Obsessing Over Climate Disinformation Is a Wrong Turn
Obsessing Over Climate Disinformation Is a Wrong Turn
Excerpt from this article from Jacobin:
In Canada, false environmental claims are now illegal. Under legislation passed in June, companies may be penalized for making representations to the public about their products’ ability to mitigate climate change without being based on an “adequate and proper test.” It was a success for environmental groups who spent a year and half working on the antigreenwashing law.
The legislation is just one moment in a much wider “disinformation turn” in the climate movement: the US Congress has been holding high-profile hearings with titles like “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.” Academics are convening conferences on “climate obstruction” with multiple days of deep dives from the network of scholars that meticulously track corporate climate misinformation. Environmental NGOs are making disinformation databases with lists of individuals and scientists and leading programs on climate disinformation. And think tanks that work on disinformation are now moving into climate, with reports like the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s The New Climate Denial .
Disinformation is a curious focus for the climate movement at this moment, however, at least from a US standpoint. This is because we actually have some funds for climate action on the ground. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) unleashed a trillion dollars to use to address the climate crisis. But much of the public is unaware of this massive investment — and local governments, tribes, and organizations often struggle to navigate accessing the new funding.
These material victories would make it the perfect time for a climate movement to focus on things like explaining to people what heat pumps are, campaigning to expedite transmission lines, and helping communities understand the labyrinth of federal funding. Indeed, many regional government organizations, municipal planners, and volunteer committees who work on climate action have their hands full with these activities. They are engaged with the ground game of mitigation and adaptation.
Yet the nationwide connective tissue and broader narrative about climate action feels absent. If there is a role for “climate intellectuals” — for the online climate commentariat, the journalists and national NGO leaders who tell us the story of climate action — it would be to focus on the new opportunities for action on the ground, and knit together those people in Peoria or Altoona who are trying to talk to people about resilience, connecting them in a broader story that fuels their motivation. Instead, the intellectual wing of the climate movement has decided to wage an information war focused on uncovering what Big Oil knew and policing speech.
Given that funding and public attention is limited, this climate-disinformation obsession is a missed opportunity and a strategic dead-end — part of a larger liberal tendency to make disinformation a bogeyman we can blame for our major political problems.