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Given by the National Academy of Sciences

2007 Kavli Frontiers Fellow

2009 Teacher-Scholar Award

The 2009 Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award

An award given by the Michigan Sociological Association

Larry T. Reynolds Award for Outstanding Teaching of Sociology

Ideology, capitalism, and climate: Explaining public views about climate change in the United States

The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public's views of global warming, 2001–2010

Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States

The effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public

Anti-reflexivity

A widening gap: Republican and Democratic views on climate change

Defeating Kyoto: The conservative movement's impact on US climate change policy

Challenging global warming as a social problem: An analysis of the conservative movement's counter-claims

Perceived scientific agreement and support for government action on climate change in the USA

Risk is a part of life. How we handle uncertainty and deal with potential threats influence decision making throughout our lives. In The Risk Society Revisited, Eugene A. Rosa, Ortwin Renn, and Aaron M. McCright offer the first book to present an integrated theory of risk and governance.The authors examine our sociological understanding of risk and how we reconcile modern human conditions with our handling of risk in our quest for improved quality of life. They build a new framework for understanding risk—one that provides an innovative connection between social theory and the governance of technological and environmental risks and the sociopolitical challenges they pose for a sustainable future.Showing how our consciousness affects risk in the decisions we make—as individuals and as members of a democratic society—The Risk Society Revisited makes an important contribution to the literature of risk research.

The Risk Society Revisited: Social Theory and Risk Governance

Aaron M. McCright is Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University.  His sociological research investigates how interrelationships among scientific developments, political processes, and social dynamics influence society’s capacity for recognizing and dealing with environmental degradation and technological risks.  Dr. McCright is most well-known for his work analyzing the political dynamics and public understanding of climate science and policy in the United States—especially organized climate change denial and political polarization on climate change.  In addition, his recent work helps to improve our sociological understanding of societal risk and increase the effectiveness of our risk governance for promoting a more sustainable society.  Dr. McCright also investigates the roles of public opinion for social movements, especially how we can use public opinion surveys to investigate how citizens identify with different social movements over their life course.  Further, he conducts research on the effectiveness of inquiry-based learning projects for improving students’ scientific and statistical knowledge, skills, and attitudes.  He has published two books, has authored over a dozen chapters in edited volumes, and has written a few commissioned reports.  He also has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in such scholarly journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Nature Climate Change; Global Environmental Change; Climatic Change; Public Opinion Quarterly; Social Problems; Social Science Quarterly; Theory, Culture, and Society; The Sociological Quarterly; Journal of Risk Research; Organization and Environment; Environment and Behavior; Population and Environment; and Environmental Politics.  He was named a 2007 Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences, he served as a 2008-2009 Lilly Teaching Fellow at MSU, and he received the 2009 Teacher-Scholar Award and the 2009 Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award at MSU.

Political Polarization

Values and Sciences

Climate Change Politics

Climate Change

Climate Change Denial

Trust in Science

Social Movement Identity

Homepage

Google Scholar Profile

Putting science into practice: Why we need to play our part

How Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?

You need to get inside the mind of a climate change denier if you want to change it

MSU Study: Climate change denial messaging works

Climate-change foes winning public opinion war

Professor and Chairperson, College of Social Science/Lyman Briggs College

The Obama administration’s proposal to fight climate change by cutting carbon pollution is opening yet another round of political debate in the United States. And the fallout will be seen in contentious legal challenges from states in the coming months.
 
Climate change has long been a politicized issue in the U.S. to a degree not found in other countries, experts say, even though its impacts span the globe.
 
An Ipso Mori Global Trends poll found that Americans are generally much more skeptical about climate change and what should be done about it than people in other developed countries. That debate spawned a movement of so-called climate change skeptics.
 
Political right

Those who initially cast doubt on climate change largely came from the political right who “saw climate change as a threat to free market economics,” said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University.
 
Taking action, they said, “would lead to the expansion of big government, more regulation of markets and a movement toward socialism,” according to Oreskes, the co-author of book Merchants of Doubt, which explores the history of climate change denial.
 
And that debate has garnered much media attention through the years, she said.
 
“The press then invites [skeptics] on TV, and the public sees a debate, the public sees a debate and thinks we don’t really know [about climate change],” Oreskes said. “Contrarians get a lot of limelight just by being contrarian. Media attention keeps them going.”
 
But Patrick Michaels, the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, who has been called a skeptic, thinks another dynamic is at work in the U.S. that is not found in a lot of other countries.
 
“Unlike in much of Europe, there’s a substantial mistrust of authority,” he said, adding that the founding fathers were wary of a powerful central government.
 
States challenging Obama plan

That sentiment remains strong today. At least 15 states plans to challenge the Obama plan in courts this fall, saying, among other claims, that the federal government has overreached its authority.
 
Aaron McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University who has studied the public understanding of climate science and policy, sees conservatives in the Republican Party as drivers of climate change skepticism. But that hasn’t always been the case.
 
For example, the conservative Nixon administration created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed clean air and water legislation, initiatives many conservatives today would likely oppose.
 
The struggling economy of the mid and late 1970s changed all of that.
 
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, one of the main thrusts of his administration was to “get government off our backs,” McCright said.
 
“The conservatives in the late 1980s and early 90s really ramped up their anti-environmentalism,” he said.
 
McCright said during this time, conservatives felt they had “few allies in academia and journalism” and needed to create their own intellectual space to promote conservative ideas, largely in the form of think tanks.
 
Oreskes said deniers and skeptics also began to personally attack the scientists who’d done some of the key research on climate change.
 
“By the late 90s and early 2000s, the attacks get worse,” she said. “The scientific community was blindsided. They thought they could get the problem solved with science.”
 
Skeptic movement

Sociologist McCright said the skeptic movement mimicked the way the tobacco industry fought efforts to cast cigarette smoking as unhealthy by raising doubt on the science that said smoking was dangerous.
 
Richard Muller, scientific director of Berkeley Earth and a skeptic who says that the link between global warming and climate change has not been scientifically proven, wonders why Europeans are not more on board.
 
“The real question in my mind, is why there has not been more skepticism in Europe,” he said. “The solutions being proposed in the U.S. will not do the job.”
 
“The vast bulk of that warming is going to come from China, India and the developing world,” he said. “Any solution that ignores the developing world is not a solution.”

Climate Change Fight Sparks Renewed Debate in US

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