action on climate change after the environmental community had already placed this issue on the national agenda.
American conservatives (via control of the legislative branch in the mid- to late-1990s and then via control of the
executive branch in the 2000s) did this by challenging climate science, underfunding environmental research, and
changing the missions of existing environmental research programs (e.g., Brown 1997; Mooney 2007; Union of
Concerned Scientists 2004a, 2004b).
Especially crucial to the conservative movement’s success are three factors relevant to the political
process model (e.g., McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1998) within social movements scholarship: framing processes,
mobilizing structures, and shifts in the political opportunity structure. Briefly, the conservative movement has
challenged the legitimacy of global warming as a social problem and the legitimacy of climate science more
generally within an anti-environmental frame that promotes private property rights, emphasizes economic
production, and rejects environmental regulations on market behavior (McCright and Dunlap 2000). Given the
slow demolition of state authority and infrastructure and the rise of neoliberalism since the mid-1990s, this anti-
environmental frame appears more salient than ever.
The American conservative movement has largely mobilized to challenge climate change policy via
existing conservative think tanks that have historically been funded by conservative foundations and wealthy
conservative families. Conservative think tanks have attempted to debunk the reality of climate change by
producing and distributing hundreds of documents to policy-makers and the media, sponsoring press conferences,
seminars, and speeches for policy-makers and attentive publics, and having their members appear on radio and
television programs and deliver testimony at Congressional hearings. Perhaps most important, though, is the fact
that influential conservative think tanks have enlisted the assistance of a handful of climate change contrarian
scientists to challenge climate science (McCright and Dunlap 2003). These climate change contrarians have
provided the conservative think tanks with some degree of credibility that has allowed these organizations to
critique climate science itself (rather than an eventual policy later informed by scientific findings) (see McCright
2007). In a sense, this sort of ideological pre-emptive strike is akin to the types of strategic activities that tobacco
and chemical corporations have performed for decades—techniques that Michaels and colleagues (Michaels 2006;
Michaels and Monforton 2005) refer to as “manufacturing uncertainty” (see also Freudenburg, Gramling, and
Davidson 2008).
The American conservative movement strategically took advantage of two specific shifts in the political
opportunity structure to successfully promote its position that global warming is not a legitimate problem and
we do not need a climate policy (McCright and Dunlap 2003). The 2004 federal elections brought on the so-
called “Republican Revolution.” In the following years, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, giving
them control over all Congressional committees and allowing them to call hearings and compose witness lists.
As a result, members of the American conservative movement—in particular, climate change contrarians—
enjoyed a sizable increase in visibility in Congressional hearings on global warming. Thus, while Bill Clinton
and Al Gore ran a relatively pro-environmental executive branch, American conservative movement members
promoted their interests within the legislative branch. Later, the American conservative movement became further
institutionalized in the federal government with the 2000 presidential election and the ascendancy of the George
W. Bush administration.
The American conservative movement exploited the media’s balancing norm—which equates
“objectivity” with presenting “both sides of the story”—to try to undermine public support for any potential
climate policy (McCright and Dunlap 2003). Indeed, after the 1994 Republican Revolution and the concomitant
rightward shift in our political culture, a small group of climate change contrarians—those scientists sympathetic