Climate Change Denial and Public Relations

Strategic communication and interest groups in climate inaction

Núria Almiron, Jordi Xifra, Núria Almiron, Jordi Xifra

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351121774
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Business General

This is the first book on climate change denial and lobbying that combines the ideology of denial and the role of anthropocentrism in the study of interest groups and communication strategy.

Climate Change Denial and Public Relations: Strategic Communication and Interest Groups in Climate Inaction is a critical approach to climate change denial from a strategic communication perspective. The book aims to provide an in-depth analysis of how strategic communication by interest groups is contributing to climate change inaction. It does this from a multidisciplinary perspective that expands the usual approach of climate change denialism and introduces a critical reflection on the roots of the problem, including the ethics of the denialist ideology and the rhetoric and role of climate change advocacy. Topics addressed include the power of persuasive narratives and discourses constructed to support climate inaction by lobbies and think tanks, the dominant human supremacist view and the patriarchal roots of denialists and advocates of climate change alike, the knowledge coalitions of the climate think tank networks, the denial strategies related to climate change of the nuclear, oil, and agrifood lobbies, the role of public relations firms, the anthropocentric roots of public relations, taboo topics such as human overpopulation and meat-eating, and the technological myth.

This unique volume is recommended reading for students and scholars of communication and public relations.

Part I
Ethics and anthropocentrism in climate change denial and public relations

1 Rethinking the ethical challenge in climate change lobbying

A discussion of ideological denial¹

Núria Almiron

A battle of ideas

Climate change denial can be roughly defined as the stance that advocates against the evidence posited for human-induced global warming. This stance has become such a powerful and organized force in the United States that it has been labeled a denial machine – a public relations engine made up of a “loose coalition of industrial (especially fossil fuels) interests and conservative foundations and think tanks that utilize a range of front groups and Astroturf operations, often assisted by a small number of ‘contrarian scientists’ ”, who are “greatly aided by conservative media and politicians … and more recently by a bevy of skeptical bloggers” (Dunlap, 2013, p. 692).

The climate change denial machine has been accurately compared with the denial campaign launched by the tobacco industry in the mid-20th century (Oreskes & Conway, 2011). However, the outcome and impact of the climate change denial effort are bigger and go beyond the United States. This is so because of the higher degree of globalization of capitalist interests in place since the late 20th century, when the climate change denial machine was created, making it easier for transnational interests to interact and cooperate with each other and even build international coalitions of interest groups. In the EU, for instance, where denial forces are relevant but do not reach the magnitude of a denial machine, policies for climate mitigation recurrently encounter obstacles posed by industries that, either aligned or in competition with their U.S. counterparts, share with the U.S. industrial sectors the same reluctance towards and fear of change (mainly when change is not driven for profit). In this regard, the success of the billionaire public relations effort launched by what in the United States has also been called the denial countermovement (Dunlap & McCright, 2015) has not escaped anyone’s attention, particularly with Donald Trump’s arrival in the U.S. presidency, which meant the virtual incorporation of the denial machine into the very heart of the U.S. administration (Sidahmed, 2016).

Both the political economy and narrative of climate change denial have been uncovered in recent decades thanks to the work of a number of scholars, experts, and journalists. Despite their work being solely U.S.-focused, this literature is very useful for understanding not only the U.S. denial countermovement but climate change denial as a global trend. Overall, there is a large consensus among critical investigators and scholars that this is mostly an ideological battle, i.e. that climate change skepticism and inaction are not about science but political ideas, and specifically the ideas that conform our worldview. The Weltanschauung behind the denial countermovement is a mixture of Enlightenment-liberal and conservative-core values that has become a very convenient dominant social paradigm for the elites – including commitment to limited government, devotion to private property rights, emphasis on individualism, support for the status quo, faith in science and technology (when it is convenient to short-term capitalistic interests), support for economic growth, and faith in future abundance ( Jacques, 2006, 2012). Thus, among critical thinkers it is widely acknowledged that the denial machine was constructed first and foremost to protect “business as usual” in the industrial and financial capitalist system; or in other words, to protect capitalistic profit (Farrell, 2015; Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008; Layzer, 2007; McCright, Marquart-Pyatt, Shwom, Brechin, & Allen, 2016).

