Despite a spate of solid peer-reviewed science indicating that our current trajectory is “catastrophic,” Americans are not worried about climate change. There are at least two primary reasons, the first has to do with the nature of climate change itself and the second has to do with the influence of powerful forces in the old energy economy.
At the end of 2013, a Gallup survey found that only 24 percent of Americans worry a great deal about climate change. Fifty-one percent of them worry about it very little or not at all.
Part of the problem is the fact that the leading cause of climate change (CO2) is invisible and its most devastating impacts will take place in the future. People are not exposed to the suffering it will cause and to make matters worse, we feel powerless to do anything about it.
The other half of the denial equation concerns the devious efforts of powerful interests who stand to benefit from delaying political action as long as possible. They have used their limitless wealth to muddy the waters of climate science.
Perhaps the most salient single factor forestalling action on climate change concerns the involvement of pseudo-scientific front groups that have managed to interject an element of doubt about the veracity of climate science. For years we have been debating the veracity of climate change rather than doing something about it. This is a victory for denial.
Powerful elites have also deployed subtle misinformation campaigns that have co-opted our narratives and succeeded in framing the issue in ways that preclude collective agreement on the need for action.
Conservative politicians around the world are now the minions of these powerful interests. Climate denial is now a conservative policy position right there besides small government and reigning in spending.
Nowhere are these denialist views more pronounced than in the US House of Representatives where Republicans have religiously prevented Congress from even considering the most modest climate and energy legislation.
“Most of the world does not have a problem with denial of climate change,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. “It’s only an issue in Australia, Canada, and most significantly, the United States.”
Americans used to believe that global warming was real, then Republicans became the party of climate denial and the country was slowly weaned away from a science-based worldview towards what can only be described as an Orwellian nightmare that serves the interests of a select few.
We will never be able to address climate change in the US as long as a substantial number of people in Congress continue to take bribes from the fossil fuel industry. According to one analysis, 161 reps have taken more than $54 million in political contributions from the fossil-fuel industry.
Using a number of arguments, ranging from questioning the science to the need for “energy independence” the fossil fuel industry has succeeded in drilling their subterfuge deep into the heads of voters.
© 2014, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.
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