We've had enough climate threads. At the end of the day we have scientists on one side and politicians, companies, and conspiracy theorists on the other.
As someone who has spent over a decade studying the climate change denial movement, many of the political tactics mainstreamed by Donald Trump and the populist right around 2015–2016 seemed familiar. Attack the experts. Launch personal attacks on opponents. Frame an email scandal to maximize political gain. Delegitimize mainstream media sources. Cast yourself as the savior of traditional American life. Climate change deniers practiced these tactics years before the Republican Party transformed from a Reagan coalition of social conservatives and small-government libertarians to a party of the populist right. While arguing against scientific consensus will always present an uphill battle, the organizers of climate change denial repeatedly prove their ability to strategically adapt to their political environment, seamlessly shifting between narratives of “climate change is not happening,” “climate change is happening but humans are not driving it,” and “climate change is happening but it is nothing to worry about.”
Considering the economic incentives of continued fossil fuel development, I expect that climate change deniers will adapt to shifting political winds for years to come and will continue to employ political tactics. In this article, I review a few facts and events to illustrate this point. For a more comprehensive overview of the players involved in obstructing action on climate change, read “
From Denial to Obstruction: A Sociological View of the Effort to Obstruction Action on Climate Change” by Robert Brulle and Riley Dunlap in this issue. Ultimately, members of the climate change denial movement do not concern themselves with building fact-based objections to mainstream scientific consensus. Rather, they are focused on how to coordinate political reactions to any sort of mitigation policy effort that detracts from fossil fuel-based economic growth strategies. Thus, in my view, the tactics used to frame scientists as corrupt, activists as antiprogress, corporations as “woke,” or journalists as liars, represent a crucial element of the contemporary climate change denial movement.
As someone who has spent over a decade studying the climate change denial movement, many of the political tactics mainstreamed by Donald Trump and the
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