Background
Scientists, as early as 1930 flag anthropogenic change driven by CO2. Industrialisation is creating more than modernisation – domestic realms are streamlined, cars get faster, planes fill the skies, cities go up, and populations expand in every direction.
During the 1960s, scientists from different specialisations around the world register their combined findings – anthropogenic climate change is registering across a diversity of data sets. By 1975 the term ‘global warming’ is coined.
1981 turns into the warmest year on record and Antarctic ice cores make it clear that CO2 levels and temperature rises have tracked together since the ice ages. Carl Sagan takes the message to Congress: Global, co-operative action on climate change is required. Other scientific voices join his call and world leaders listen.
The world’s leaders and their advisers support early intervention. They accept the science and that climate change is induced by humans. The Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke states:
““Significant climate change will have major ramifications on human survival””
He works with Margaret Thatcher, George Bush Senior and other world leaders to tackle the immediate impact of greenhouse gas. They agree to bring levels down quickly and decisively. It is clear the world can act together for future generations. Scientists continue to deliver science and are respected for doing so. We are on track for action.
It’s 1988 and the International Panel on Climate Change forms in Toronto. But there are uneasy rumblings. What’s now clear is that hitting targets to reduce temperature spikes will require pervasive energy restructuring. Around the globe, captains of the fuel industry rush to boardrooms seeking strategies to protect their own economic future. The long hot summer of 1988 causes unprecedented fires across the United States. Bush Snr says it’s the year ‘the Earth spoke back’.
But by 1989 the Reagan administration has buckled to the demands of industry. The IPCC potentially works in favour of containing noisy scientists at broader conferences. Quarantine the messaging: A message that is becoming increasingly problematic.
The manufacturing of doubt has begun. The voices of the fossil fuel industry have got themselves organised with a premeditated campaign ‘to replace fact in the minds of the public, with doubt’:
““C02 is a benefit to plant life. It’s increasing the bounty and the productivity of the planet, our ability to feed populations of this world.” ”
The world is warned not to panic.
Scientists are trained to emphasise uncertainties, playing perfectly into the hands of doubt merchants. Skeptics don’t have to win the argument; they just have to create doubt to slow or halt the action of world leaders and quell the concerns of world citizens. The battle for public opinion is played out in the media – but at the time we don’t see the motivation for politicising science.
Throughout the 1990s, as the population becomes increasingly confused about the claims of science, political leaders become more outspoken about the economic perils of climate action. At Kyoto in 1997 the watering down of targets has well and truly begun.
By the turn of the century, climate science is well and truly politicised. We track the oil dollars as they track their way into the pockets of contrarian scientists and think tanks posing as environmental defenders. Accountability is almost non-existent. Exxon Mobil takes out an ad in the New York Times reading ‘Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil.’
By the 2000s we are deep in the weeds created by fossil fuel interests and their affiliates. Think tanks across carbon rich economies pour resources into campaigns targeting schools, churches and political lobbying.
President George Bush Junior removes the US from the Kyoto Protocol process on the basis it will ‘damage the US economy’. Margaret Thatcher, previously a great champion of action, damns it now:
““Kyoto was anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project which no American leader alert to his country’s national interests could have supported.””
She says climate action is promulgated by doomsters. She calls it socialism. In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard agrees with Thatcher. The Kyoto Protocol is most definitely not in the interests of a mineral rich exporter.
In 2004 Facebook launches, followed by Twitter in 2006. Social media becomes a new frontier for denial and propaganda. Climate deniers now have extraordinary influence and occupy plenty of space in the media. The scientists attempting to counter them are floundering like fish in a drought-stricken waterhole.
It is clear that scientists need to meet propaganda with new tactics. While NewsCorp commentators call them ‘loons’ and ‘alarmists’ prone to ‘warming hysteria’, by 2006 the IPCC calls human induced global warming ‘unequivocal’. Words such as ‘likely’ (meaning, in scientific terms, a 2 in 3 chance) in relation to climate change, are now out. As scientists grapple with effective language and the urgency of communicating their message, Al Gore cautions that:
““People will go straight from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem.””
In 2016 President Donald Trump is elected. He says climate change is a conspiracy created by the Chinese. By 2018 nearly half of Americans polled by Gallup don’t believe climate change will pose a ‘serious threat’ in their lifetime, despite the fact global warming is already costing trillions of dollars in economic damage.
By 2023 we are still saturated in disinformation. But we’re all invested in change now – including big business… and slowly a new political and cultural vision is emerging. Language is changing. Business leaders are reaching out to government leaders. We chart a social movement of individuals working together – applying pressure, voting in blocks, demanding action. Everything is in place: the technologies, the innovations, the policies we need all exist.
We have arrived at a juncture in history where the transition away from fossil fuels is gathering pace just as the world starts to feel the impacts of climate change. We don’t need to invent miracle technology. The tools are at our disposal. We just need to use them: en masse. And rather than action on climate change being a cost to our economies, it could be an economic opportunity.