Why is climate change denial still not over? Because the amount of money that can be made by denying climate change.
Has there been a change? Yes, but not necessarily for the better. For many people (generally with a financial motive) they have gone from outright climate denial, to climate doomism – we have already emitted too much carbon, we are going to see global warming, so there is nothing I can do (this has the advantage of allowing those people to continue to behave in the same way). Climate doomism says, I am too little, I cannot do anything.
A case in point, is the USA where a recent survey found that over 75% of Americans believe humans are causing climate change. That means, in the richest country on earth, 1 in 4 people do not believe that climate change is the result of human behaviour. This is a country with one of the best education systems in the world.
Well known climate denialism has been lead by fossil fuel companies-
- 1954 – An article in the American Petroleum Institute (API) suggested that smog was a reaction to gases and ozone from cracked gasoline.
- 1959 – A Shell article stated that burning fossil fuels released 2.5 billion tons of carbon each year, which could change the climate.
- 1968 – The Stanford Research Institute presented a report to the API that warned of the harmful consequences of releasing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
- 1970s – ExxonMobil’s internal documents and peer-reviewed studies acknowledged that climate change was real and human-caused. Exxon’s scientists predicted that global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions would increase, and that global heating would be about 0.2C per decade. This continued into the 1980s.
Shell accepted climate change in private, but continued to lie about it into the 1980s. It was not until 1991 that they accepted the science. ExxonMobil accepted the science in 2014, a full 44 years since they started the research that made it clear that climate change is real.
Others known for their climate change denial include the Koch brothers: Have supported right-wing groups that oppose climate change legislation and undermine environmental progress, and right-wing think tanks: More than 90% of papers that are sceptical of climate change come from right-wing think tanks (this should be a great embarrassment for the right wing, and my suggestion, would be to deny your support for any right-wing political group who still denies climate change – they are asking you to ignore your eyes).
These days? Well, there are climate deniers out there, with famous political ones including Malcolm Roberts, an Australian politician (see below, for a video with him telling Professor Brian Cox that he is wrong – particularly suggesting that consensus of scientists is not something to pay attention to), and Donald Trump (there is no need to supply a video, these are easy to find).
It is a sad fact that in many parts of the world, it is still possible to win the popular vote, while publicly stating climate change is not real (and therefore stating that you are incapable of understanding or recognizing humans knowledge, even at a simple level). As an aside, I would hope that no American readers are thinking of voting for Donald Trump next month, as this is like shooting yourself in the foot (see other articles for more on this).
Climate doomism, is in some ways more dangerous than climate change denial. These are people, who at least at some level, recognize the science but believe that it does not matter.
FYI, for Christians who believe that God built the earth, and therefore we cannot change it, just look around. God told us to look after it, and we are not. God is not a get out of jail free card.
So, what should we do?
- Talk – The biggest thing, is to talk to people around us. It is true, that with global emissions being over 37 billion tonnes in 2023, we cannot end climate change on our own, however, by telling other people, we can make a difference
- Make the easy cuts, which do not impact your standard of living –
- replace your car with an electric car (the market for second hand electric cars is growing, and with prices falling, you can now get an electric car which will save the price (in saved petrol money) in as little as 3 years)). If you have more money, make sure your next new car is going to be electric. For us, given burning 1 litre of petrol emits almost 2.3kg of carbon dioxide (directly), plus all the transportation, refining, splitting and extraction, this change reduced our households emissions by around 10 tonnes.
- Replace your gas boiler with a heat pump (in the UK, with the current government help, you can be sure that it will cost no more than a replacement boiler, so if your boiler is dying as ours was, it is going to be cheaper to go green). The average carbon emissions of a boiler (in a 4 bedroom house) is roughly 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
- Reduce your red meat consumption – we have greatly cut down on red meat, with the easiest change being replacing beef mince, with turkey mince – while it requires a change to some recipes, in many things, it is indistinguishable. National geographic and Tulane University both suggests that this can cut your dietary carbon emissions in half.
- Replace your electricity supplier (and gas if you still use it) with a green supplier. Our supplier (octopus – if you are signing up, use ours which is Cyan-wind-625, this link will send you to the page – http://share.octopus.energy?cyan-wind-625 ) offset our gas use, before we got rid of it, installed our heat pump, and guarantees all our electricity comes from green sources (this makes green electricity more valuable, and if everyone goes to a guaranteed green tariff, it would mean all electricity generation from gas would have to be retired tomorrow) -These can combine to eliminate the majority of your direct carbon emissions. There is still an issue with the carbon emissions of what you buy, and similar, but this is a great start.
Climate change is real, and changing our behaviour now can save huge amounts of money.
Next time someone is either denying climate change around you, or is suggesting that the human race is doomed, and that therefore there is no point in changing behaviour, fight the earths corner. You might not change behaviour instantly, but it is likely that we can make a significant difference. In the UK, 17% of carbon emissions comes from houses and 20% of the greenhouse emissions, yet we now have the ability to eradicate this. 60% of transport emissions (roughly 15% of the countries carbon emissions) comes from cars, and these are all things that the UK has the ability to eliminate now. Heat pump installers should be swamped, as should electric car salesmen; these two are generally price competitive, and you are doing the right thing, for your children (if you have none, I presume you still care about the countries next generation)