Denialists Article 1

Do you trust the people downplaying the climate emergency, or the activists highlighting the emergency? There exists the human talent for just about averting our eyes from what is directly in front of us. Meanwhile, for a certain kind of media voice, it is all about raging against climate sceptics and deniers and their influence on politics, and the public in general. The former BBC presenter Andrew Marr provided a good example on LBC: (London Broadcasting Company) “I for one have had enough of being told by pallid, shadowy, old businessmen and lazy ignorant hacks and sleazy lobbyists – who aren’t real scientists, any of them – that the science is wrong and that what is happening isn’t happening,” he said. “Enough!”

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The key question of 2023 is not whether the global warming denialists are wrong, both factually and morally: we know the answer to that. For the moment, I don’t think many people need to be thinking very much about particular parties or politicians. What we surely need to focus on is the deep attachment to fossil fuels still locked into our economy and political system, and how to help the environmental and biological movements that want to protect the Living Earth.   

The people backing the climate and ecology bill – including such politicians as the Greens’ Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Clive Lewis and many others working within the context of Westminster politics, supporting the bill such ideas may seem so unlikely as to be barely worth considering. In the meantime activism and protest often trigger suspicion that they will alienate people and damage whatever cause that they advocate. But experience suggests otherwise: just as successive waves of social reformers, the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid movement were stubborn, daring and creative enough to make their demands irresistible. There is a very reason for that: it is only well outside centres of power that you can find the answer to questions that power and politics are dodging more than ever – how to live as if the truth is actually true.

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Today many sense that we are on the brink of an initiation into a different kind of social order, one that is fair and just. Yet others are fearful of change. Indeed, many deny that anything is the matter. Resistance to change is often the result of psychological denial.

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It could be said that humanity is running an ecological scheme in which society robs nature, and future generations to pay for short-term economic gains. With disinformation campaigns to protect profits, it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time in order to protect the Living Earth. Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems of global biodiversity loss and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals.

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An article published in ‘Frontiers in Conservation Science’ explains the impact of political ineffectiveness of planned actions to address the scale of environmental erosion. It concludes that much of politics underestimates the challenges of avoiding a ghastly future. Arguing that everything is fine, climate sceptics usually insist that plastic waste, radioactive waste, chemical pollutants, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gases, pesticides, etc. are not a problem; therefore, nothing needs to change. Yet necessary change is part of protecting the Living Earth.

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For too long those who own and control the giant energy corporations and indeed much of the giant chemical organisations across the world knew perfectly well what was happening to the Living Earth. And what did they do? They put their money into funding think tanks, politicians, foundations, and various activists, intent on discrediting the science since it couldn’t actually be refuted. The result can be measured in terms of the horrendous damage that has been, and continues to be, inflicted on the life of the Living Earth. This simply cannot continue. The fossil-fuel industry, as with the lead, the asbestos industry, and the tobacco companies all knew the danger of their products and still made strenuous efforts to suppress the information about the damage caused to human health.

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How on earth did we get here? An endangered world, and there is no international plan for how to keep the world habitable by the end of the century, and sadly those protesting about the situation are often labelled extremists. In the meantime, the Earth is genuinely heating and at a dangerous rate, and human activities are the primary cause. Yet there remain sustained efforts by a coalition of business lobbies, politicians, maverick scientists to discredit and undermine what the real science is telling us.

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We are approaching a point where denialist efforts are more than cynical, irresponsible and self-interested: they are starting to look like crimes against humanity and the natural world. The denialist’s actions, and the lobbying of multinationals, would count for far less if they were not so eagerly embraced by politicians who, for short-term electoral gain, have shied away from taking difficult decisions regarding the protection the Living Earth.

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