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J P's avatar

Finally got to read this post. I'm growing convinced that climate denialism is becoming a catch-all phrase to label someone as "other". In other words, it's meant to divide us from what we agree on.

Climate denial is a flag that gets raise by use of seemingly benign yet critical words. For example, Dolan uttered a few forbidden words that aren't allowed by climate policy activists: "low carbon", "nuclear", and "unreliable" in the context of renewables. Low carbon isn't good enough, only 0 carbon is good enough, nuclear is a crutch and anti-environmental, and the approved word to describe renewables is "intermittent" not "unreliable". Use of those forbidden words gets a person labelled a climate denier, or at best a climate delayer ("delayer" is a newer term I've also started to see used.)

I've been looking more into the language of climate discussions and am very intrigued because language shapes the way we think about something. There's been little journalism about it, and what does exist doesn't get at the heart of the challenge. For example: Revkin is a journalist who says he's been writing about this challenge but I find his articles don't admit bias and dig deep enough: https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/can-better-communication-of-climate-science-cut-climate-risks/. The Guardian, perhaps not surprisingly, admitted in 2019 that its editing of articles about climate change would require authors to use more emotive language: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment. So climate change journalism is encouraged, at least openly by one source, to use emotive language. Emotive criticism however, like Dolan's, is a sign of Bad Think.

Peer-reviewed literature, include the social sciences, have weighed in on the challenges of communicating about climate change and the language used. Moser confirmed a culturally dominant point that I've suspected exists: "[...] it may be telling that such resources [on climate change] dominate in the Anglo-Saxon world, where resistance to climate action, politicization of climate science, and polarization have been stronger than elsewhere." (Moser, Susanne C. “Reflections on Climate Change Communication Research and Practice in the Second Decade of the 21st Century: What More Is There to Say?”) The irony in this Western dominance of climate change communication coming from Anglo-Saxon sources is ironic given recent social justice trends to repudiate Western domination. I'd imagine the most ardent climate activist would align with social justice yet that well-intentioned person wouldn't realize that non-Western people could see climate policies pushed without equitable discussion as more fuel on the fire of oppression. Moser begs the question of whether any culture -- I'd argue especially the West -- admits its cultural lense: "[...] the critical takeaways from this body of work [on climate communication] is that, first, we all hear, perceive, make sense of, and judge incoming information (be it spoken, written, visual, or sensory) through the filters of culturally transmitted values and no one can escape this influence although we can become conscious of this influence and actively probe it, if we are willing". It's far too simplistic for those of us in the West to say China and India don't get it; that the science is above culture and unquestionably says to stop coal now, etc.

A recent example is the UAE not falling in line with the Paris Agreement, and Western activists saying COP28 shouldn't be hosted in Dubai, or otherwise undermining the common ground that can be found with a host whose national income is massively funded by fossil fuels. Revkin, for example, allowed his Substack to syndicate an article about climate misinformation that its author believes are from the UAE: https://revkin.substack.com/cp/126714568. By pointing fingers of doubt about intention and using language to divides us, we're missing the next phase of climate communication that Moser and others have found. We need to cross cultural boundaries and collaborate. Or the other C word: compromise. Compromise is probably the worst forbidden word that will get someone labelled a climate denier. ;)

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Christoph Roettger's avatar

Thank you for pointing that out.

These people are deliberately arguing in bad faith, and we should do whatever we can to not let them get away with it.

I try to make use for your material in reader comments.

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