Climate Denialisms

Climate change denial is as old as the scientific study of global warming. At the close of the Cold War, the same “merchants of doubt” who had previously sought to minimize risks associated with smoking, acid rain, and nuclear winter once again seized upon the epistemological problem of uncertainty—inherent in any form of scientific research—first to deny the warming effect of carbon dioxide, and then to obscure its impact.

Is climate denialism finally on the wane? Until recently, there seemed to be cause for guarded optimism. That an energy transition was necessary raised fewer objections, even if what passed as climate change awareness was essentially based on incentive pricing mechanisms (carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes) designed to internalize the ecological externalities of fossil capitalism. However, both the failure to keep global heating below the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement and the rise of a radical right hell-bent on oil and gas extraction suggest that the reports of the political elites’ conversion to sobriety were exaggerated, to say the least.

To account for the current regression, we must first identify the actors who structure the debate on climate issues and examine how their arguments and their lobbying succeed in pushing what counts as common sense toward the far-right. While reason used to be on the side of green capitalism, whose promoters claim that the transition to a carbon-free world is as much a priority as it is compatible with the profitability of investments, the mainstream is now being overtaken by two kinds of hardcore climate change deniers: the detractors of an allegedly militant or woke ecology intent on depriving ordinary people of their cars, their meat and their fertilizers, and the apostles of a neo-Malthusian environmentalism predicated on energy sovereignty, closed borders and birth control in the Global South.

On paper, the painless greening and win/win solutions promoted by Net Zero advocates is at odds with the exhortation to “Drill Baby Drill” that serves as the Trump administration's slogan. In practice, however, the differences between the two approaches are often a matter of degree, especially in a context of heightened geopolitical tensions and shifting alliances: compounded with the logic of capital accumulation in fossil fuel and renewable energy sectors, the rivalries that shape industrial policy in the US, Europe, and China tend to subordinate sustainability imperatives to security objectives. Meanwhile older modes of climate change skepticism may be gradually giving way to outright cynicism, as illustrated by the increasing prominence of either bunker mentality or escape to Mars fantasies in far-right circles. 

The tipping point that we are reaching calls for both nuance and intransigence. On the one hand, the shortcomings of the COPs should not be confused with the scorched earth policy pursued by their enemies. Yet on the other hand, similarities between crude denialism and strategies of adaptation to climate change cannot be overlooked. This becomes all the more stark as governments ostensibly sensitive to the climate emergency choose to spur investment in risky technologies of geoengineering instead of pivoting away from fossil assets.