Lyman Briggs College HPS professor Aaron M. McCright was recently named as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his sociological analysis of the political dynamics of climate change in the United States. According to the U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science website, Fellows are “some 100 of the best and brightest of young American scientists” who are “selected from a pool of young researchers (under 45) who have made significant contributions to science.” As part of this honor, Dr. McCright was an invited participant at the 19th Annual Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium for the National Academy of Sciences in Irvine, California on November 8-10, 2007.
Dr. McCright began this research agenda during the spring of 1997. Searching for a master's thesis topic, he became interested in some of the messages about global warming coming out of prominent conservative think tanks. In particular, he was struck by how these important organizations in the American conservative movement enlisted the services of a handful of climate change contrarians—those few scientists aligned with the fossil fuels industry who publicly challenged the reality of global warming. “I was fascinated at how vigorously these conservative think tanks attacked the international scientific community,” says Dr. McCright. Drawing upon literatures in environmental sociology, political sociology, sociology of science, and social movements scholarship, he systematically examined how the American conservative movement mobilized to challenged the legitimacy of global warming as a social problem. He has published several works on his climate change research to date (see below).
This spring semester, Dr. McCright served as a panel member at a “Focus the Nation” Community Forum on climate change at the end of January 2008. With Stan Kaplowitz in the Department of Sociology, he is conducting research to identify how different persuasion techniques affect Americans' support for different climate policies. At the end of May 2008, Dr. McCright will participate in a climate change workshop at the National Science Foundation to discuss priorities for federal funding for sociological research on climate change. Later in the summer, Dr. McCright will complete a new manuscript on the American conservative movement's success in undermining climate change science and policy for a special issue of an international social science journal.
Selected Publications McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2000. “Challenging Global Warming as a Social Problem: An Analysis of the Conservative Movement's Counter Claims.” Social Problems 47(4): 499-522. McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2003. “Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement's Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy.” Social Problems 50(3): 348-373. McCright, Aaron M. 2007. “Dealing With Climate Change Contrarians.” Pp. 200-212 in Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change, edited by Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling. New York: Cambridge University Press. McCright, Aaron M., and Rachael L. Shwom. 2008. “Global Climate Change in the U.S. Mass Media.” Forthcoming in Climate Change Science and Policy, edited by Stephen H. Schneider, Armin Rosencranz, & Michael Mastrandrea. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
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Lyman Briggs College HPS professor Aaron M. McCright was recently named as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his sociological analysis of the political dynamics of climate change in the United States. According to the U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science website, Fellows are “some 100 of the best and brightest of young American scientists” who are “selected from a pool of young researchers (under 45) who have made significant contributions to science.” As part of this honor, Dr. McCright was an invited participant at the 19th Annual Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium for the National Academy of Sciences in Irvine, California on November 8-10, 2007. 