America, God, Science and Durban

The brave people who united this week in Durban, South Africa, to fight against global warming have no chance. Already, the economic situation is against them. When recession and mass unemployment threaten, the primary concern is not the protection of the environment. The second piece of bad news for the United Nations Climate Change Conference is that the United States will play the role of “leader” in this battle less than ever: They have been beaten by climate skepticism.

This is not the case in the Obama administration, certainly, but the school of climate skeptics dominates on the Republican side. They represent the majority in the House of Representatives; they will vote against all proposals of a tax on greenhouse gas emissions. And, week after week, the candidates for the Party’s nomination for the presidential election of Nov. 2012 proclaim their refusal to accept the “farce” of global warming.

In other words, the elite of one of the two major parties in the United States — a country where conviction in the merits of science has always been part of the collective DNA — is opposed to the majority of contemporary scientists. The Republicans claim to doubt the harmful effects of global warming; they refuse to attribute to humans any responsibility for climate change.

[Public] opinion is affected. “Skepticism about global warming has spiked dramatically in the past two years,” notes one of the keener observers of the transatlantic public scene, Christopher Caldwell. In the Financial Times on Nov. 26, he cites a recent Pew Research Center poll: On a list of 22 top policy priorities, the fight against climate change comes second to last.

In Durban, negotiators from some 200 countries are pressured. Brought into effect in 2005, the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — the cause of global warming — is about to expire. A successor must be found. Scientists want to limit the average temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius from now until the end of the century. At the current rate of CO2 emissions, the thermometer is pointing instead to a 3 to 6 degree Celsius rise beyond the expected threshold to prevent catastrophe.

In Washington, PNAS, the journal of the National Academy of Sciences, published its tally: 97 percent of climate research specialists in the United States attribute to humans the responsibility for global warming and therefore the problems that come with it.

It would take more to intimidate the crusaders in the Republican Party. All candidates for the 2012 [presidential] nomination proclaim their climate skepticism. They refuse to acknowledge that industrial carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of climate change.

Elected Representative from Minnesota Michele Bachmann assures that CO2 emissions are harmless. Herman Cain, one of the latest applicants, talks of the “myth” of global warming. James Richard Perry, governor of Texas, denounces it to be a “hoax” perpetrated by scientists who want government grants.

The most solid candidates, Mitt Romney and Newton Gingrich, have had to change camp. After having taken seriously the entropic effects of CO2 emissions, they have now reneged. They now adhere to the doxa [orthodoxy] of the Party: There is no proof that human activity is responsible for changes in the climate. They have ceded to the intimidation of the militant Republican wing, enlivened by ultra-conservative television and radio stars. To his 15 million weekly listeners, Rush Limbaugh, the country’s biggest shock jock, spouts that this CO2 affair is a big “joke.”

Climate skepticism, which has become one of the Republican dogmas, is attached to this other conviction: We must stop presenting the theory of evolution as an explanation for human origin and add to school programs the creationist theory, which holds that humanity was created by God such as it is.

Also in the Nov. 26 Financial Times, American correspondent Gillian Tett asks, “Why doesn’t America like science?” She cites the mayor of New York’s anger at the Republican candidates’ position on evolution and the climate: “We have presidential candidates who don’t believe in science! …Are you kidding me? It’s mind-boggling!” said Michael Bloomberg.

The New Scientist magazine perceives an unprecedented Republican offensive against science. On The Daily Beast site, Andrew Sullivan declares, “Republicanism As Religion.” How did we get here? Defining himself as an enlightened conservative, Sullivan, who managed the weekly liberal cum neo-conservative The New Republic, denounces the influence of Protestant fundamentalists on the party of Abraham Lincoln. Incidentally, Lincoln was the president who established the American Academy of Sciences.

The Party behaves like a religious movement, writes Sullivan. Its presidential candidates must adhere to the credo: no to the theory of evolution, no to the U.N. climate farce, no to the slightest increase in tax (direct, indirect, long-term or temporary), no to the “socialist” abomination that is universal health care, no to abortion, etc.

One might say that it has been this way since Ronald Reagan and his “conservative revolution” of the early 1980s. Wrong. Ronald Reagan opened up the Party to all families of American conservatism. There exists in the Republican camp today a dogmatic tension that allows an escape from the complexity of the times.