The environmental movement has been successful, according to humanities scholars at Michigan State University. Certainly that is where the money is. Though environmental groups and pro-science groups are industry and politically funded, only the pro-science groups are dismisses as industry-funded, despite that fact that one group, Union of Concerned Scientists, has more funding than all pro science groups in America combined. 

Environmental groups are so successful at public relations they are getting credit for reducing greenhouse gases in America, instead of a switch from coal to natural gas, which is the real reason emissions dropped. Social scientist Thomas Dietz and Kenneth Frank, MSU Foundation professor of sociometrics write in PNAS that jumping on the environmental bandwagon can translate into a state-level win for environmental activism, even if it doesn't happen on a national scale. 

In the 1990s, greenhouse gas emissions climbed considerably in the U.S., thanks to environmental groups getting nuclear energy projects banned by Democrats, forcing more reliance on coal. To make their case that environmentalism actually reduced greenhouse gas emissions rather than raising them before natural gas took America by storm, the authors compared greenhouse gas emissions between all 50 U.S. states and within each state over time going back to 1990, and determined how emissions correlated with population, gross state product per capita, employment rate, and environmentalism. They calculated environmentalism by the environmental voting record of a state's congressional delegation, as rated by the League of Conservation Voters.

The combined influences of population and affluence have been regarded as the core of environmental stress - and have tended to guarantee an annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions. But the paper "Political influences on greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. states" adds what the MSU researchers say is an important layer to understanding human impact on climate change. They show that a 1 percent increase in environmentalism tends to reduce emissions by more than enough to compensate for the typical annual increase in emissions.

"Efforts to mitigate emissions take a variety of forms at the state and local level and may have substantial impact even in the absence of a unified national policy," the paper notes. "Existing regulations can be applied strictly or less stringently, and programs can be pursued enthusiastically or given a low priority. Even without formal policy and programs, the importance of reducing emissions can be widely accepted by individuals and organizations and result in actions that have substantial impact."

This breakdown showed that certain states, such as New York for example, that would expected to see its increasing population and affluence bring along significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions instead saw those emissions fall - and environmental activism got the credit, rather than buying the natural gas from Pennsylvania that New York bans within its own borders. 

Frank's sensitivity analysis parceled out whether variables comparable to a state's liberal or conservative leanings, political affiliation or number of women in the legislature, could be tipping the scales they were attributing to environmental activism.

"When doing this sensitivity analysis, we ask what it would it take to knock our results over - a feather, an arm or a sledgehammer, and these are pretty close to sledgehammer results," Frank said. "We're finding that 44 percent of our data would have to be due to bias to shake this."

Dietz notes that understanding activism is a strong first step to understanding many kinds of environmental stresses, such as air pollution.