.,
2008). Defeating global environmentalism necessitated an aggressive attack
on the impact science underlying evidence for global environmental
problems (e.g. ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, climate change). A height-
ened level of anti-environmentalism emerged in new and existing conser-
vative think-tanks, heavily funded by conservative foundations and
corporations (Austin, 2002; McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003). More so
than local environmental problems, global environmental problems call into
question the Dominant Social Paradigm (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1984)
strongly defended by the conservative movement. Jacques and colleagues
(Jacques, 2006; Jacques et al., 2008) term this iteration of anti-
environmentalism within the conservative movement ‘environmental
skepticism’, while Gleeson (2000) refers to it as a force of anti-reflexivity
because it opposes forces of RM and protects the industrial capitalist social
order.
Since Rio, the conservative movement’s anti-environmentalism has
visibly manifested itself in institutional politics twice: in the years follow-
ing the 1994 election that gave Republicans control of both houses of
Congress (e.g. Brown, 1997; McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003) and then
with the ascendance of the George W. Bush administration. In the mid to
late 1990s, the Newt Gingrich-led ‘Republican Revolution’ attempted to
repeal existing environmental legislation, underfund the environmental
science programs at government agencies, and generally cripple the func-
tioning of environmental regulatory agencies (Brown, 1997). One key
success was the 1995 closure of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA),
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which was previously Congress’s only source for independent scientific
advice. Conservatives perceived OTA as a source of impact science and
quickly eliminated it (Mooney, 2005). The conservative movement also
began using the terms ‘sound science’ and ‘junk science’ as political tropes
during this time period, after the 1993 creation of The Advancement of
Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) by conservative movement activist Steven
Milloy, regularly applying the latter term to impact science suggesting the
need for governmental regulations (Herrick and Jamieson, 2001). The insti-
tutionalization of the American conservative movement in the executive
branch with the 2000 election of George W. Bush as President gave this
countermovement vastly more leverage to challenge environmental science
and policy from within the state structure than it had ever enjoyed before.
The Conservative Movement’s Attack on Climate Science and
Policy
We turn to an analysis of the activities of conservative movement activists
outside of institutional political channels (e.g. those in conservative think-
tanks) and those of the institutionalized manifestations of this counter -
movement in the mid-1990s Republican Congress and the George W. Bush
administration. Since the activities of these actors vis-a-vis climate change
are quite numerous, we merely discuss a few examples as illustrative of key
non-decision-making techniques associated with the second dimension of
power. Our main objective here is to demonstrate how the American conser-
vative movement has attacked climate science and policy in recent years.
Let us first explain our focus on the American conservative movement rather
than a more materialist emphasis on corporations, as advocated by Fisher
(2006). Briefly, we examine this countermovement because of the constancy
of its anti-environmental position over the past two decades, even as many
corporations have ‘greened’ their position, and because of its role in
supplying ideas for American policy-making circles.
Corporations in many industries are now employing ‘green’ discourse
out of financial interest, while conservative movement activists rail against
environmentalism. Nowhere is this more evident than on the issue of climate
change. The December 1997 Kyoto Conference was a watershed for the
business community by several accounts (e.g. Layzer, 2007; Newell, 2000).
After Kyoto, most oil companies gradually acknowledged publicly the reality
of global warming and abandoned the anti-environmental Global Climate
Coalition, while joining groups – such as the Business Environmental
Leader ship Council – that acknowledge the necessity of decreasing green-
house gas emissions. Regardless of motives, much of the business commu-
nity – with the obvious exception of ExxonMobil (Union of Concerned
Scientists [UCS], 2007) – no longer sees challenging the science of climate
change to be a productive strategy. Indeed, Levy and colleagues (Kolk and
Levy, 2001; Levy and Egan, 2003) and Newell (2000) found that by 2000
most multinational fossil fuel corporations ceased using the tactics to under-
mine climate science and policy that the American conservative movement
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continues to employ to date, provoking the anger of ideological conserva-
tives (Layzer, 2007).
4
Yet, the conservative movement continues to
challenge climate science and policy as part of its long-term opposition to
the environmental movement and impact science.
We are also persuaded by existing works discussing the critical role
that ideas play in policy-making – and the power of those actors who provide
such ideas. Campbell (1998) and Yee (1996) talk about the importance of
ideas in public policy-making (independent of the economic materialism of
corporate power), and many scholars (e.g. Campbell, 1998; Fischer, 1991;
Stefancic and Delgado, 1996) have demonstrated the critical influence that
conservative think-tanks have had on public policy-making in the US.
Paralleling our assertion that the American conservative movement has
exercised the second dimension of power, Fischer (1991: 345, original
emphasis) writes the following about conservative think-tanks:
Missing, then, from the pluralist explanation [the first dimension of power] is
the critically important fact that the agenda for policy consideration is
increasingly shaped and approved by private elites before governmental
policymakers and political parties become actively involved in the process.
Also critical here is the mea culpa of current conservative movement
activist (and former climate change skeptic) Ronald Bailey of the conserva-
tive think-tanks Reason and Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bailey (2006)
flatly acknowledges that his long-term opposition to climate science and
policy had been influenced more by his ideology than by financial support
from industry. In other words, Bailey’s ideological opposition came first, and
financial support followed. This emphasis on ideas and ideology comes
through even more strongly in Lahsen’s (2008) analysis of three leading
climate change skeptics from the Marshall Institute (also see Oreskes et al.,
2008). Lahsen finds that the three influential founders of the Marshall Insti-
tute – Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg – lent their
expertise to this conservative think-tank primarily to oppose what they
believed was a trend toward the increasing importance of impact science at
the expense of production science. They personify the American conserva-
tive movement’s challenge to environmentalism and impact science:
Their discourses generally reveal a pre-reflexive modernist ethos character-
ized by strong trust in science and technology as providers of solutions to
problems, whether environmental, social, or economic, an understanding of
science and progress that prevailed during the first half of the 20th century.
(Lahsen, 2008: 211)
In short, their ideology leads them to reject impact science in a reactionary
attempt to reassert the industrial capitalist order of simple modernity – when
their area of physics enjoyed greater public funding and social prestige.
