Climate change skepticism seems to be growing, at least online. In the mainstream media, the so-called “debate” seems to be finally disappearing and global warming is now taken as truth by the media, but they still don’t talk about it enough. It gets a mere mention now and then.
George Monbiot, a well-known writer and activist in the UK, wrote an article recently that puts out a theory as to why climate change skepticism seems to be growing more and more. This is happening despite the science becoming more and more certain for the theory of human-caused climate change, as the evidence piles up. Monbiot’s explanation is that people are afraid of death, and that climate change reminds older people of death, so they reject the theory because it reminds them of their own mortality. That sounds too complicated to me, and it lets purposely deceptive people off the hook.
In the U.S., I think it’s much more simple. It’s about $$$. The oil and gas industries are immensely powerful and massively rich beyond the wildest dreams of the common person. This has led to more and more greed on their part and each quarter the biggest oil and gas corporations post record earnings. They don’t worry about climate change because it’s bad for business. And it’s important to note that they deny climate change with their actions, not their words. Most large oil companies, like Shell, admit to climate change but then go on to do more than ever what they were doing before. This is an effective tactic because no one really knows what they are up to anyway. Meanwhile, Shell Oil also dropped its development of renewable energy. That is the first point as to why some Americans are climate skeptics. The other points are below.
Al Gore thinks that he can appeal to doubters and skeptics with spiritualism. He feels that, “appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.” (It sounds like he read polls about this and wrote a book according to religious demographics.) He’s written a new book discussing this, called Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. From the Guardian:
The man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”
This is a disappointment. If Americans won’t be satisfied with facts, what hope do we have of surviving climate change in a way that doesn’t involve building an Ark or waiting for the “Rapture”? This could lead to all sorts of inappropriate responses, like more missionary work instead of ways to save peoples lives.
Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message – now put out by hundreds of volunteers – to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.
“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising,” Gore tells Newsweek.
I find it astounding that we can’t depend on facts and science to convince people of something this important and relatively easy to understand. But apparently it’s true. Convincing people that God wants them to take care of the planet might be a nice way to convince people of global warming for Al Gore, but for me it’s a problem. A slideshow filled with scriptual references will be a huge turn-off for many people and add to our disappointment for Al Gore such as his support for the cap and trade legislation, when he could have done so much more.
There is some good news from Al Gore, however. He reports that it’s likely that Obama will attend the Copenhagen summit in December!
The former vice-president has been working behind the scenes to try to nudge the White House and Congress to move forward on a 920-page proposed law to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions and encourage its use of clean energy sources like solar and wind power.
On Saturday, he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, he was “almost certain” Obama would attend the negotiations. The White House has so far refused to make a commitment.
That would be good news if it’s true.
I know that Al Gore knows how pressing and highly important solving climate change is, and he must know that cap and trade isn’t the way to solve it. Hopefully he has other ideas, but gently nudging our government to develop renewable energy doesn’t sound like it will work either.
In other ways the people are persuaded to reject facts in America, there is Point 2: A main cause of a climate change denialism movement in the U.S., is money and politics. Maybe in the UK most of the skeptics are in their 60s and 70s, but in the U.S. they are of all ages. Their common denominators are often geographic and ideological. They come from the “red” states, the more right-wing states, and they probably don’t have the best education. If they are intelligent and well-educated, then fall back on the ideological/political argument. Their skepticism is not even skepticism, it’s a fake front so that they can convince others to share their viewpoints so they can hang on to more of their money and investments in coal and oil. They are afraid that energy will cost too much for them to continue their current lifestyles. They are afraid their taxes will go up. Conservatives have a deep-seated irrational fear, more like a horror, of their taxes being raised and their lifestyles being lessened by paying more for something. The rest of us have to adjust to inflation and whatever life throws at us, but rich people, especially right-wing politicians, don’t accept that. So you can add “fear of change” to their problems.
Then, Point 3, you have the Republican movement in the U.S. becoming ever more divorced from reality. They encourage their supporters to “vote their values”, not vote based on facts or reality. What does this translate to? Vote as a fundamental Christian would vote. Vote for guns, vote against abortion, vote against gay marriage, vote against government involvement in any good areas of your life, (but let them read our email and wiretap our phones) because somehow its “liberal” or “socialist” to care about the future and care about others. I think its futuristic to think about the future. But some people are also angry at having to pay to fund a future they won’t enjoy.
These 3 pressures come to bear on the average right-wing Republican every day. Then add the Tea Party movement, a hysterical group that is confused about many things.
