When people use low-effort thought, they are more likely to endorse conservative ideology, according to psychologist Scott Eidelman of the University of Arkansas. Results of research by Eidelman and colleagues were published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response,” Eidelman…
Designed to give the public a voice in policy decisions, public meetings and consensus conferences can, in some cases, provide valuable insights into the local public’s views and opinions on certain issues. But they can also have disastrous consequences when used as a policy-making tool designed to tap public opinion more broadly. The politics of…
Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen. Hansen, will be awarded the prestigious Edinburgh Medal for his contribution to science, and in his acceptance speech will call for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions….
The Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews all proposed federal regulations, have never used job figures as part of the calculus of the costs and benefits of rule-making, largely because there is no accepted methodology for assessing them. But the Institute for Policy Integrity at New…
Politically conservative Americans have lost trust in science over the last 40 years while moderates and liberals have remained constant in the stock they put in the scientific community, a new study finds. The most educated conservatives have slipped the most, according to the research set to appear in the April issue of the journal…
Increasing production and declining consumption of oil and gas have unexpectedly brought the United States markedly closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon: independence from foreign energy sources, a milestone that could reconfigure American foreign policy, the economy and more. In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid…
Every election year, political candidates of all stripes are called “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.” In a recent column, Washington Post pundit Kathleen Parker asks if it’s fair that many U.S. women see the Republican party in precisely those terms. Barbara King’s question: Is that fair to the Neanderthals? King explains why Neanderthals weren’t at all the cartoonish,…
Stronger global governance is needed to mitigate human impact on the earth’s climate and to ensure sustainable development, according to 32 scientists who published a paper in the journal Science. In “Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance,” the scholars argue that current institutions, including the United Nations, have shown themselves inadequate to the necessities…
Created in 1947, the doomsday clock graphically reflects how close humanity might be to human-induced apocalypse, in terms of the “number of minutes to midnight”—at which time, presumably, time itself will no longer matter. Currently, the clock is set at five minutes to midnight. Nuclear weapons continue to be the most urgent global threat to…
Continued inefficient use of water could threaten Europe’s economy, productivity and ecosystems, a report has warned. The European Environment Agency (EEA) said that the continent’s water resources were under pressure and things were getting worse. It said limited supplies were being wasted, and nations had to implement existing legislation more effectively.