Illustration by Carlos PX. Photo by Carlos PX/ payforlayers.com.
Climate disinformation is on the rise, and a new report now exposes how the fossil fuel industry’s prolific use of online propaganda – purely to increase profits from coal, oil and gas – is increasingly threatening public perspective and climate action
January 27, 2023
Since when did it become “extremist” or “hipster” to care about climate change?
And how is it possible, given the mounting scientific evidence and extreme weather before our very eyes, that climate activism is still required to garner support for climate action?
There’s nothing inherently activist, extreme or controversial about wanting a prosperous future.
This perplexing detachment from reality can perhaps be attributed to a growing vortex of climate scepticism. A phenomenon which has stemmed, in part, from the rise in well-meaning but antagonistic protests pitching climate advocacy against culture, but most prominently from the increasing dose of climate disinformation spiking the mixing pot of public opinion.
As climate action is now too frequently framed as an unrelatable “woke” movement that seems out of touch with reality, even the well-informed are susceptible to being pushed away from climate advocacy by propaganda.
No doubt a symptom of the widespread uncertainty caused by global instability and the emerging epidemic of “climate anxiety.”
In light of this, the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition, in collaboration with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and 15 global partners including Friends of the Earth, has released a new report to expose just how many “false and misleading narratives” surrounding climate change are currently in circulation.
“Deny, Deceive, Delay” paints a picture of how, in the months since COP27 (the annual UN climate summit) in Egypt last November, amidst the turbulence of the past few years of conflict, crises and covid, a whirlpool of damaging trends in climate mis- and disinformation has emerged on social media platforms.
The report exposes an escalation in anti-climate agenda from actors who intended to stall talks at the COP27 summit, but as Jennie King, Head of Climate Research and Response at ISD stated, “the events of 2022 turbocharged a global ecosystem for disinformation,” and as such, this disinformation has since weaved its way into widespread general consumption.
Don’t let the fossil fuel fibbers fool you
Climate change is an undeniably urgent existential threat to our species, but as the crisis has evolved, so has the rhetoric that disputes it, now emerging as one of the most abrasive divisions of opinion in the 21st century.
In turn, with the world pushing harder and faster to accelerate the green transition through a seismic shift towards renewables, a similar existential threat is posed to the polluting non-renewable energy industry in parallel.
As a result, it has now become in the lucrative best interests of fossil fuel stakeholders to use propaganda and pretence to direct public preference away from clean energy, and back towards oil, coal and gas as a safer and more robust option.
Society’s sphere of influence is increasingly being infiltrated by proponents pushing anti-climate narratives; a worrying shift in the midst of an uncertain world, which provides “fertile ground for the spread of mis- and disinformation.”
Such disinformation has largely been allowed to propagate without regulation on widely-used social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Through false advertising, viral hashtags, and polarising narrative, fossil fuel propagandists’ emotional, social and cultural influence – as well as their fear-mongering – is now threatening public perspective.
“This research shows that climate disinformation isn’t going away and, in fact, it’s getting worse,” said Erika Seiber from Friends of the Earth US.
Meta’s misleading adverts
H.G. Wells once said that “advertising is legalised lying,” which pretty much describes what’s been going on with fossil fuel ads on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram.
According to the CAAD report, the top 10 pages for volume and/or amount of money spent on advertising came from the fossil fuel sector, which between Sep. 1 and Nov. 23, 2022, spent over $3 million on 3,781 climate-related campaign ads.
These adverts primarily came from the industry’s lobbyists, PR groups, and “Carbon Major” corporations such as Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil.
Through misleading rhetoric and misrepresentation, these entities promoted misleading “carbon neutral” statuses, flooded the platforms with “emotional messaging,” and further fueled climate denial.
A technique known as “nature-rinsing” was also rife within ads on the platforms. This tactic refers to obvious polluters such as car manufacturers using natural imagery of animals and landscapes to try and appear greener.
Fossil fuel advocacy was also repeatedly linked to the protection of livelihoods, national security and sovereignty, whereby key phrases like “energy independence” and “human flourishing” were used to appeal to readers emotionally.