Furthermore, comparative US-Canadian and US-German analyses of
climate politics and policy also point to the pivotal role of ideas from climate
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change skeptics and their conservative think-tank sponsors in helping
account for the recalcitrant position of the US (Grundmann, 2007; Harrison,
2007). Such evidence suggests that conservative movement opposition to
climate science and policy has a firm ideological base that supersedes the
obvious desire for corporate funding. For these reasons, we chose to examine
how the conservative movement has challenged climate science and policy
as an example of this countermovement’s more general attempts to attack
environmentalism and impact science in order to defend the industrial
capitalist order of simple modernity.
The American conservative movement has employed four non-
decision-making techniques associated with the second dimension of power
to make climate change a non-issue and prevent significant progress on
climate policy-making. This countermovement has (1) obfuscated, misrep-
resented, manipulated and suppressed the results of scientific research; (2)
intimidated or threatened to sanction individual scientists; (3) invoked
existing rules or created new procedures in the political system; and (4)
invoked an existing bias of the media. We briefly discuss and provide empir-
ical examples illustrating each technique from the past two decades. Table
2 summarizes these four techniques and examples of each.
Obfuscating, Misrepresenting, Manipulating and Suppressing Research
Results
Activists in the American conservative movement have obfuscated, mis -
represented, manipulated and suppressed the results of climate science
research (see Molotch, 1970). Conservative activists have obfuscated such
results by promoting both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publica-
tions by a handful of contrarian scientists, who regularly speak out against
the mainstream scientific consensus. Indeed, their publications form a
significant proportion of conservative think-tank documents challenging the
reality of global warming that were disseminated by a network of conserva-
tive think-tanks during the 1990s (McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003).
McCright and Dunlap (2000) analyzed 224 publications disseminated
by 14 conservative think-tanks between 1990 and 1997 (when the Kyoto
Conference occurred) and identified three key counter-claims that conser-
vative think-tanks promoted to challenge climate science and policy. First,
conservative think-tanks claimed that the evidentiary basis of global
warming is weak, if not wrong. They did this by relying upon contrarians’
publications that highlighted the uncertainty of the evidence for global
warming, called mainstream climate research ‘junk science’ and occasion-
ally accused the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of inten-
tionally altering its reports to ‘manufacture’ its position. Second,
conservative think-tanks argued that the net effect of global warming would
be beneficial to our quality of life, health and agriculture should it occur,
by touting the purported benefits of warmer weather while demonstrating a
complete lack of comprehension of the socio-ecological ramifications of
climate change. Third, conservatives argued that the policies proposed to
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112 Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3)
Table 2 Key non-decision-making techniques employed by the conservative movement to challenge climate science and policy
Non-decision-making technique Illustrative empirical cases
Obfuscating, misrepresenting, manipulating or suppressing the results of scientific research (Molotch, 1970: 133–4, 137–8, 140)
1. Obfuscated the results of scientific
research by
A. Selectively promoted existing Conservative think-tanks relied upon a handful of cherry-picked studies by contrarian scientists while ignoring
publications by contrarian the scientific consensus during the 1990s and early 2000s (McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003)
scientists with positions at odds White House removed mention of 2001 National Academy of Sciences climate change report from the EPA’s draft
with the scientific consensus report on the environment in favor of a largely discredited single publication by two climate change skeptics
(Mooney, 2005; Shulman, 2006; UCS, 2008b)
B. Funded contrarian scientists to Conservative think-tanks enlisted the services of well-known climate change skeptics as authors or expert sources
produce new reports that are for a few hundred policy briefs, position statements, op-ed essays, and press releases in the 1990s (Austin and
often not peer-reviewed Phoenix, 2005; Jacques et al., 2008; Lahsen, 2005; McCright and Dunlap, 2003)
2. Misrepresented the results of Mischaracterized the 2001 National Academy of Sciences climate change report (Austin and Phoenix, 2005;
scientific research by spinning McCright and Dunlap, 2003; Mooney, 2005)
the results or committing errors Disparaged the 2002 US Climate Action Report (UCS, 2004a, 2008b)
of omission Climate Change Science Program omitted references to the first National Assessment from a range of documents
(e.g. Climate Change Strategic Plan and the 2002 Our Changing Planet) (Center for Public Integrity, 2008;
Mooney, 2007)
Kept reference to first National Assessment and US Climate Action Report off the EPA website (UCS, 2008b)
3. Manipulated the results of scientific Lobbyist Philip Cooney edited uncertainty into government reports between 2001 and 2005 (Begley, 2007; Faris,
research by editing government 2008; GAP, 2007; UCS, 2007, 2008b; US House of Representatives, 2007)
agency reports prior to publication White House Council on Environmental Quality edited climate change out of EPA’s 2002 annual air pollution
report and inserted uncertainty into EPA’s 2003 draft report on the environment (GAP, 2007; Simoncelli and
Stanley, 2005; UCS, 2004a; US House of Representatives, 2003, 2005, 2007)
Continued
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McCright & Dunlap – Anti-reflexivity 113
Table 2 Continued
Non-decision-making technique Illustrative empirical cases
4. Suppressed (by stalling or canceling) EPA refused to release analysis of Senator Carper’s air pollution regulation bill (US House of Representatives,
scientific reports from government 2003, 2005)
agencies EPA refused to analyze McCain–Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act (US House of Representatives, 2003, 2005)
Blocked a NOAA report on climate change and hurricanes (GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007)
Delayed release of the second National Assessment (Center for Public Integrity, 2008; GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007)
Intimidating or threatening sanctions on individual scientists (Molotch, 1970: 133–4, 137–8, 140)
1. Attacked individual scientists who Accused mainstream climate scientists of being ‘junk scientists’ (McCright and Dunlap, 2000, 2003)
work at public or private Personal attacks on specific mainstream climate scientists in mid-1990s and mid-2000s (Brown, 1997; McCright
universities to discredit their work and Dunlap, 2003; UCS, 2007)
2. Silenced, censored or otherwise Censored federal scientists in several agencies (Bowen, 2008; NASA, 2008; UCS, 2008a, 2008b; US House of
targeted individual scientists who Representatives, 2005, 2007)
work at government agencies by Many EPA scientists reported widespread and inappropriate interference in their scientific work (UCS, 2008b)
