(From Issue 10)
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Climate change has been a major global issue since the late 20th century. However, the current situation for achieving the common international goal seems far from the promise to decrease the temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius as declared in the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement (UNEP, 2022). While the future of human lives is at stake, it is fair to say that the reality of the climate crisis has been taken critically or doubtfully in general despite the increasing public access to scientific facts regarding the issue. This paper argues that this current situation is due to the process in which scientific information or data are conveyed to and understood by people. Specifically, this paper addresses two points that have shaped the negative responses to the climate crisis. First, it points out the prevailing narrative in the debate on the climate crisis, which has been strategically organised to bring confusion to the public. Then, it analyses the external results in three dimensions: media, the scientific community, and politics, which allows the discourse to be sustained in a society. It examines the background social shift to advanced capitalism, which has allowed for and motivated to make up the discourse. Second, it explores other conventional factors which also lead to acceptance of the narrative on climate change and are strengthened by the first factor of organised doubts or denials. This paper aims to shed light on the process of socialisation behind the constructed negative responses toward climate change.
First, the organised discrediting of scientific consensus on human-caused global warming and climate change has been continuously conducted by industries or corporations which would be affected by political measures for solving climate issues. Their strategy is to cast doubts on the scientific evidence that suggests the reality of climate change and to have the discussion linger on the topic so that they can avoid the possible regulations on the free market and maintain its advantages and vested interests (Oreskes, 2011). The fossil fuel industries are one great contributor to proposing strategic doubt and denial of climate change. Their goal is the “reposition of global warming as a theory rather than a fact” (Guggenheim, 2006). For example, it has been discovered that Exxon Mobile, a leading American corporation in the oil industry, devised a strategy to hide information regarding global warming from the public while it had known the situation since the 1960s (Cook et al., 2019). While man-made global warming was unanimously validated by IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 1995 and for climate change in 2014, those interests continued to develop the strategy and apply it to protect the benefits of the industries (Oreskes, 2011; Richardson, 2018).
Their tactic of disregarding scientific facts contains several techniques to deceive the public. Specifically, it involves holding third-party allies. They have hired real scientists, regardless of their speciality to present plausible opinions on climate change in the name of listening to an ‘expert’ on the issue (Kenner, 2014). For example, Dr. Fred Singer, known as a major opponent of climate change, denied global warming on one occasion by presenting evidence of a tendency for the global temperature to cool down within a decade. However, it turned out that he had selectively used data in favour of his funder of the oil industry to show a particular part of the “going up and down escalator” of the temperature and ignored the overall tendency (Upin, 2012). His behaviour can apply to the features of agnotology, which bears a striking resemblance to the case of tobacco, as he also played a role in perpetuating wrong information about the influence of tobacco on human health (Oreskes, 2011). In this way, the true scientific information or data on climate change is deliberately distorted by ‘fake’ scientists.
This process of casting doubt involves three external impacts, accelerating the prevalence of distorted scientific information. First, once doubt about climate change has appeared in the debate, the mass media tends to present it with binary opposition in reporting information (Weart, 2011). They place a set of two scientists with conflicting viewpoints: one claims there is a climate crisis and conveys urgency for a solution, and the other doubts or disagrees with the opinions. The latter is the fake scientists, who often receive funding to appear in the media and argue for the industries or interest groups. This gives a wrong impression of climate change to the public that there is a debate proceeding among ‘scientists’ while the scientific community has agreed on global science and climate change. Moreover, those funded ‘scientists’ tend to manipulate rhetoric in their narrative. For example, when they refer to environmental issues, they often use ‘global warming’ instead of ‘climate change’ (Zaval and Cornwell, 2016). These terms are often confused with each other among the public in the debate on climate science, even though their definitions are significantly different. Whereas ‘global warming’ means an environmental phenomenon of increasing the temperature of the Earth, ‘climate change’ includes various changes due to continuous CO2 production and warming caused by human activities, and is thus a more comprehensive term (Kennedy and Lindsey, 2015). Therefore, the principle of impartiality in journalism has been used in prevailing false perceptions of climate change as if it were still controversial among scientists.
