"Nuclear power makes individualists see green."

The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University Law School has just completed a new study entitled, Making Sense of - and Making Progress In - the American Culture War of Fact. Among the topics addressed in the study was public acceptance of nuclear energy, and some of the findings like this one caught my eye ...

"Cultural individualists who are told that nuclear power will reduce greenhouse gas emissions are more likely to accept that global warming is caused by humans and is a serious threat than those who are told that restrictive anti-pollution regulations are necessary," said [Dan] Kahan [Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

"The reason is that anti-pollution regulations threaten the values of people who like commerce, whereas nuclear power strikes those same people as a good idea."

Said Kahan, "Nuclear power makes individualists see green."

Sounds like something we've been saying for quite a while now. To download the entire paper, click here.

Comments

GRLCowan said…

Collectivists seem to be a dog that is wagged by its oil- and gas-tax-collecting tail; or anyway, the tail says it still can wag the dog, just as the similarly fossil fuel beholden part of the individualist electorate said none of its electors believed in man-caused global warming.

Now they seem to be saying its electors don't believe man is causing global warming, and one should not be deceived on this point by recent election results. Desperate mendacity, in both parallel cases, I think.

October 1, 2007 at 1:05 PM

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There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

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