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Some of the ads circulated even featured ex-climate activists and scientists, some of which claim to have previously founded renewable companies, only to later “realise” through their research that “pushing the planet towards wind and solar energy would actually cause more harm to the environment, than good.”
Twitter’s alarming trends
If you type “climate” into Twitter’s search bar, even now, the first hashtag that comes up is #ClimateScam.
Hashtags like this one, as well as #ClimateHoax, began climbing the platform’s trending charts in July 2022, as many users (including verified and high-profile accounts) began using the tag to spread anti-climate ideals.
According to the CAAD report, #ClimateScam had amassed over 362k mentions from 91k separate users by December 2022.
The report goes on to express how “the source of [the hashtag’s] virality is entirely unclear,” as the related data suggests that hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency were much more actively engaged with users on the platform.
This draws attention to the need for greater transparency around Twitter’s content policies, and highlights alarming concern regarding the platform’s active recommendation of damaging hashtags, especially seeing as disinformation was actually shown to increase on Twitter after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform.
The broader landscape of lies
Often these viral trends are embedded in a broader landscape of compounding anti-climate narrative, one that has now woven the climate crisis into present day “culture wars.”
Within this terrain, the CAAD coalition monitored five key online climate narratives which coincided with the COP27 summit last year, including: “Cost of Living Crisis; Culture Wars and Conspiracism; Loss and Damage; Anti- Green Technology; and Necessity of Fossil Fuels.”
The coalition found that online commentary in these areas was often centred around “anti-woke” messaging, claims that “climate change is a hoax,” and far-right conspiracy theoriesthat claim climate change is a concept created by governments to control us for their own machiavellian prerogatives.
“Wokewashing” was another trend found to be rife within the climate opposition narrative. Used by fossil fuel advocates, lobbyists and Chinese and Russian state media, this term describes an attempt to utilise “progressive rhetoric” to argue that climate policy disproportionately impacts marginalised communities and should be considered as a socially unjust weapon of “Western Imperialism.”
What needs to happen now?
For a myriad of reasons, including an underwhelming closing agreement and the presence of a record number of over 600 fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance, COP27 was partially hailed as a disappointing failure.
But one area of progress that was witnessed at the conference, was in that “COP27 became the first COP where climate misinformation became part of the conversation among country delegations and leaders,” stated the Conscious Advertising Network’s co-chair, Jake Dubbins.
This is likely due to the spike in disinformation witnessed in parallel with the conference’s proceedings, a wave which is only expected to get worse in the run-up to COP28.
Especially given that this year’s summit will be headed by a COP-president-come-oil-chief, Sultan Ahmed Jaber; the United Arab Emirates’ special envoy for climate change, but also the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
But riding this wave is our only option. We cannot afford to get lost in the noise of misleading climate change narrative as we simply do not have time to waste convincing millions of people on the climate science that 99.9% of scientists agree is verifiable fact.
Therefore, in the lead-up to COP28, intervention is required from governments, the UN and Big Tech to acknowledge the threat of rising disinformation and fossil fuel advocacy online, better govern the climate content that gets posted, and make immediate policy changes to mitigate its circulation and impact on public perspective.
Failing that, responsibility will fall to every one of us to try and talk round the misguided climate sceptics and deniers, especially given that a good portion of them experience passive or dismissive denial stemming from an understandable fear of change.
What’s more, having near unanimity within the scientific community on climate change science is of course important for progress, but considering researchers only make up 0.1% of the global population, this is not much use if a significant chunk of the rest of the world thinks it’s nonsense.
Therefore, as well as climate science, social science must play a greater, and more central role in defining the climate policy, action and targets we design to address the crisis.
Telling people the planet is warming due to human activity is one thing, but getting them to believe it and make seismic lifestyle changes is another, especially given that for many people living in the developed countries doing most of the damage, climate change is a somewhat invisible threat that’s not very easy to relate to.
Disinformation, climate denial propaganda, fossil fuel advocacy and all the other harmful misleading narratives and tactics used by anti-climate actors only stand to make this already uphill battle even steeper.
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This article was originally published on IMPAKTER. Read the original article.