What do Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, James Inhofe, and George Will have in common? Several things. They are influential members of society, ‘elites’ who have a big effect on policy. They adamantly deny that human-made climate change is happening. And they are all conservative white men. Probably the only thing you might not call these people is “Cool dudes”.

            But that is precisely the label they are given, somewhat facetiously, in the title of a new study - COOL DUDES: THE DENIAL OF CLIMATE CHANGE AMONG  CONSERVATIVE WHITE MALES IN THE UNITED STATES - about the war over climate change. The study confirms what many others have found, that conservative white males (CWMs) are more likely than any other segment of the population to deny the overwhelming body of science that anthropogenic climate change is underway, and a serious threat to the biosphere and everything in it, including human beings. This is not new, or surprising.

          What is valuable about this study is what it says not just about conservative white men, but about all of us. This research confirms that who we are as people, at really fundamental levels, has a lot more to do with the way we see things than just the facts. All of us, not just CWMs. And not just on climate change. And what that means is that arguing issues based just on the facts isn‘t going to get us very far, since the facts aren’t really what we’re arguing about in the first place.

 

            Here are a few of the findings (based on analysis of Gallup surveys of public opinion between 2000 and 2010);

   --- 14% of the general public doesn’t worry about climate change at all, but among CWMs the percentage jumps to 39%.

 ---   32% of adults deny there is a scientific consensus on climate change, but 59% of CWMs deny what the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists have said.

 ---   3 adults in 10 don’t believe recent global temperature increases are primarily caused by human activity. Twice that many - 6 CWMs out of every ten – feel that way

            So what is about CWMs that make them see the climate change issue this way? The “Cool Dudes” paper suggests that its partly because they’re WMs, and partly because they are Cs. The so-called “White Male Effect” in risk perception has found that white males between ages 18-59 are generally less afraid of things than white women or people of color of either gender. A famous “White Male Effect” paper  suggested “Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it. Perhaps women and nonwhite men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control.”  That’s consistent with general theory about risk perception, which finds that for all of us, the more control we have the less afraid we are, and the more benefit we get from something, the less scary it is.