At the same time, looking at the core ideology of the denial machine as it is deployed in the U.S., but with followers elsewhere, including the EU,² is useful for understanding not only denial but also the inaction and/or ineffectiveness of defenders of anthropogenic climate change. This is so because of what an expanded discussion of the ideas promoting climate change denial reveals. This chapter attempts to introduce such a discussion.

To this end, in this chapter I will first look at what climate change denial is by examining the different conceptual approaches used to scrutinize this massive public relations campaign. Following this, I will summarize alternatives for addressing the issue advocated by defenders of the anthropogenic-roots of climate change; that is, the main solutions lobbied by climate advocates. My aim here is to point out that, in spite of the opposing stances adopted by climate change advocates and denialists, they all share what I call a major ideological denial, the refusal to accept that some ideas are systematically kept out of the discussion. Finally, I will introduce these underdiscussed ideas, which are not new but reflect a sort of historical taboo and are directly related to the human-supremacist lens that permeates the arguments of both climate change denialists and advocates. However, the ultimate goal of this chapter is not to equate climate change denial with climate change advocacy in any way, but to encourage a more honest and effective discussion regarding our values and worldviews.

Climate change denial: main approaches

There is a debate over which term is most appropriate for labeling the opposition to acknowledging the reality and seriousness of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). North American scholars have mostly led the debate, because the United States has larger and more powerful organizations lobbying against restrictions on carbon emissions. Some have suggested that the different terms should be viewed on a continuum representing different degrees of rejection, some individuals and organizations only holding a skeptical view on some aspects of climate change and others “in complete denial mode” (Dunlap, 2013).

This debate is particularly obscured by the fact that there are three different sources and fields of usage for the terms: The public opinion field, the scholarly or academic level, and the advocacy arena. In public debate (media, everyday conversation, etc.), climate change skepticism, climate change denialism, and climate change contrarianism are often used with the same meaning. They are all applied to denial of, dismissal of, or unwarranted doubt regarding the scientific consensus on the rate and extent of global warming and its link to human behavior. However, scholars have tried to differentiate these concepts to better understand the phenomenon. At the same time, what advocates call themselves has also influenced the public and scholarly spheres, and not usually for the sake of clarity. The entanglement of these three sources and usages is beyond the scope of this conceptual clarification. Here I will only try to clarify the main current understandings of each term regardless of their historical background.

Thus, semantically the concepts of skepticism and denialism reflect a different degree of rejection, yet definitions provided for them do not always help to comprehend the differences. Similarly, both terms have weak points that allow for criticism when they are used. For these reasons, other words have also been used in the search for a better way of understanding opposition to scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of global warming. The most relevant terms in this respect have been contrarians and climatic countermovement.

Skepticism

Skepticism is probably the most controversial term. While those actively involved in challenging climate science commonly prefer to describe themselves as skeptics, for some authors this is “allowing denials to cloak themselves in the mantle of science even as they deny critical parts of climate science” (Powell, 2011). Skepticism has played an important role in science, and these climate skeptics clearly do not comply with common standards of scientific skepticism, since they persistently deny evidence.

For Peter J. Jacques, the term skepticism is also inappropriate because the “skepticism in environmental skepticism is asymmetrical” since while “skeptics cast doubt on ecological science, they have an abiding faith in industrial science and technology, free enterprise, and those great institutions of Western Enlightenment” ( Jacques, 2012, p. 9).

Critical authors have used this term abundantly, however. The literature identifies four key dimensions of climate change skepticism (McCright & Dunlap, 2000; Rahmstorf, 2004; McCrigth, Dunlap, & Xiao, 2013): Trend skepticism (believing that the Earth is not warming, and climate change is not happening); attribution skepticism (believing that human activities are not causing climate change); impact skepticism (believing that climate change will not have significant negative impacts); and consensus skepticism (believing that there is no strong scientific agreement on the reality and human cause of climate change).

