You may remember a few years ago the American Republican Vice President Dick Cheney released his energy task force report. It was written by and for Big Energy (read oil and gas companies). The administration fought to keep the process by which the report was produced secret, but the list of people the task force consulted was eventually leaked. It was exactly what people expected - a who's who of energy industry executives. The environmental groups and climate scientists got a chance to make their case only after the work that produced this document was essentially done.
That wasn't particularly odd but here's the thing: By the standards of today's Republican Party, the Cheney report was enlightened, even left-leaning in places. One entire chapter was devoted to conservation, another to renewable energy. By contrast, speeches by Republican Party hopefuls barely scratch the surface of either topic. When it comes to energy policy, the G.O.P. (Grand Old Party) has become fossilized. Their reality: it's fossil fuels and only fossil fuels, all the way.
This Big Energy sentiment runs deep. In the heart of many Republican strongholds, a great many people are totally unconvinced that climate change is real. Debates to the contrary seem to matter little to residents.
Today more that 75 percent of self-identified Democrats, liberals, and left-centrists believe humans are changing the climate - a level that, despite yearly fluctuations, has risen only slightly since 2001. In sharp contrast, Republicans have overwhelmingly chosen to reject the scientific consensus. In some regions, only about 20 percent of self-proclaimed Republicans accept the science. This political rift can also be found in Canada. According to a 2013 poll conducted by Environics, only 41 percent of respondents who identify themselves as right-wing believe that climate change is real and human caused, while 69 percent of supporters of the left persuasion believe it is real. Similarly, this same phenomenon has once again been documented in Australia and the UK as well as Western Europe.
The only parts of the U.S. where opinions about climate change are slightly less split along political lines are regions that are highly dependent on fossil fuel extraction - such as Appalachia coal country and the Gulf Coast. There, in typical fashion, Republicans still staunchly deny climate change, as they do across the nation. Interestingly, many of their Democrat neighbours do as well (in parts of Appalachia, just 49 percent of Democrats believe in human-created climate change, compared with 72 to 77 percent in other parts of the country.) Canada holds the same forms of regional splits: in Alberta, where income once soared thanks to the tar sands, only 41 percent of residents confided that humans are contributing to climate change. In Atlantic Canada, which has seen far less extravagant benefits from fossil fuel extraction, 68 percent of respondents say that humans are warming the planet.
A similar bias can be found amongst scientists. While 97 percent of active climate scientists believe humans are a major cause of climate change, the numbers are radically different among economic geologists' - scientists who study natural formations so they can be commercially exploited by the extractive industries. Only 47 percent of these scientists believe in human-cause climate change. The bottom line is that we are all inclined to denial when the truth is too costly - whether emotionally, intellectually, or financially. As Upton Sinclair famously observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."1
There's another development in the offing. While it's true that fracking has led to a boom in gas and oil production in the U.S., we are also living in an area of spectacular progress in wind and solar energy. Why have the right-leaning people become so hostile to technologies that look more and more like the wave of the future?
This is a quandary. It's true that wind and solar energy were once the topics of comic books not part of any serious approach to our energy future. Many people still have that perception - albeit so far out of date. The cost of wind has dropped sharply and solar panels are becoming cheaper and more efficient, reminiscent of the progress in microchips that underlies the information technology revolution. To further strengthen the cause of wind and solar production, they account for essentially all recent growth in electrical generation capacity in developed countries.
Furthermore, renewables have become major industries in their own right employing several hundred thousand people across North America. Employment in the solar industry now exceeds the number of coal miners and solar is adding jobs as coal declines.
You might expect people in the Republican party who say they want to unleash our energy potential,' and leaders in the party who say they want to unleash the Energy Revolution,' to embrace wind and solar as engines of jobs and growth. But they don't. Indeed, they're less open-minded than Mr. Cheney. But why?
Part of the answer is surely that promotion of renewable energy is linked in many people's minds with attempts to limit climate change - and climate denial has become a key part of right leaning identity. The truth is that climate impact isn't the only cost of burning carbon-based fuels, that fossil-fuel-associated pollutants like particulates and ozone rain down huge measurable damage and are major reasons to support alternative energy. Also, renewables are getting close to being cost-competitive even in the absence of special incentives (and don't forget that oil and gas have long been subsidized by the tax code.) But the association with climate science evokes visceral hostility on the right.
On top of that, you need to follow the money. It used to be said that the G.O.P. was the party of Old Energy. In the 2014 election cycle, the oil and gas industry gave 87 percent of political contributions to the Republican Party: for coal mining the number was an unbelievable 96 percent. Meanwhile, alternative energy went 56 percent for Democrats.
And Old Energy is engaged in a systematic effort to blacken the image of renewable energy, one that closely resembles the way it has supported experts' willing to help create a cloud of doubt about climate science. For example: earlier this year a major publication published an op-ed article purporting to show that the true cost of wind power was much higher than people thought. It turned out, however, that the piece contained major factual errors and its author had failed to disclose that he was the Charles W. Koch professor at Utah State, and a fellow of a Koch- and Exxon Mobile-backed think tank.2
It is unlikely that energy policy will play as big a role in other issues, such as tax policy, in the 2016 election. But to the extent it does, one needs to know what's at stake.
While politicians on the right may talk about encouraging innovation and promoting an energy revolution, they are actually defenders of the energy status quo, part of a movement trying to block anything that might disrupt the reign of fossil fuels.3
1 Naomi Klein. "The Right is Right." This Changes Everything-Capitalism vs the Climate. Toronto: Knopf Canada , 2014
2 Paul Krugman. "Fossilized Enemies of the Sun." The New York Times International Weekly. (October 17-18, 2015): 15
3 Ibid
