Melting the polarizing ice caps on climate change

Two weeks ago, Republicans took back the Senate and promised a wave of conservative reforms regarding issues like healthcare (shrink it), reproductive rights (limit abortion but provide over-the-counter birth control, maybe) and immigration (bolster border security).

But they were notably silent on one issue: climate change, about which several Republicans merely shrugged, “I’m not a scientist.”

That much is obvious. But that doesn’t mean Republican politicians can’t ever make policy decisions that require some understanding of science, particularly when the stakes are as high as they are with climate change.

Science is inseparable from our daily lives. As laypeople, you and I must make scientific decisions despite imperfect knowledge all the time. When we elect to undergo surgery, when we vaccinate our kids, even when we decide to eat less meat, dairy or soy for health reasons — all are decisions we make based on the expert testimony of doctors and other scientists.

In policymaking, science plays an even bigger role. Making national decisions often requires some amount of technical understanding, without which there is no way of determining the best course of action. As Republican energy lobbyist Michael McKenna put it, “Most politicians aren’t scientists, but they vote on science policy. They have opinions on Ebola, but they’re not epidemiologists. They shape highway and infrastructure laws, but they’re not engineers.” So why is it climate change that shuts down the conversation?

When Republicans or any other politicians say they are not scientists to brush off the climate change conversation, what they mean is that they don’t want to talk about it. But when an issue is time sensitive, as is the case with climate change, inaction is decisive. Whether motivated by laziness, fear of science, or simple ignorance, such inaction is impermissible for a politician on either side of the aisle.

Not all science is conclusive, but the evidence on climate change is pretty clear. Both federal and international groups of scientists have compiled reports just this year on the growing threat climate change poses to our planet and our way of life. The effects of human activity on our planet are not only likely to have an impact on the future; increasingly extreme temperatures, water scarcity and torrential rains are already affecting American agriculture, economy and daily life today. And constituents agree: Over half of Americans think human activities are to blame for climate change, according to a March Gallup poll.

Scientists, to their credit, are trying to make their field more accessible to the average person. Just take a look at the National Climate Assessment’s easy-to-navigate website, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s average-Joe-oriented show "Cosmos" or even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s handy “Summary for Policymakers.”

Policymakers should use these tools, as well as their unique access to scientists as Washington’s elite, to educate themselves. This doesn’t mean they necessarily need to passively receive their information from scientists. But the benefit of user-friendly tools like those mentioned is that they create an opportunity for skeptics like Senator James Inhofoe (R-OK), author of "The Greatest Hoax," to insert themselves into the debate around climate change, rather than to simply insulate themselves from it. If Republicans are going to deny climate change, they should do it upfront and based on reasoned evidence rather than hiding behind the excuse that they aren’t qualified to talk science.

Of course, in Congress, there’s not always time to do one’s homework. That’s why scientists are especially important in policymaking. This is the notion of legitimate authority advanced by legal philosopher Joseph Raz: Appealing to authority makes sense when it allows us to better act in our own self-interest — to make better decisions — than if we went at it alone. Climate change, with its often-impenetrable models and technical jargon, seems the perfect example of a case where we might be better off taking the scientists’ word for it.

Still, there could be a danger in blindly accepting science as if it were a testament of truth handed down from the research gods. Scientists have their own biases and a desire for self-preservation, which means ensuring a steady flow of government funding for the sciences. That need for government funding is perhaps one reason why Republicans are so reluctant to confront the issue. Moreover, scientific truth is different than capital-T Truth; like surgery, it is always marked by an amount of uncertainty, and that gray area is where things get tricky.

Climate change is no different. We don’t know exactly what will happen when global temperatures and sea levels rise. We can’t predict the future down to which real estate will go from waterfront to underwater, which animals will go extinct or which crops will be decimated. But we can get pretty close to the answer, and as policymakers now at Congress’s helm, Republicans ought now to take a look — or to at least phone a scientist.