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Sociology: Clean-energy conservatism

Nature Energy volume 2, Article number: 17026 (2017) Cite this article

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US conservatives receive a steady stream of anti-environmental messaging from Republican politicians. However, clean-energy conservatives sending strong counter-messages on energy issues could mobilize moderate conservatives to break away from the dominant right-wing defence of fossil fuels.

Writing in Environmental Sociology, David J. Hess and Kate Pride Brown2 offer the latest in their larger project examining the factors that influence whether US state legislatures pass energy-transition policies with bipartisan support3–5 by providing a rigorous qualitative investigation of clean-energy conservatism. First, Hess and Brown examined organizations' historical documents and biographical statements from organization leaders and found clear heterogeneity within clean-energy conservatism. These organizations were founded with a broad environmental focus (for example, ConservAmerica), to oppose Republican efforts to undermine state-level renewable energy and energy efficiency policies (for example, the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum), to oppose utilities' actions to halt the development of distributed solar energy (for example, Conservatives for Energy Freedom), or to promote renewable energy policies nationally (for example, Young Conservatives for Energy Reform). They either accept the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, decline to disparage climate science, or avoid the topic of climate change altogether. While clean energy conservatives' refusal to promote climate change denial is an encouraging development for embattled scientists, it places these relatively few organizations in direct conflict with the dominant thrust of American conservatism6.

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Figure 1: Pro-environmental voting records of US Senate and House Democrats (blue squares) and Republicans (red triangles), 1970–2015.
Figure 2: Percentages of US liberals (blue squares), moderate conservatives (red triangles), and strong conservatives (orange circles).

References

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  1. Aaron M. McCright 919 East Shaw Lane, Room E-35, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48825-3804, USA.,

    Aaron M. McCright

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Correspondence to Aaron M. McCright.

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McCright, A. Sociology: Clean-energy conservatism. Nat Energy 2, 17026 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.26

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