Second, climate change has been used for identity politics since the topic does not involve a common ground between the two opinions (Maeshima, 2017). It makes environmental issues highly ideological, as it depends on which information one finds more valid or easy to believe. This can distinguish one as liberal or conservative since the viewpoints on climate change, whether ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ environmentalism, respectively, suggest acceptance or reluctance for regulations. Moreover, the exposure to the discourse with ongoing conflicts over climate change is not only for ordinary people but also politicians. It allows for political polarisation, which requires ideological consistency with either liberal or conservative standpoints (Farina, 2015). That is to say, in terms of environmental issues and any political debates concerning this topic, a policymaker is encouraged to be consistent with the party’s ideology regardless of issues, despite the validated consensus on human-made climate change. The case of former Congressman Bob Inglis, who had lost his election after becoming actively engaged in conveying the reality of climate change, precisely illustrates the issue (Upin, 2012). That is, a Republican is unconditionally required to hold a conservative standpoint on various issues, not to mention to have a negative view on environmentalism or any policies involved with the topic. Eventually, conservative politicians who claim action for climate change will lose popularity and have difficulty gaining votes, decreasing the possibility of establishing a policy on environmental issues. Thus, ideological identity tends to influence opinion about climate change, which encourages people to believe more in organised disregarded scientific facts.
Third, the experts or scientists have become more hesitant to present the possible scenarios of the future, which may sound dramatic but are most likely to occur, given the ongoing organised doubts to diminish the credibility of climate change. One of their strategies of prevailing doubts or denials involves criticising messengers of scientific information as “alarmists,” and some of them even experienced severe personal attacks from the public who disagree with climate change (Dunlap, 2013: 694). For example, Dr. Ben Santer received considerable amounts of e-mails, including death threats, by taking part in writing the IPCC report presenting evidence of anthropological global warming (Kenner, 2014). Thus, the scientific community has tended more to choose predictions that sound less extreme in its attempts to avoid driving public resignation for tackling environmental issues. It has already resulted in the trend of statistical facts that the real data has exceeded the predictions reported previously by scientists (Scherer, 2012). Therefore, it increases the difficulty of gaining possible future climate change predictions based on true scientific information, contributing to prevailing misinformation.
What encourages the organised negative campaign for climate change with the three impacts and drives people to reject so much for accepting the reality can be examined from a social shift of values to prioritise a free-market economy. That is to say, the narrative to doubt or deny climate change within political discourse is attributed to the fear of a shrinking economy in the capitalistic principle (Upin, 2012). Since the debate on climate issues began in the late 20th century, which coincided with ideological conflicts from the Cold War, the so-called victory of Western capitalism and the following political trend of neoliberalism, heightened the legitimacy of their ideology and led to building absolute trust in a free market (Shimokawa, 2007). As the belief that prioritising a free market would lead to a better society has been established and prevailed, environmentalism has been considered a hindrance to economic development because the growth rate of GDP had been correlated with CO2 emissions, despite the possibility of compatibility, as seen in 2014 when the global economy achieved growth without an increase in carbon emissions (Onofre, Vatamanu, and Cigu, 2022; Richardson, 2018). Moreover, since the solutions for climate change involve regulatory measures with a big-government policy, especially in the fossil fuel industry, they frame environmentalism as opposition to a free market in association with a conservative view. The trend in American politics on climate change precisely demonstrates this social shift. While Republican George H. W. Bush had claimed the necessity of taking political action against climate change during his presidency, but Democrat Barack Obama mentioned very little in his election, given the partisan aspect of climate change (Upin, 2012). Thus, the capital-oriented tendency through the social shift has allowed for this organised conspiracy and confusion on climate change to happen as the issue has increased political awareness.
In this way, fossil fuel interests, conservative policymakers, and funded scientists have played a role in disregarding climate change and drawing negative responses from the public. Although they are a major contributor to the confusion on the topic, other factors also function to prevent people from ascertaining the truth about climate change and shape biased views. The influence of the original obstacles in terms of communication or interpretation of the scientific facts gets even stronger due to the process of discrediting climate change, which could cause the lingering of negative responses.
First, the conclusions in climate science reports can be variable depending on what measures to utilise for statistics or data. Since the study of climate change still has many aspects that remain uncovered, it takes thorough research and a long time for the scientific community to agree on one absolute answer for a fact or prediction (Edwards, 2014). While anthropological global warming and climate change are co-set, there are many approaches and methods in scientific research where one can gain different results and predictions. For example, the average sea level rise within the century can be predicted to be twenty to thirty inches with methods based on physics, while it can be three to six feet with statistics (Edwards, 2014). Research on climate change requires various approaches, which complicates reaching a consensus within the scientific community. Thus, the uncertainty of climate change as a scientific subject has been taken advantage of by those who cast doubt on the results.
Moreover, this issue can be seen in some aspects suggesting the IPCC’s dysfunction. One of the criticisms of the IPCC is its political influence on climate science since it is not an independent organisation for climate change but is based on participation in the United Nations (Yearley, 2010). While the IPCC has a principle of “policy-neutral” for fostering agreements on climate change, the political or economic conflicts within countries could affect presenting the scientific ‘truth’ and its limitation due to uncertainty (IPCC, 2022). For example, the IPCC has been criticised for understating the information in assessments, such as its lesser warning in the estimation of a sea level rise (Dunlap, 2013; McGrath, 2021). Thus, the uncertainty or vulnerability of climate science for consensus within the scientific community gets even more complex with the influence of international politics in presenting information to the public.
