Fossil Fuel Interests 'Coached' Conservatives to Reject Climate Science in US and Australia, Study Finds

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Thereโ€™s a widely held belief that when it comes to human-caused climate change, youโ€™re far less likely to accept the science if you lean towardย theย right of the politicalย spectrum.

But a new study just published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that this link between conservative values and climate โ€œskepticismโ€ holds strongest in the U.S. and Australia, and less so in Canada, where fossil fuel vested interests areย high.

The research, carried out at the University of Queensland in Australia, also found people who accepted conspiracy theories were more likely to reject climate science, but this effect is restricted to the U.S.

Psychology professor Matthew Hornsey, who led the study, told Guardian Australia: โ€œI think itโ€™s all about vestedย interests.โ€

Vestedย Interests

โ€œWhen the vested interests are high, the fossil fuel industry and conservative thinktanks, media and politicians collaborate in an organized campaign of misinformation. In my data, the link between conservatism and skepticism is really only obvious in countries with high per capita carbonย emissions.โ€

Hornseyโ€™s study surveyed 5,300 people in 24 countries and measured their โ€œworldviewโ€ across four different measures of politicalย ideology.

Then Hornsey and colleagues asked people about their views on the causes of climateย change.ย 

The subjects were also asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with four known conspiracy theories around the death of President John F. Kennedy, the death of Princess Diana, the existence of a โ€œNew World Order,โ€ and the 9/11 terror attacks in Newย York.

The only countries showing an association between climate science โ€œskepticismโ€ and conspiratorial beliefs wereย the U.S. andย Singapore.

The study concluded there is โ€œnothing inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climateย science.โ€

Instead, the study argues: โ€œThe greater the vested interests in resisting change, the more incentive there is to engage โ€” and believe โ€” in ideologically driven campaigns of misinformation about the reality of anthropogenic climateย change.โ€

In other words, Hornsey said, vested interest campaigns had โ€œtrained and coachedโ€ conservatives to see climate change โ€œthrough the lens of theirย worldviews.โ€

Jiujitsuย Communications

Hornsey said: โ€œWhen the vested interests are high (in terms of the fossil fuel industry, for example) then there is more of a motivation for big business to engage in an organized campaign of misinformation around climate change. These campaigns often develop as a collaboration between the fossil fuel industry and conservative thinktanks, media and politicians, and are designed to โ€˜coachโ€™ conservatives to believe that the climate science is not yetย settled.โ€

Hornsey and colleagues have developed what they call a โ€œjiujitsuโ€ model of persuasion, which they think could help focus the way climate change is communicated toย conservatives.

This is a method, Hornsey added, which โ€œaligns with peopleโ€™s underlying ideologies rather than competing withย them.โ€

Main image: Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke speak at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Credit: Zach D. Roberts forย DeSmog

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