influencing what they can say and Many federal climate scientists reported widespread and inappropriate interference in their scientific work (UCS
to whom they can say it and GAP, 2007)
Invoking existing (or creating new) rules or procedures in the political system (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970: 43–4; Lukes, 1974: 17–20)
1. Held seemingly open-ended Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) conducted the ‘Scientific Integrity and Public Trust’ hearings in fall 1995 to discredit
investigatory hearings where mainstream climate science and promote climate change skeptics (Brown, 1997; McCright and Dunlap, 2003)
results were pre-determined Joe Barton (R-TX) conducted a hearing in 2006 to attack mainstream climate scientists (UCS, 2007)
James Inhofe (R-OK) conducted a hearing in 2003 to promote climate change skeptics (Layzer, 2007; UCS, 2007)
2. Changed the scientific rules that Created the Data Quality Act that gives opponents of environmental regulation greater power to challenge
government agencies must follow information disseminated by federal agencies (Herrick, 2004; Mooney, 2005; Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005;
UCS, 2004a, 2007, 2008a, 2008b; US House of Representatives, 2003)
Office of Management and Budget attempted to centralize scientific peer review applicable to all federal agencies
(UCS, 2008b; Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005)
Invoking an existing bias of the media (Molotch, 1970: 140)
1. Exploited the mass media’s Conservative think-tanks promoted the positions and activities of climate change skeptics to increase their media
‘balancing norm’ to promote fringe exposure, contributing to the public perception of scientific controversy over climate change (Boykoff and
scientists’ views to near parity with Boykoff, 2004; Dispensa and Brulle, 2003; McCright and Dunlap, 2003)
mainstream scientific consensus
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ameliorate global warming would do more harm than good. Publications
containing this counter-claim identified certain harm to our national
economy, national security, national sovereignty and even our natural envi-
ronment as prime costs of any international climate treaty. Briefly, then,
conservative think-tanks asserted that while the science of global warming
is becoming more uncertain, the harmful effects of climate change policy
are becoming more certain.
Since Kyoto, conservative activists have employed several new claims
to counter the IPCC and proponents of climate policy-making, particularly
the ‘conservative equity’ claim that it is ‘unfair’ for the US to limit CO
2
emis-
sions if developing nations such as China and India do not do so as well (an
argument frequently used by the Bush administration). Although we have
not conducted a recent analysis of conservative think-tank websites as we
did for the period 1990–7, it is clear that additional counter-claims have
evolved in response to increasingly credible evidence of anthropogenic
climate change produced by the IPCC. While reluctantly acknowledging
that global warming may be occurring, conservatives have argued that it is
a natural phenomenon, that human activities are a modest cause of warming,
that there is nothing that can be done to halt warming, that rich nations such
as the US can easily adapt to warmer weather and so forth – gradually giving
ground to the reality of global warming but consistently arguing that there
is no need to try to reduce carbon emissions, nor any use in doing so. And,
of course, outright denials of the reality of climate change, invoking one or
more disproven alternative explanations, continue to appear on conservative
websites, blogs and electronic media.
To justify its inaction on climate change, the George W. Bush admin-
istration consistently employed the tactic of selectively promoting fringe
science at odds with the international scientific consensus. The most
obvious example of this occurred in spring 2003. Philip Cooney, chief of
staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) from
2001 to 2005, made numerous edits to the EPA’s draft version of its ‘State
of the Environment’ report. Critical here is that Cooney edited out all refer-
ences to a 2001 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the state of
climate science knowledge (National Research Council [NRC], 2001) – that
the Bush White House itself had requested – and inserted references to a
discredited publication (Soon and Baliunas, 2003) authored by two well-
known climate change skeptics (Mooney, 2005; UCS, 2008b). EPA staff
scientists noted that Cooney’s revisions contradicted the mainstream scien-
tific consensus, thus prompting the EPA simply to remove the entire section
of climate change from its eventual report rather than violate its scientific
integrity (UCS, 2008b).
A second way that conservative movement activists have obfuscated
the results of climate science is by directly supporting climate change
skeptics to promote their counter-claims challenging climate science and
policy (Jacques, 2008; Lahsen, 2005, 2008; McCright and Dunlap, 2003).
Central here are the affiliations between influential conservative think-tanks
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and contrarian scientists. McCright and Dunlap (2003) found that most of
the well-known climate change skeptics were affiliated with and presum-
ably on the payroll of at least one conservative think-tank as a fellow,
visiting scholar or consultant. These contrarian scientists lent their expert-
ise to these organizations by authoring documents widely disseminated by
them, appearing at their sponsored press conferences and testifying on their
behalf in Congressional hearings (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). Conserva-
tive think-tanks provided the skeptics with substantial resources and signifi-
cant venues for promoting their ideas, and the skeptics provided the
conservative think-tanks with an appearance of scientific legitimacy with
which these countermovement organizations could attack mainstream
climate science.
Besides obfuscating the results of scientific research by promoting
contrarian science and scientists, conservative activists have also misrep-
resented existing scientific reports by spinning their results and committing
errors of omission (Kennedy, 2004; McCright and Dunlap, 2003; Mooney,
2005; UCS, 2004a, 2008b; US House of Representatives, 2003, 2007). The
Bush White House mischaracterized the very 2001 NAS climate science
report (which supported the results of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report
that anthropogenic climate change is already occurring) that it had
requested. While the White House asked the NAS to report the state of
climate science knowledge (what we know and what we do not know), subse-
quent discussion of this report by Bush administration officials focused
almost solely on the report’s coverage of gaps and uncertainty. Clearly, the
Bush administration misrepresented the degree of scientific uncertainty in
this report (Austin and Phoenix, 2005; McCright and Dunlap, 2003). In a
March 2001 speech justifying why the US would not be party to the Kyoto
Protocol, President Bush (2001) challenged the scientific consensus – which
the NAS report had validated and clearly described – by saying that the
report:
. . . tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in
climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much our climate
could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will
occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.