Jacques et al. (2008) stated that the term skeptic is most commonly invoked to describe someone who (a) denies the seriousness of an environmental problem, (b) dismisses scientific evidence showing the problem, (c) questions the importance and wisdom of regulatory policies to address them, and (d) considers environmental protection and progress to be competing goals (p. 354). Yet this could perfectly fit with a description of denialism like the one produced by Norgaard (2006, following Cohen), which includes three dimensions as they relate to environmental issues: Literal (sheer refusal to accept evidence), interpretative (denial based on interpretation of evidence), and implicatory (denial based on the change/response that acceptance would necessitate).

Capstick and Pidgeon (2014) attempted to clarify the term in relation to how members of the public use it. They argued that a distinction should be made between two main types of skepticism among the general public: Epistemic skepticism, relating to doubts about the status of climate change as a scientific and physical phenomenon; and response skepticism, relating to doubts about the efficacy of action taken to address climate change. The latter, according to these authors, is more strongly associated with a lack of concern about climate change.

Denialism

Denialism is the term preferred by the strongest critics of the phenomenon, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and critical scholars, to refer to those organizations that have attempted to undermine and obstruct the scientific consensus around climate change or policy solutions to climate change, against the recommendations of the scientific community that countries must act urgently to reduce carbon pollution (e.g. Greenpeace, 2013). As mentioned in the introduction, Dunlap (2013) has described the “denial machine” as a coalition of interests made up of conservative think tanks, front groups established by the fossil fuels industry, contrarian scientists, conservative politicians, and conservative media ( joined by bloggers since the mid-2000s).

Denialism as a term has been criticized for several reasons. First, because the use of denialism alone erases the important differences that someone with doubts may hold compared to someone in complete denial mode. Yet the concept of denialism can also reflect these nuances. For instance, French analyst Stéphane Foucard (2010) divided denialists into the following different progressive kinds (which closely resemble the dimensions of skepticism mentioned earlier):

1. 1 Someone who denies the existence of climate change as a whole
2. 2 Someone who denies the anthropogenic causes of climate change (but does accept that climate change is real)
3. 3 Someone who denies that climate change is a serious problem (but does accept that climate change is real and has anthropogenic causes)
4. 4 Someone who denies climate change is a challenge (but does accept that climate change is real, as well as its anthropogenic causes and its seriousness, believing that technology will fix it)

Foucard’s classification is actually similar to the anatomy of denial described by Powell (2011), although the latter closes the circle. Powell’s anatomy tracks how global warming deniers have thrown up a succession of claims falling back from one line of defense to the next as scientists refute each one in turn. In The Inquisition of Climate Science, Powell ascribed the following phrases to these successive claims (2011, p. 172):

The earth is not warming.

All right, it is warming but the Sun is the cause.

Well then, humans are the cause, but it doesn’t matter, because warming will do no harm. More carbon dioxide will actually be beneficial. More crops will grow.

Admittedly, global warming could turn out to be harmful, but we can do nothing about it.

Sure, we could do something about global warming, but the cost would be too great. We have more pressing problems here and now, like AIDS and poverty.

We might be able to afford to do something to address global warming someday, but we need to wait for sound science, new technologies, and geoengineering.

The earth is not warming. Global warming ended in 1998; it was never a crisis.

The term denial has also been criticized by some due to its inclusion of an unnecessary and inappropriate implicit link to other denial movements. In this respect, Jacques elaborated on the appropriateness of the denial label by reviewing its major use, Holocaust denial. According to said author, it follows from this analysis that climate change denial is a label consistent with Lang’s “General Theory of Historical Denial” (Lang, 2010). Although the term denial may suggest that we are comparing climate change rejection with a human holocaust, which might be deemed insensitive and inappropriate, the Holocaust theory reveals that denial does not point just to this comparison but to a whole genre, a common historiographic category that fully applies to climate change denial: “Climate change and the Holocaust are not equivalent, but that does not mean there is no climate [change] denial” ( Jacques, 2012, p. 10). In the same text, however, Jacques also notes that the term denial promotes the oversimplification of far more complex issues by suggesting a false binary position of acknowledgment versus denial.

Contrarianism

Contra...