Climate Policy Dragged into Culture Wars as a ‘Delay’ Tactic

Climate policy is being dragged down with misinformation and fake science being spread across the internet by a relatively small group of individuals and groups. 

A new study released Thursday shows that the climate emergency, and the required measures that are necessary to deal with it, are being conflated with “culture war” issues, such as critical race theory, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, and vaccinations. 

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition found that while outright denials of the facts of the climate crisis were less common than the other divisive issues, opponents were now likely to focus on methods of “delay, distraction, and misinformation” in order to stop rapid action that is needed. 

Climate disinformation has become more complex, the head of climate disinformation at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Jeannie King, said. 

Climate disinformation has evolved from outright denial, into identifiable “discourses of delay” in order to exploit the gap between accepting the reality and taking action about it. 

The study looked at social media posts from the past 18 months, especially around the UN Climate summit Cop26 in Glasgow last November. 

The report found that the urgent need to address climate change was continually downplayed, or condemned as unfeasible, expensive, disruptive, or hypocritical. 

Numerous specific “discourses of delay” were identified. Some posts focused on elitism and hypocrisy, alleging the wealth and double standards of people calling for action. Others used methods of absolution, which absolves one country of any obligation to act on climate by blaming another. The third big method was the concept of unreliable renewables, calling into question the viability and effectiveness of renewable energy sources. 

The report called for there to be an internationally agreed definition of climate misinformation and disinformation. It said that tech companies should also restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, and groups or individuals that fall short of the standard.