Two subsequent documents (US White House, 2002a, 2002b) by
Bush’s cabinet-level climate change working group – the Climate Change
Science Program (CCSP), formerly the Climate Change Research Initiative
– exhibited a conspicuous and detailed emphasis on the uncertainties of
climate science. For instance, Climate Change Review (US White House,
2002a: 1), which reported the initial findings of the CCSP, claimed to be a
report that ‘outlines areas supported by the science and significant gaps in
our knowledge of climate change’. However, even a casual reader could
realize this report ignored all the ‘core’ knowledge claims about global
warming, only discussed gaps and uncertainties in climate science, and
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even mischaracterized the 2001 NAS report: ‘At the most fundamental level,
the report indicated the need to better understand the causes of warming’
(United States White House, 2002a: 23).
When conservative movement activists could not directly control the
scientific reports created within agencies of the Bush administration, they
resorted to disparaging these reports or omitting official reference to them
altogether. For instance, the EPA produced its 2002 Climate Action Report
to fulfill our country’s obligations to the United Nations Framework Conven-
tion on Climate Change. Even though it was highly edited by CEQ chief of
staff Cooney, this report still declared that anthropogenic global warming
was already occurring. Under advice from the Competitive Enterprise Insti-
tute’s Myron Ebell, Bush administration officials immediately disparaged
the document (Government Accountability Project [GAP], 2007; UCS,
2004b, 2008b). Indeed, on the day after its publication, President Bush
dismissed it as ‘a report put out by the bureaucracy’ (Seelye, 2002).
Conservative activists within the Bush administration also omitted
reference to inconvenient reports of the mainstream scientific consensus.
The document most often ignored by countermovement activists is the
Clinton-era National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate
Variability and Change (2000; hereafter National Assessment), probably the
most comprehensive federal government climate science publication yet
produced. Bush’s CCSP and the White House CEQ routinely removed nearly
all reference to the 2000 National Assessment from their official documents
(Center for Public Integrity, 2008; GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007; US House of
Representatives, 2007). Events in 2003 surrounding the preparation of the
CCSP’s legally required Strategic Plan are particularly telling, as reported
in a court declaration by whistleblower Rick S. Piltz – a former senior
associate of the CCSP:
In the March 31, 2003 draft, there were a total of 12 references to the National
Assessment. In the June 2, 2003 draft, 4 of these references had been
removed. . .. In the June 30, 2003, ‘Agency Concurrence Draft’, 7 references
remained. In the July 24 Pre-Publication version that was released in a
limited edition, 5 references remained. In the September 2003 final printed
version of the plan, 4 of these 5 references had been removed. The existence
of the National Assessment was mentioned only in a single sentence, which
did not include the actual title of the report. (Piltz, 2007: 19)
The Bush administration’s EPA also omitted important science publi-
cations from its official website, a crucial means of communication with the
general public. While EPA officials failed to update the agency’s climate
change website from 2002 to 2006 (GAP, 2007; Piltz, 2006a), they finally
posted a new website in October 2006. Unfortunately, the new website
contained no reference to either the 2000 National Assessment or the
Climate Action Report (GAP, 2007; Piltz, 2006b), further allowing the Bush
administration to effectively ignore the implications of these scientific
reports.
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Conservative activists in the Bush administration were not content to
merely misrepresent or ignore the results of existing reports. They also
manipulated the results of scientific research by editing government agency
reports prior to publication. While this practice by White House officials in
the CCSP, CEQ and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was rampant
(Begley, 2007; Faris, 2008; GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2005; Shulman, 2006;
UCS, 2007, 2008b; US House of Representatives, 2007), we only discuss
two particularly illustrative cases – Philip Cooney’s September 2002 edits
of the EPA’s annual air pollution report and his June 2003 edits of the EPA’s
draft version of its ‘State of the Environment’ report.
As mentioned earlier, Cooney was the chief of staff for the White
House CEQ. Between 2001 and 2005, Cooney edited uncertainty into – and
scientific consensus out of – many science reports from various government
agencies, until evidence of his activities published by the New York Times
forced his resignation (GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2005; Revkin, 2005; UCS,
2008b; US House of Representatives, 2005). This central figure is a lawyer
with a degree in economics and no formal science training. Prior to his job
at the White House, Cooney was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum
Institute, an oil industry trade group. After his resignation from CEQ, he
was hired by ExxonMobil. Philip Cooney appears to be the personification
of the tactic called ‘manufacturing uncertainty’ that has been so success-
fully employed by industries fighting government regulations (Michaels,
2006).
In September 2002, Cooney and the White House CEQ effectively
vetoed the entire climate change section from the EPA’s annual air pollu-
tion report (GAP, 2007; UCS, 2004a; US House of Representatives, 2003,
2005, 2007). We described earlier how Cooney edited out all references to
the 2001 NAS report from the EPA’s draft report version of its ‘State of the
Environment’ report and inserted references to a discredited publication
authored by two well-known climate change skeptics (Mooney, 2005; UCS,
2008b). He also edited much of the draft to magnify the uncertainty regard-
ing several areas of climate science. Indeed, an internal EPA memo (cited
in UCS, 2004a: 6) stated that Cooney’s edits to the draft inserted ‘uncer-
tainty . . . where there is essentially none’. Rather than suffer the indignity
of publishing the edited version of the report – and misrepresenting the
international scientific consensus – EPA staff chose to delete the entire
section on climate change. EPA Administrator Christine Whitman resigned
four days after the release of the version without the climate change section.
The final way that conservative movement activists in the Bush
administration attacked the results of scientific research was by suppress-
ing scientific reports from government agencies (Kennedy, 2004; Mooney,
2005; Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005; UCS, 2004a, 2008a, 2008b; US House
of Representatives, 2003). Four examples illustrate this strategy, with the
last perhaps being the most important. Early on the Bush administration’s
EPA refused to release a requested analysis of one piece of climate legis-
lation and refused to conduct an analysis on another piece of similar
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legislation. In July 2002, Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE) introduced emis-
sions limits legislation – competing with Bush’s Clear Skies Act – that would
set tighter limits and also include carbon dioxide. The EPA first refused to
release its analysis of his bill for months, and then eventually released a
very limited analysis that only examined the bill’s costs (US House of Repre-
sentatives, 2003, 2005). Also, the Bush administration prevented the EPA
from completing a requested analysis of the 2003 McCain–Lieberman
Climate Stewardship Act, which would have established a national cap on
greenhouse gas emissions (US House of Representatives, 2003, 2005).
