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I want to make a very important point here. Not to justify myself, but so people can understand why there has been no progress on reducing carbon emissions and why this was nothing to do with climate change denial. @GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1286956226618818562
1) @GeraldKutney disputed what I said and claimed I was wrong, without carefully reading what I'd actually said. This was a misunderstanding as Gerald was talking about industry sponsored climate propaganda and I was talking about public opinion.
https://twitter.com/GeraldKutney/status/1286997817756655616
https://twitter.com/GeraldKutney/status/1286997817756655616
2) By "public" climate change denial, I mean widespread mass phenomenon of strongly held sentiment, on a level and depth which could influence elections. I specifically used the term "public" to separate it from industry sponsored climate change denial.
3) The reason the above point is so important to understand is that many politicians, media commentators and vested interests have falsely implied that the reason for the lack of progress in addressing climate change in the last 30 years is because of public resistance.
4) The basis of this false argument being that if people were really worried about climate change, then they'd stop flying, driving, consuming so much. Which ignores how governments subsidise the fossil fuel industry, the aviation industry, and induce people into consuming more.
5) The whole fallacy that it's the public who're greedy and motivated to consume more and more in a reckless way is illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, where governments are desperately trying to coerce people against their will to get back to consuming. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/21/greener-happier-world-politicians-boris-johnson-consumerism-planet
6) In other words, both the failure of governments to reduce carbon emissions in line with the pledges they started making in the early 1990s and public consumption is driven by the political leadership, not public pressure.
7) In this long thread here I explain why politicians are the tail wagging the dog and have not been driven to ignoring their pledges to reduce carbon emissions by public pressure. Rather this reluctance to act on sustainability goes back 50 years. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285888885319491587.html
8) The reason it's so important to understand that it's not the public's fault that there's been a failure to take action, is not to apportion blame. It's to identify what the primary obstacle is, so it can be overcome and the climate crisis will be successfully averted.
9) Even with some environmentalists there's a tendency to lazily blame the public for a lack of action which is not helpful. Firstly it's not the correct identification of the obstacle and secondly people just become fatalistic if it is falsely believed that it is inevitable.
10) Whereas if it's recognised that it is politicians, business leaders, the wealthy who are dragging their heels, the public can put pressure on them to act. Even dictators tacitly need the support of their people.
11) Powerful people are always worried about public opinion turning against them and they will be very motivated to act if they think the public are demanding this action and they will lose public support if they fail to act.
12) This false idea that climate change denial has been the obstacle to action is a very serious problem. It gives the false impression that once climate change denial has been defeated everything will be fine and governments will take action.
13) However, as I've explained at length today, climate change denial as a mass phenomenon only really began to grow after about 2005. Prior to that it was mainly fossil fuel industry propaganda, trying to start a public backlash against addressing the causes of climate change.
14) There was no wide scale phenomenon of people denying the science on climate science when the IPCC was set up in 1988, at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the first COP Conference in 1995.
15) I am not denying that climate change denial existed from early on, but it was mainly fossil fuel industry sponsored propaganda, which no one took much notice off, because it was expected they'd say that.
16) Remember, politicians were first pledging to address the causes of climate change from 1988 onwards, the year the IPCC was set up. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-green-hero
17) As climate change denial as a mass (public) phenomenon didn't really gain traction until 20 years after politicians first started failing to take action on what they pledged, it cannot plausibly explain their failure to take action.
18) Just look at how much carbon emissions grew between when politicians first started pledging to reduce emissions, and when climate change denial as a mass phenomenon started to get some traction, but only really in the US. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters
19) Climate change denial is not a plausible hypothesis to explain the failure to reduce our carbon emissions, because climate change denial never had the traction to influence politicians for 2 decades or more.
20) It is a classic confusing cause and effect. Climate change denial as a mass phenomenon only emerged as a problem, because politicians failed to take effective action, not the other way around.
21) It is very unhelpful to believe that effective action on the climate crisis will emerge after climate change denial is defeated, because the clear empirical evidence is that the reluctance to take action preceded overt denial by some considerable degree.
22) Just for the record, anyone familiar with my commenting on the Guardian will be well aware that I was involved in challenging climate change deniers a long time ago. @Sustainable_EN
