ABSTRACT
Climate change has been enmeshed in the culture wars, where beliefs about science often align with beliefs about abortion, gun control, health care, evolution, or other issues that fall along the contemporary political divide. Climate change has been transformed into a rhetorical contest more akin to the spectacle of a sports match, pitting one side against the other with the goal of victory through the cynical use of politics, fear, distrust, and intolerance. For skeptics, climate change is inextricably tied to a belief that climate science and policy are a covert way for liberal environmentalists and the government to diminish citizens’ personal freedom. But social scientists from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, ethics, and philosophy try to make sense of such powerful and contradictory reactions to the issue of climate change. In the case of climate change, people must once again let that trust overrule cultural biases.
