Cool Dudes

In late-February, after taking a “sunbath” in the 75-degree Fahrenheit afternoon on the school lawn, I found several bug bites on my arms. Soon, my arms began swelling so much that I had to visit the Student Health Services. Seeing my swelling arms, the nurse did not seem very surprised. Instead, she told me that I was the third person who came there because of bug bites that week. She said since last winter was warm, several injurious bugs were able to survive and turned out to be hidden dangers on campus. Although I have always believed that global warming is happening, that was the very first time I experienced the effect of it in person. However, in front of the evidence offered by renowned scholars from all over the world and more dramatic …show more content…
McCright and Riley E. Dunlap’s essay, “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States,” they state that “conservative white males are more likely than other adults in the US to express climate change denial views” (McCright et al., 1171). McCright and Dunlap also discuss two main reasons, identity-protective cognition and system-justification tendencies, which lead to conservative white males’ denial views. Identity-protective cognition means that since conservative white males are likely to perceive conservative white male elites to be their in-group, they are eager to embrace and defend the denial claims of those conservative white male elites (McCright et al., 1164). The system-justification tendencies mean that conservative white males display the tendency to justify and defend the current social and economic system, because they have largely occupied positions of power with the current economic system (McCright et al., 1165). They are not willing to accept climate change, because it interferes with their fortunes by posing expensive challenges (McCright et al., 1171). McCright and Dunlap regard conservative white males as a unified group without inner differences and write that conservative white males are able to secure their current fortunes by denying climate change, when they talk about the justification of current system and the interests of conservative white males, (McCright et al., 1171). However, …show more content…
Similarly, conservative white males do not realize the current effect of climate change, but there is already evidence from several research studies which can prove that climate change is affecting their economic benefits, especially those of the working-class. For example, in Thomas W. Hertel and Stephanie D. Rosch’s essay, "Climate change, agriculture, and poverty," when talking about the agricultural impacts of climate change, they mention that any temperature rise more than 2℃ over the average temperature of 2008 will likely reduce crop yield in all regions (Hertel et al., 358). Different from the industry of fossil fuel, the relationship between agriculture and climate change is not so obvious, but this potential reduction in crop yield will definitely become an economic concern for a part of working class conservative white males. According to Derek Thompson’s article, more than 95.8% of farmers and ranchers are white (Thompson), and according to Ana Swanson, about 75% of farmers are conservative (Swanson). Hence, about 70% of farmers in the US are white conservatives. As the annual average temperature keeps rising, the annual yield rate goes down and that can directly cause a reduction in the income of white conservative farmers. The farmers’ interests, thus, are the first to be affected, far earlier than the interests of white