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Conservative organizations spend as much as a billion dollars a year trying to convince Americans that climate change isn’t real, or if it is real, that it isn’t caused by humans. At one point, it seemed that their campaign was working.
In 2009, Pew found that belief in global warming had fallen to a low of 59 percent, down from 77 percent in 2007. And just 36 percent of those surveyed that year believed that climate change was being caused by humans, down from 47 percent in 2007. However since 2009, the number of believers has grown: Today 69 percent of those surveyed believe global warming is occurring, with 42 percent believing it is caused by humans.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
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Across party lines there is a large divide, with Democrats mostly believing climate change is happening, and Republicans mostly disbelieving. Independents are split. But not by science. Independents’ views on man-made climate change change with the weather.
On hotter days, Independents become much, much more likely to claim they believe in man-made climate change:
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Which makes me wonder: Why don’t the conservative billionaires spending money trying to convince the public that climate change isn’t real instead spend their money developing technology to cool the planet? There is lots of technology in development that can do just that. For instance, carbon scrubbers that strip carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it as sodium carbonate.
After all, there is no better way to convince the world that climate change isn’t happening than preventing it from occurring.
John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.
