by Zenia Zuraiq, III B.Sc. Physics
Climate change is arguably the most pressing global issue that we face today. The number of natural calamities is increasing per year. As per a 2017 study, India has the second longest number of deaths related to extreme weather events—floods, heatwaves, etc. (source: Financial Express).
Source: Tom Toro, for The New Yorker
And yet, as temperatures rise around the world, we seem to be seeing a rise in another thing as well—‘climate change deniers’.This is the arguably stupid belief that climate change and global warming are either a) not real and made up by the evil scientists, or b) real, but like it’s not that big a deal y’know, we’re totally fine! It’s all exaggerated!
And yes, I’m going to call them climate change deniers and not climate change sceptics, because there is nothing ‘rational’ or ‘sceptical’ about denying science. I’m also going to try very hard to refrain from calling them unintelligent, because of ‘civil discourse’ or whatever.
I’m also not going to stay here and share the proof for how climate change is actually real and will be the end of it all, because
a) that always bums me out,
b) so many more qualified people than I have already made excellent demonstrations of this fact, and
c) proof is not really the point of climate change denial
The first time I heard about climate change denial, I was extremely confused. How could people be ‘denying’ a scientific fact? An extremely basic one, at that—I mean, we learn about global warming in third standard, don’t we? I couldn’t understand how people could simply ignore all the data and research that was available out there!
I also (foolishly) assumed this was something like flat Earth societies, where a bunch of people believe that the earth is actually flat, and that globes are a conspiracy because “reasons.”
Both of my observations are extremely flawed. For one, the deniers don’t care about data, because this is not about getting down to the facts—it’s about ideology. It’s about preserving the status quo. And on the other hand, unlike the flat earthers’ movement, climate change denial is not the problem of a few bad apples, but deliberate and planned. This is something that could actively result in fatal consequences around the globe.
On that note, let’s talk about the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers are Charles and David, part of the Koch family, one of America’s most influential business families.
The Koch brothers are part of a larger group of American Conservative billionaires who have been actively lobbying for and funding groups whose main purpose is to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been put in to fund this climate denial industry; because that’s what it is—an industry; an industry whose sole aim is to cast doubt in any way possible—from stopping funding for alternative sources of energy, to rolling back emission control, to saying that climate change isn’t that serious.
The total income of these climate change counter-movements comes out to about $900 million. This is not a few bad apples. This is corporate-funded, deliberate misinformation. And it has literally changed the course of history. People have known about climate change and global warming for multiple decades at this point—there are reports that Exxon Mobil (an American multinational oil and gas corporation) knew about climate change as early as 1977, 11 years before the consensus reached the general public (source: Scientific American).
Source: Joel Pett
The saddest part is that this deliberate corporate misinformation is not a new tactic. In the 1950s when compelling scientific evidence came out to suggest that smoking caused physical harm, the tobacco industry used a lot of the same tactics to undermine and misrepresent the science. Public relations experts were hired and statements were released that cast doubts on the link between smoking and lung cancer. Lobbying, manipulation, misinformation – it’s all been done already. Yet it keeps working, somehow. You’d think we’d pick up on the hints by now.
This is extremely disheartening and makes me want to scream into the void. It makes one question everything when they learn that a few exponentially powerful people control so much. It seems like such an obvious fact, and just the way the world is, but does it have to be this way?
The crux of the issue is this: the story mentioned here is not an exception, it is the norm. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe that a system where honest science and data analysis is so easily tampered with by corporate greed and deliberate lies is a good one. Climate change is not an apolitical issue. Science is not apolitical.
This is the real world we’re talking about—our world—and the only way out right now seems to be to change the system.