In September 2006, Bush administration officials in the Department
of Commerce blocked publication of a National Oceanographic and Atmos-
pheric Administration (NOAA) report on the relationship between global
warming and increased hurricane intensity (GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007). Yet
perhaps the most egregious example of suppression until quite recently
concerns the National Assessment (GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007). We stated
earlier that conservative activists in the White House removed reference to
the Clinton administration’s National Assessment from a range of official
government documents and websites. We now identify how conservative
activists long suppressed the legally required updated assessment.
The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires the federal govern-
ment to develop both a ‘National Global Change Research Plan’ (to be
updated every three years) and a scientific assessment of the impacts of
climate change (to be produced every four years). A month before the
Clinton administration produced our nation’s first assessment in November
2000, conservative activists – including the Competitive Enterprise Insti-
tute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Repre-
sentative Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), among others – sued Clinton to suppress
that publication, objecting to how the National Assessment Synthesis Team
and the Clinton administration prepared the document (Jacques et al., 2008;
Mooney, 2007). The suit was re-filed in George W. Bush’s first term, with
CEI then trying to suppress the 2000 National Assessment on the grounds
that it was created in violation of the Data Quality Act – which did not exist
when the assessment was completed (Mooney, 2007). The two parties
reached a settlement whereby conservative activists in the Bush adminis-
tration stipulated that the National Assessment would not serve as the basis
for any federal policies.
Administration whistleblower Rick Piltz claimed in a federal court that
the White House CEQ and Philip Cooney were key figures in the suppres-
sion of any new assessment (GAP, 2007; Mooney, 2007). Eventually,
members of the environmental community sued the Bush administration to
comply with the 1990 Global Change Research Act and produce a new
assessment. In August 2007 a federal judge issued a court order directing
President Bush to comply with the law, and the Bush administration finally
began delivering its assessment in May 2008. Yet, rather than complete a
single, comprehensive report, the Bush administration slowly provided its
assessment in a series of 21 reports – with the last five published on 16
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January 2009, the administration’s final working day. This tactic amounts to
a ‘creeping event’, which Molotch (1970: 139) defined as:
. . . when the manifest signs of an event are arranged to occur at an in -
conspicuously gradual and piecemeal pace, thus eliminating some of the
consequences which would otherwise follow from the event if it were to be
perceived all-at-once to be occurring.
Producing the National Assessment four years late in 21 parts has served
to effectively suppress policy action that would have likely occurred if
policy-makers and the general public had received a comprehensive
assessment on schedule.
Intimidating or Threatening Individual Scientists
Conservative movement activists have employed a second key non-
decision-making technique: intimidating or threatening sanctions on
individual scientists (Molotch, 1970). They did this by attacking individual
university scientists and by silencing, censoring or otherwise targeting
individual scientists employed in government agencies. In the 1990s,
members of conservative think-tanks regularly accused mainstream climate
scientists (most of whom are professors at public or private universities) of
being ‘junk scientists’ more concerned with securing federal research
funding than with the truth (McCright and Dunlap, 2000). Activists in
conservative think-tanks and in Congress especially attacked accomplished
climate scientists, such as Dr Benjamin Santer (an atmospheric scientist
and lead author of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report) and Dr F. Sherwood
Rowland (an atmospheric chemist and 1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
for research on the thinning of the ozone layer), accusing them of scientific
malfeasance. Conservatives attempted to intimidate these high-profile
scientists, and sully their image, with the aim of disparaging mainstream
climate science more generally by association. While their tactics produced
no evidence of scientific wrongdoing, their public accusations nevertheless
were enough to cast doubt on climate science within Congress (Brown, 1997;
McCright and Dunlap, 2003).
This tactic emerged in recent years, for instance, in Representative
Joe Barton’s (R-TX) attack on Drs Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and
Malcolm Hughes, authors of important peer-reviewed publications popularly
known for validating the ‘hockey stick’ phenomenon – that global mean
temperatures have recently increased after a long period of stability. Repre-
sentative Barton first demanded that these scientists turn over a mass of
their data and research materials for the previous 15 years – an unprece-
dented request, especially since most of these research materials were not
related to the publications in question. Then Representative Barton
engineered a Congressional hearing to intimidate these scientists, inviting
members of CEI and the Marshall Institute to levy unfounded accusations
against the scientists (GAP, 2007; UCS, 2007).
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Conservative activists in the Bush administration have also silenced,
censored or otherwise targeted individual scientists employed at government
agencies (Bowen, 2008; GAP, 2007; National Aeronautics and Space
Administration [NASA], 2008; Shulman, 2006; UCS, 2008a, 2008b; UCS
and GAP, 2007; US House of Representatives, 2007). A striking example
of Bush administration officials targeting scientists is seen in the case of Dr
Robert Watson. While not technically a federal employee, Dr Watson served
as the Chair of the IPCC from 1996 to 2002, overseeing the publication of
its Third Assessment Report in 2001, which concluded there was strong
evidence that anthropogenic global warming was already occurring. Under
pressure from the White House CEQ, the US State Department opposed Dr
Watson’s reelection as IPCC Chair – a position he then lost in April 2002.
Perhaps the most famous case of censoring a government scientist in
recent decades involves NASA’s top climate scientist Dr James Hansen, a
vocal spokesperson for climate science since the late 1980s (Bowen, 2008;
NASA, 2008). NASA public affairs officials filtered Dr Hansen’s public
statements and media interviews to reduce his ability to make scientific
claims that conflicted with the Bush administration’s position on climate
change (UCS, 2008a). NASA’s Office of the Inspector General published an
investigative report finding that:
. . . during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office
of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that
reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made
available to the general public through those particular media over which the
Office of Public Affairs had control. (NASA, 2008: 1)
More significant than these specific cases of undermining such high-
profile scientists is recent evidence of widespread censorship and political
pressure felt by hundreds of government scientists across seven government
agencies (UCS, 2008b; UCS and GAP, 2007). A UCS and GAP (2007) report
found widespread interference in how government scientists studying
climate change at such agencies as NOAA, NASA and the EPA could
communicate their research findings. Also, UCS (2008b) conducted a survey
of 1586 EPA scientists during summer 2007 and found that several hundred
EPA scientists have personally experienced specific forms of political
interference. Such experiences were detailed in GAP’s (2007) report of
interviews with several dozen government scientists.