Second, information or reports on climate change through media can be biased even without the appearance of a deliberate opposite view. The reason why communication matters in the debate on the environmental issue is the difficulty of understanding scientific information, which causes a distance between experts and non-experts (Kenner, 2014). Thus, one’s understanding of the meaning or conclusion behind the statistics on climate science depends on the perspectives or interpretations of journalists and media companies in charge. For example, media outlets reported different stories on future predictions of sea level rise while they all used identical research results after the press conference (Edwards, 2014). That is because they compared new data with previous ones in a selective way to fit their view without giving the methodology or factors. With this process of ‘framing,’ the connotation of scientific information can be different among media companies, leading to different impressions among viewers.
Moreover, the media have an influential power to form a ‘social reality’ with agenda-setting effects, which can control public opinions on climate change at a cognitive level (Kobayashi, 2016). They tend to report news regarding environmental issues from an objective point of view and stop updating the information once the novelty wears off, which can be seen in the dramatic decrease in updating information about the Chernobyl disaster (Yamakoshi, 2015). Thus, this trend lessens a public sense of crisis as well as that of relevance to everyday life while the problem is proceeding.
Furthermore, the constant use of a certain media source for following the topic of climate change drives people into a filter bubble. This creates an isolated cycle of exposure to a particular kind of information and eventually leads to believing in distorted facts, as it gives a greater sense of reality to what people already believe, even if it is a based or minor view (Napoli, 2018). This can be particularly seen in social media with Internet algorithms, which leads to the spread of misinformation. Despite those issues with reporting climate change, the data suggests that very few people voluntarily gain information from direct sources such as environmental reports or lectures from experts, and they rely on mass media such as TV or newspapers instead (Ministry of Environment, 2016). Thus, while technological development allows for easier and direct access to scientific information as well as more accurate data or predictions from climate science, the media intensifies distance between scientists and the public and among people through exposure to certain types of information on a daily basis.
Third, the public perception of climate change is also influenced by cognitive functions, which could shape biased views towards environmental issues. The study of psychology indicates that the response to climate change depend more on contexts. One study suggests that people tend to rely more on recent events or individual experiences rather than general scientific information when it comes to climate change (Zaval and Cornwell, 2016). Another cognitive bias is the ‘anchoring effect,’ with which people’s opinions toward climate change are constructed with their first experience for recognition, and it lasts as a criterion (Zaval and Cornwell, 2016). With these psychological functions, it can be said that people would easily believe the false logic of doubters or deniers on climate change when the idea is accessible or frequent. Also, another study suggests that there is a correlation between the insistence on believing climate change to be ‘unreal’ and the required costs for solving measures (Weart, 2011). This precisely explains the motivation behind the process of organisation, creating doubts or denials. Therefore, the public perception of climate change is constructed through cognitive biases, and it greatly depends on environmental events or factors that individuals undergo every day.
Also, these cognitive biases create another distance between people who live in different environmental conditions, given that the perception or ideas of climate change depend on individual experiences. The data reveals the regional difference in attitude toward solving environmental problems. In the survey conducted in 2015, 66% of the international participants considered measures for the climate crisis an opportunity to improve their quality of life, whereas 60% of Japanese people thought that was a threat to lower their current quality of life (World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, 2015). The sense of responsibility or burden in tackling climate change can lead to avoiding facing reality or disregarding scientific information. Thus, the differences in the response to the climate crisis can depend on one’s environmental factors, allowing for delays in comprehensive action.
In conclusion, the cause of negative responses to climate change can be explained by two related factors, despite the increasing access to abundant scientific information. The first factor is the organised strategies by fossil fuel industries, conservative political groups, and funded scientists that cast doubt on the facts so that they could maintain their advantage over potential regulations. This process involves three external influences to discredit the scientific consensus on anthropological global warming and climate change: positioning the issue as a conflicting debate in media discourse, increasing its influence as criteria of political identity, and discouraging scientists from presenting dramatic predictions. This whole process can be analysed because of the social shift to advanced capitalism. The second factor is the organised doubts fostering other pre-existing factors: uncertainty in the research of climate change, distorted information through mass media, and cognitive biases. Therefore, organised strategies cause public negative responses to climate change, and other factors, including political, economic, and cognitive aspects, strengthen the trend.
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Angles 