The Tea Party movement in the U.S. is a truly strange phenomenon that defies explanation. The participants didn’t make a peep about George Bush for eight years and he nearly spent us into oblivion. The tea partiers reject facts and seem to run on pure emotion. If you run on pure emotion and noticed that last summer was cool, you are not going to believe in climate change. The TPers are a hybrid of the Republican party talking points, talk show host talking points, and their own hyperactive adrenal gland run amuck. Fear and paranoia rule the day, followed by distrust of government and a love of guns, independence and paying as little in taxes as possible. Add to that a problem of watching too much FOX News, especially the ultra-paranoid Glenn Beck and you have created a monster.
These people are the kind that the right-wing politicians in America love to get all hot under the collar about climate change. They attend rallies holding signs against cap and trade, calling it the biggest tax ever perpetrated on the American people. The Congress members who want to be elected again (this is another factor, the money in our political system) turn on the denialism right before elections so the base will come out and vote for them. This is the anti-tax base of course.
There are other factors in why Republicans support fighting climate legislation, but because the bill isn’t strong enough to actually mitigate climate change is not one of them. These folks are afraid it will work and then …. what? What they fear might happen is not clear.
So, their main motivations in the U.S. are 1) fear of higher taxes and 2) fear of higher cost of energy. Fear and money.
Fear of death? Not really. Fundamentalist Christians, from what I know of them, actually feel that Jesus is going to return some day soon and take them up to heaven (which exists beyond the polluted climate, I presume). I have heard talk show hosts, very conservative ones, deny climate change on the one hand and then talk about the rapture on the other. And they are sure this “rapture” will happen during their lifetimes. This seeming divorce from reality is seen as simply an alternative theory in the U.S., instead of appearing crazy to people.
So it’s interesting that Al Gore is now doing his best to appeal to a spiritual side of Americans in convincing them to act on climate change. I wonder if he will be successful, and if religion and spiritualism will beat out profit and greed, or if something else, like climate change itself becoming more evident, will be the deciding factor. It’s going to be an epic battle.
Funny…. I got many comments from global warming deniers all saying the same denier nonsense. Amazing how they all sniff out global warming topics and descend like a flock of buzzards to give their uneducated 2 cents, which consists of denial silliness that has been disproved over and over again by real science.
I will do my best in the future to post more of the science and remind people of the overwhelming consensus of scientists that human-caused global warming is factual and agreed upon by the majority of the world. Obviously, this is a big job and there is more hysteria from the deniers than ever to overcome.
And the denialist comments continue…… see my podcast at http://www.futurismnowradio.com. Denialists especially need to listen to it.
Yes please do post for me the science that conclusively links CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to global temperature. I need the actual scientific papers because the deniers I talk to keep dismissing my arguments about consensus as ‘appeals to authority’. Please help!
I agree with you and I agree with Monbiot. It’s money, fear of change, and fear of death. Even a belief in the rapture can be traced to a fear of death – what is it but a denial of mortality?
The mounting empirical evidence of climate change would explain the denialist hysteria and the increase in deniers.
Even many (most?) scientists who work in climate science deny how bad it really is, so it’s hardly surprising most non-scientists either deny or, what I find most, just ignore the entire subject. I call them the ignorers. For instance, it’s quite obvious that there is already enough CO2 dissolved in the oceans to destroy coral reefs and all shellfish from acidification. This is going to demolish the food change and the entire ecosystem will collapse. Since earth gets most of its oxygen from life in the oceans, what does that tell you? And these are just the facts.
I live in New Jersey and it’s quite obvious to me that the vegetation – trees and everything else – is dying from greenhouse gas pollutants. But even experts who know that ozone and other emissions are toxic to plant life won’t acknowledge that the leaves fell off the trees a month early this year. Consider the implications and its not hard to see why nobody wants to fact up to the shrinking biomass and what that means for food production, never mind the loss of CO2 sinks.
Tens of millions of people managed to avoid knowing that millions of others were being marched to their deaths in WWII, even though it was occurring right in front of them. Never underestimate the human capacity to deny.
The best thing that can happen in the US is to declare global warming not a science but a religion. Once it attains religion status, the ACLU will sue to prevent the government from supporting it (religion)via treaties and taxes.That is one religious case that I would back the ACLU on.
The religion is global warming DENIALISM because there are no facts to back it up. It is a matter of faith. There is an immense amount of proof of global warming on this website and many others. Check out NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, James Hansen’s many papers — and the tabs here about denialism, skepticism — and check out ClimateProgress.org. If all you deniers are really smart enough to google, then try googling something that doesn’t fit the Religion of Denialism. It’s bordering on mental disturbance. There is plenty information on this website on global warming.
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”