Invoking Existing (or Creating) New Rules or Procedures
A third non-decision-making technique the American conservative
movement has employed has been to invoke existing – or create new – rules
or procedures of the political system from which it could disproportionately
benefit (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970; Lukes, 1974). In general, conservative
activists have benefited from the Bush administration’s exceptionally strong
tendency to fill agency positions with political appointees with strong
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partisan credentials – facilitating the ‘agency capture’ of the Department of
the Interior, the EPA and the Department of Energy. For example, George
W. Bush’s Secretary of the Interior until 2007 was Gale Norton, a former
attorney for the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation established
by James Watt, and co-founder – with leading conservative anti-tax activist
Grover Norquist (see Medvetz, 2006) – of the Council of Republicans for
Environmental Advocacy (CREA). CREA was set up to cast Republicans’
environmental policies in a positive light and combat the Republicans for
Environmental Protection, a pro-environmental organization quite critical
of party policy on environmental issues.
In the Bush administration, top climate scientists were personae non
grata around the White House. Dr Rosina Bierbaum, who served in the
Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) during the first year of the
Bush administration, claims: ‘The scientists [who] knew the most about
climate change at OSTP were not allowed to participate in deliberations on
the issue within the White House inner circle’ (UCS, 2004a: 7). Rather than
climate scientists, the White House packed the CCSP, CEQ and Vice-
President Cheney’s energy task force (the National Energy Policy Develop-
ment Group) with conservative activists and industry representatives who
attacked climate science and policy (Austin and Phoenix, 2005). It was
common knowledge within the administration that any documents related to
climate science or policy would be passed to the White House CEQ for
review – and likely editing (UCS, 2004a).
We identify two specific tactics within this more general non-
decision-making technique. First, conservative activists in Congress have
held seemingly open-ended investigatory hearings whose results were
clearly pre-determined (Brown, 1997; Layzer, 2007; McCright and Dunlap,
2003; UCS, 2007). We claim that this tactic is a type of ‘pseudo-event’,
which Molotch (1970: 139) says ‘occurs when men [sic] arrange conditions
to simulate a certain kind of event, such that certain prearranged conse-
quences follow as though the actual event had taken place’. Over the years,
conservative Republicans in Congress have structured hearings on climate
science and climate scientists to produce what they wanted to achieve: the
disparagement of both the science and scientists. Typically, conservative
Republicans have composed their witness lists and structured their hearing
questions so that no other outcome is possible. We identify three prominent
instances.
In 1995 Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Chair of the
Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, conducted three ‘McCarthy-
esque’ hearings on alleged scientific improprieties in three major areas of
environmental science: ozone depletion (US House of Representatives,
1995a), global warming (1995b) and chemical dioxins (1995c). The Repub-
lican majority expected to demonstrate that the science underlying these
three issues was distorted to serve the political purposes of liberals, thereby
justifying both the repeal of environmental regulatory policies created on
the basis of this science and the reduction of research funding for these
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areas of science. Yet, Representative George E. Brown Jr (1997: 14)
reported: ‘the hearings produced no credible substantiation of any of the
claims of scientific misconduct’. Nevertheless, the work of mainstream
climate scientists was unduly criticized, while the non-peer-reviewed work
of climate change skeptics associated with conservative think-tanks and
industry organizations was touted (McCright and Dunlap, 2003: 361–2).
This tactic has been revived in recent years by Representative Joe
Barton (R-TX) and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). As noted earlier, in July
2006 Representative Barton conducted a hearing (US House of Represen-
tatives, 2006) to attack the mainstream climate scientists who have
contributed to the ‘hockey stick’ temperature studies. Key witnesses
included climate change skeptics affiliated with conservative think tanks
and fossil fuels industry executives, providing Representative Barton
enough verbiage to attack Dr Mann and colleagues and give the appearance
of scientific impropriety without any substantiated evidence (UCS, 2007).
Senator Inhofe convened a July 2003 hearing on the proposed Climate Stew-
ardship Act before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
(US Senate, 2003) simply to promote climate change skeptics and his own
personal opinions on climate change. Yet he passed it off as a genuine inves-
tigatory hearing into the state of climate science. While this hearing was not
as much of a spectacle as one Inhofe chaired in September 2005 (when he
invited science fiction writer Michael Crichton to rail against climate
science), it nevertheless became famous for Inhofe’s (2003) two-hour speech
ending with the following: ‘With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the
phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest
hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.’
Conservative activists in the Bush administration also tried to change
the scientific rules that government agencies must follow (Herrick, 2004;
Mooney, 2005; Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005; UCS, 2004a, 2007, 2008a,
2008b; US House of Representatives, 2003). We provide two examples here:
the Data Quality Act and OMB’s peer review rules.
In 2000, long-time conservative movement activist Jim J. Tozzi wrote
a few legalistic sentences and passed them on to Representative Jo Ann
Emerson (R-MO), who added them as a rider in the 712-page Consolidated
Appropriations Act that was signed into law in early 2001. Thus was born
the Data Quality Act, which ‘creates an unprecedented and cumbersome
process by which government agencies must field complaints over the data,
studies, and reports they release to the public’ (Mooney, 2005: 103). In other
words, opponents of environmental regulations now have a powerful legal
avenue through which to challenge the impact science disseminated by
federal agencies. Indeed, we wrote earlier that the CEI has already sued the
federal government over the 2000 National Assessment, arguing that it
violated the procedures of the Data Quality Act (which was passed after the
National Assessment was completed) (Mooney, 2007; UCS, 2007). As a UCS
(2008a) study points out, while almost none of the numerous conservative
movement and industry challenges on behalf of the Data Quality Act are
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successful, they nevertheless succeed in forcing federal agencies such as
the EPA to devote considerable resources and personnel to fight legal battles
– often reducing their ability to carry out their scientific and regulatory
missions.
