# Quote — Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science

> To be sure, it remains up to policymakers to decide whether the economic costs of such preventative measures outweigh the benefits. But that key question isn’t even being properly debated. Instead, climate change has become an issue on which conservatives have elected to fight over science at least as much as over economics, relying on stunning distortions and a shocking disregard for both expertise and the most reputable sources of scientific assessment and analysis.
>
> If this situation is maddening, it is also tragic. There may be no other issue today where a corruption of the necessary relationship between science and political decision-making has more potentially disastrous consequences. And together, James Inhofe and the Bush administration have made that corruption systematic and complete. Not only do they strive to prevent the public from understanding the gravity of the climate situation, but in sowing confusion and uncertainty, they help prevent us from doing anything about it. And this—this—is what the Right calls “rational, science-based thinking and policy-making.”

- Author: [Chris Mooney](https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney.md)
- Book: [The Republican War on Science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science.md)
- Page: 101
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chris_Mooney#The_Republican_War_on_Science_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science/to-be-sure

## More from this book

> But if we care about science and believe that it should play a crucial role in decisions about our future, we must steadfastly oppose further political gains by the modern Right. This political movement has patently demonstrated that it will not defend the integrity of science in any case in which science runs afoul of its core political constituencies. In so doing, it has ceded any right to govern a technologically advanced and sophisticated nation.

p. 255 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science/but-if-we-care.md)

> From acid rain to global climate change, from “creation science” to “intelligent design,” conservatives had been meddling with science for years, largely on behalf of their pro-industry and religiously conservative supporters.

p. 224 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science/from-acid-rain.md)

> “Healthy skepticism is an essential and treasured feature of scientific analysis,” Gibbons added. “But willful distortion of evidence has no place at the table of scientific inquiry.”

p. 59 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/chris-mooney/the-republican-war-on-science/healthy-skepticism-is-an-essential.md)