of science. Even more important, we need to shift scholarly attention to climate change further toward the core
of our discipline. As the first generations of sociologists attempted to comprehend and deal with the major social
dislocations of their time, we also need to do the same—lest we lose intellectual relevance.
Regarding the political dynamics of climate change, the following are some important questions that
sociologists should be asking and answering. How will the existing trajectory of the problem status of climate
change affect social, political, and economic attempts at mitigation and adaptation? We need to better understand
the political dynamics across multiple levels of analysis—individual, organizational, national, and international.
Furthermore, we need more comparative analyses of the political dynamics of climate change across multiple
nation-states. We need more nuanced examinations of the ideological aspects of climate change. We need greater
comprehension of the conservative movements’ and the corporate sector’s challenge to impact science more
generally to better understand the context in which these groups attack climate science and the environmental
community’s claims about climate change. Historically tightly coupled with the American environmental
movement on the left, what factors best predict when and how climate change will shift to become a non-
partisan issue whereby political elites, general citizens, and NGOs on the left and on the right work together to
successfully ameliorate it? How will an enduring ideological divide over beliefs about climate change affect our
nation’s attempts at climate mitigation and adaptation policy?
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