During the Bush administration, conservative activists in the White
House’s OMB tried to change the rules by which government agencies
produce and review scientific reports. Briefly, the rules (see OMB, 2004,
2005) gave the OMB centralized control over peer review of federal
agencies’ scientific reports used in policy-making, likely resulting in greater
delay in the dissemination of important scientific reports (Mooney, 2005;
Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005; UCS, 2008b). This gave the OMB: ‘authority
to designate information as requiring more or less stringent levels of peer
review, issue exemptions, and establish or approve processes for selecting
reviewers’ (Simoncelli and Stanley, 2005: 28). Regarding the latter, scien-
tists who received funding from a government agency (many of the leading
experts in a given area) were prohibited from serving as a peer reviewer,
opening up new opportunities for scientists employed by conservative think-
tanks or corporations to serve as reviewers. The summer 2007 survey of EPA
scientists by the UCS (2008b: 28) found that ‘nearly 100 EPA scientists
explicitly identified the OMB’s meddling in EPA decision making as a major
hindrance to the agency’s scientific integrity’. While the legality of this rule
remained in question, it nevertheless was a normal operating procedure in
the Bush administration’s OMB.
Invoking an Existing Bias of the Media
Conservative movement activists have employed a fourth key non-decision-
making technique by invoking an existing bias of the media (Molotch, 1970).
In short, the conservative movement has exploited the media’s ‘balancing
norm’ – or the equation of ‘objectivity’ with presenting ‘both sides of the
story’ – to attack climate science and policy (McCright and Dunlap, 2003).
Through the sheer weight of hundreds of conservative think-tank documents
and dozens of conservative think-tank press conferences in the 1990s, and
many aforementioned high-profile Congressional hearings on climate
change convened by conservative Republicans in the past two decades, the
conservative movement has promoted a handful of climate change skeptics
to national prominence. These climate change skeptics have translated this
heightened visibility into increased media presence. Journalists at media
outlets are highly cognizant of these contrarian scientists and believe that
statements from them will ‘balance’ a news story on climate change – thus
fulfilling their professional obligation of ‘objectivity’.
McCright and Dunlap (2003) argue that the media’s balancing norm
in science reporting – especially in stories about climate change – produces
a ‘dueling scientists scenario’. Parallel to the ‘pro and con’ model, reporters
solicit statements from scientists holding the most extreme views regarding
a scientific issue, regardless of the fact that the bulk of scientists hold
positions between the extremes that may reflect a consensus position. For
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example, between 1994 and 1997, five climate change skeptics were cited
as often in the nation’s seven largest circulating newspapers as were the
most respected climate scientists of the time (McCright and Dunlap, 2003).
Others (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004; Brossard et al., 2004; Dispensa and
Brulle, 2003) have validated this effect in major newspaper and television
news. A few of these studies document how differently US media portray
climate science (as very unsettled with little or no mention of the scientific
consensus) compared to media outlets in other countries. For instance,
Brossard et al. (2004) found that the New York Times emphasized conflicts
between scientists and politicians and potential negative impacts of climate
change policy significantly more than did the French newspaper Le Monde.
Likewise, Dispensa and Brulle (2003) found that the New York Times and
Washington Post reported uncertainty about global warming six times more
often than did Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat and the New Zealand Herald.
Reflecting the impact of the US media’s idiosyncratic portrayal of
climate science, analyses of US public opinion on climate change find a
significant proportion of the US public believing that climate science is
characterized by considerable uncertainty. For instance, in their review of
20 years of public opinion polls about global warming, Nisbet and Myers
(2007: 7) find that:
. . . the public remains relatively uncertain about whether the majority of
scientists agree on the matter. Depending on how the question is asked, belief
that scientists have reached a consensus view ranges from only a third of
Americans to more than 60 percent.
Leiserowitz (2008) summarizes international public opinion of climate
change and finds that the US public has consistently expressed low levels
of concern about global warming relative to other nations in numerous cross-
national surveys. Indeed, in terms of its view of climate change, the US
public is more similar to publics in developing countries than to publics in
most European nations. It seems reasonable to believe that Americans’
unique views of global warming have been affected by the misleading
‘balance’ in US media coverage of climate change, as well as the constant
barrage of climate change skepticism offered by conservative media like
Fox News and commentators like Rush Limbaugh. In fact, self-identified
Republicans – a primary audience for conservative media – have become
highly skeptical of global warming in the past decade (Dunlap and
McCright, 2008), contributing heavily to the American public’s overall
skepticism.
The Grand Finale
A concerted series of non-decisions late in Bush’s second term secured his
administration’s successful subversion of climate policy action. Thirteen
states, several cities and numerous environmental organizations sued the
EPA to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act in a
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court case known simply as ‘Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection
Agency’ (549 US 497). On 2 April 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled five
to four that the Clean Air Act does give the EPA authority to regulate GHG
emissions, and it ordered the EPA to examine the extent to which human
health and welfare are being harmed by GHG emissions from cars, power
plants and other sources – or offer a good rationale for not doing so
(Greenhouse, 2007). By late 2007, EPA employees completed a report
finding that GHG emissions harm human health and welfare. On 5
December 2007, EPA deputy associate administrator Jason Burnett sent the
report via email to the OMB’s regulatory review office. For several months,
the White House refused to open the email and accept the document
(Barringer, 2008). Instead, White House officials convinced EPA
Administrator Stephen Johnson to rescind the report.
Still compelled to act because of the Supreme Court decision, the EPA
dragged its feet through the first half of 2008 until EPA Administrator
Johnson announced on 11 July 2008 that the agency would seek four months
of public comment on the human health effects of climate change. At that
time, the EPA released a 588-page federal notice – highly edited by White
House officials – dismissing scientific knowledge of climate change health
effects and highlighting the purported difficulties and economic costs of
regulating GHGs (Eilperin and Smith, 2008; Wilson, 2008). Most observers
agreed that this tactic allowed the Bush administration to run out the clock
on its legal responsibility to regulate GHG emissions under the Clean Air
Act.
Thus, what was widely viewed – given the Supreme Court decision
– as the best and last chance of forcing the Bush administration to take
meaningful action on climate change was successfully thwarted via the
familiar practices of misrepresenting and manipulating evidence, intimi-
dating or ignoring agency personnel, and creating new procedures to divert
public attention from the major issue. The result is that George W. Bush
completed his two terms having gradually acknowledged the reality of
climate change, but with his changing rhetoric merely masking perpetual
inaction.
Reflexivity or Alternate Realities?
