Many efforts to gauge why most Republicans reject or doubt the science pointing to risks from unabated emissions of greenhouse gases are issue-centric. It’s fossil fuel money. It’s disinformation campaigns that spin scientific complexity and some overheated warming rhetoric into a carbon-tax conspiracy.
Those factors are out there. But a more fundamental explanation is hinted at in polling on broader attitudes on science. The bottom line continues to be that belief, particularly religious belief, trumps data. (Keep in mind that belief sometimes trumps data for other political factions, as well, on issues like nuclear power.) [2:02 p.m. | Updated In a comment below, Dan Kahan, a Yale researcher who studies how values shape people’s perceptions of information, adds important context, asserting that religiosity, per se, doesn’t appear to be the issue.]
Gallup polling on evolution provides a useful lens. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, reviewed the group’s findings on Friday after a week in which two Republican presidential candidates clarified their starkly different stances on global warming and evolution. (Hat tip to GOP12 blog via Politico.)
A 2007 poll asked respondents if they believed that “Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life,” is “definitely true, probably true, probably false, definitely false?” (That’s a very odd and constrained definition of evolution, of course, but responses would still provide a useful view of broader attitudes on the theory.)
Newport said the 2007 survey found that 53 percent of Americans said this particular framing of evolution was either definitely or probably true, while 44 percent said evolution was definitely or probably not true.
Then he wrote this about Republicans:
Of importance to us here is the breakout among Republicans. We found in 2007 that a whopping 68 percent of Republicans did not believe in evolution when using this question wording.
A 2010 survey with a different approach still found a majority of Republicans, as opposed to much smaller percentages of Independents and Democrats, believing that humans were created in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Here’s the summary of the overall finding:
Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God’s involvement.
This all reinforces the importance of considering the power of cultural cognition when pondering American polarization on climate, stem cells and a host of other issues underpinned by science — and the longstanding tendency of candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination to take unscientific positions.
Here’s Newport’s description of the fundamental dilemma facing candidates in this party:
By pleasing the Republican base, they move further away from the general population of voters who will be crucial in November 2012. If they fail to please the Republican base, however, they run the risk of not getting the nomination in the first place, rendering all else moot as far as they are concerned.
Given how the nomination process and primaries work, is there any chance that a reality-based Republican can be a serious candidate in the general election? It doesn’t seem possible, at least for now. It’s to the credit of Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney that they have tried. Maybe the tide will turn a bit, if Republicans are punished by voters who recognize the perils of anti-scientific policies.
Huntsman put it this way on the Sunday ABC news show This Week:
The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas doesn’t seem to think so, and continues to pander to creationists and their ilk.
George Will expended one column early this year on a warning similar to Huntsman’s, although he hasn’t followed up on that, perhaps recognizing that it’s a lost cause for the Republican Party as we know it today and because he personally has chosen to bash climate science while embracing science writ large.
I’d like to think it’s possible to have reasoned discussions about policies involving both science and values — discussions that recognize where the data end and personal choices begin. Some of my best friends, including an Episcopal priest and a Baptist minister, are deeply religious, but find a way to mesh their beliefs with an understanding of basic physical and biological processes.
Can we, as a nation, do the same?