Let us now broaden the focus and return to our initial discussion of reflex-
ive modernization. In recent years, several notable conservative movement
activists – Ron Bailey, Frank Luntz and even President Bush – have
publicly conceded to the weight of the evidence that human activities are
causing climate change. Yet we must keep the following in mind. Congress,
and much of the rest of American society, has spent the last 20 years
publicly bickering over climate science (even as it has become increasingly
credible) rather than debating, formulating and proceeding with any number
of mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change. As a result, until
the Obama administration took office, the US government was no closer to
dealing effectively with climate change than it was 20 years ago.
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The George W. Bush administration (acting as an arm of the American
conservative movement) seems to have accomplished its mission of not only
blocking meaningful policy-making, but also helping cast additional skep-
ticism on the significance of global warming, with the result that the new
Barack Obama administration will have a more difficult task in mustering
national support for policies needed to produce a reduction in the nation’s
carbon emissions in the foreseeable future. Bush himself seemed to recog-
nize and celebrate this accomplishment at the end of his last G8 summit in
early July 2008 when – to the surprise of his fellow leaders – he ended the
meeting, where he had once again failed to promote international progress
on carbon emission reductions, with ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest
polluter’ and then punched the air in celebration (Winnett and Khan, 2008).
He might as well have proclaimed, this time with far more accuracy:
‘Mission Accomplished!’
All of this highlights the need for RM scholars to devote more concep-
tual and empirical attention to examining forces of anti-reflexivity, as such
forces continue to shape the overall direction of our social, political and
economic order, and the life chances of many of our individual citizens in
advanced modernity (see e.g. Murray, 2009). Indeed, there is some evidence
that elements of the American conservative movement’s environmental
skepticism are spreading internationally to other nations such as the UK
and Germany (Jacques et al., 2008). For example, witness the voices of
prominent US climate change skeptics (John Christy, Richard Lindzen, and
Patrick Michaels) in such endeavors as The Great Global Warming Swindle,
which aired on the UK’s Channel 4 in 2007.
Leading RM theories maintain that social movements and impact
science are critical forces of reflexivity for societies. Yet our understanding
of social movements as forces of reflexivity is lacking if we do not also under-
stand the roles that countermovements play. Clearly, the American conser-
vative movement has been a powerful counterforce to the environmental
movement. Furthermore, while science is the closest thing we have so far
to an ideal speech situation, where evidence may speak truth to power, we
must better understand attacks on science – especially impact science –
from those sectors, groups and individuals who feel threatened by the results
of scientific studies.
Impact science helps us to accurately identify, characterize and begin
to solve some of the most pressing ecological, social and technological
problems we face (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss, food security,
energy security), especially when environmental scientists and activists
disseminate its results and highlight their implications for the public and
policy-makers. Thus, developing a better understanding of the forces and
power of anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience
and adaptation. Postmodern efforts to deconstruct scientific knowledge are
little more than an annoyance to natural scientists (see e.g. Gross and Levitt,
1994), but the forces of anti-reflexivity create potentially dangerous
situations with real consequences. Indeed, they can lead nations down
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dangerously misguided paths. Besides the US government’s failure to
address climate change in the last 20 years, this is well illustrated by the
recent US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
On numerous occasions the Bush administration ignored experts (e.g.
UN weapons inspectors) and relied upon highly dubious information (e.g.
regarding Iraq’s purported efforts to obtain uranium from Nigeria) to fabri-
cate justifications for invading Iraq (e.g. Saddam has weapons of mass
destruction). A telling sign of the anti-reflexivity at work in the Bush admin-
istration came almost a year before the military invasion. Writing about the
Bush presidency, Ron Suskind (2004) recalls a summer 2002 meeting with
a senior advisor (presumably Karl Rove) to President Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based
community’, which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured
something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore’, he continued. ‘We’re an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re
studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.’
The forces of anti-reflexivity may try to create their preferred reality, yet
eventually the ‘real reality’ undercuts their socially constructed one – as the
US occupation of Iraq unfortunately illustrates. The US and the rest of the
world are also dealing with the consequences of the American conservative
movement’s efforts to impose its version of ‘reality’ vis-a-vis climate change.
The long-term consequences may prove even more deleterious to more
people than has the Iraq invasion.
Notes
Thanks are due to the editors and reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier
draft.
1. For the former, see Holland (1999); for the latter, see Bagguley (2003), Pellizoni
(1999), and a special issue (vol. 20, no. 2) of Theory, Culture & Society.
2. For our purposes here, we focus on reflexivity insights shared by RST and EMT;
however, we acknowledge there are significant differences between these perspec-
tives on several crucial matters (e.g. Cohen, 1997).
3. See Krehely et al. (2004) for a recent report on conservative foundations, the
think-tanks they fund, the ties linking both foundations and think-tanks to the
Republican Party, and the resulting impact on US politics and policy-making.
4. However, fossil fuel corporations are opposing the Obama administration’s
efforts to promote ‘green energy’ and implement measures to reduce CO
2
emissions.
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Aaron M. McCright is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in Lyman Briggs
College and the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. His
research investigates how interrelationships among scientific developments,
political processes and social dynamics influence society’s capacity for
recognizing and dealing with environmental degradation and technological
risks. His recent publications analyze the political dynamics and public
understanding of climate science and policy in the United States and the
roles of public opinion for social movements. He was named a 2007 Kavli
Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences, and he recently
received the 2009 Teacher-Scholar Award at MSU. [email:
mccright@msu.edu]
Riley E. Dunlap is Regents Professor in the Department of Sociology at
Oklahoma State University. A past president of the International Sociolog-
ical Association’s Research Committee on Environment and Society (RC
24), Dunlap has also served as Chair of the environmental sociology sections
of the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Study of Social
Problems, and the Rural Sociological Society. His research emphases
include public opinion toward environmental issues, including cross-
national comparisons; partisan and ideological polarization over environ-
mental issues, particularly climate change; and the sources and nature of
climate change denial. He has published extensively on these topics in
sociology and interdisciplinary environmental journals, and is co-editor of
American Environmentalism, Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste, Handbook
of Environmental Sociology and Sociological Theory and the Environment.
[email: rdunlap@okstate.edu]
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