An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Climate skepticism and denial has emerged with equal momentum as its antidote, climate science. The arguments against climate science have increased progressively as an equal and opposite reaction to the scientific consensus for the adverse effects of climate change, according to a study published in ‘Global Environmental Change’, a scientific journal. While in the United Kingdom and France, there are isolated entities combatting efforts to conserve the environment, the United States has, over the years, cultivated a counterculture of climate change deniers, in the form of think tanks and social conservatives.

Members of the religious Right in the United States, accompanied by libertarians and social conservatives, believe in giving the market a free reign and reducing the involvement of the federal government in contentious issues. To sum it up, these activists are firm believers of the laissez-fair state and do not appreciate regulations.

However, the current scenario in climate change warrants universal and political regulation in terms of reduction in the use of fossil fuels and using clean energy in its stead. Harnessing solar and wind energy in the free market have been a popular choice among climate change activists. The use of solar energy is cost efficient and has diverse applications, and is the third most accepted alternative to conventional energy generation.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that total use of solar energy in the United States increased from about 0.06 trillion British thermal units in 1984 to about 917 trillion Btu in 2018. Total solar electricity generation increased from about 5 million kWh in 1984, nearly all from utility-scale solar power plants, to about 93,365 million kWh in 2018, of which about 32% was from small-scale PV systems.

The 2018 Paris Agreement, a declaration which has been ratified by 197 countries, the last party to accede being Syria, lays down differential models for parties to collectively, through transference, support and cooperation, keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. There is a strong emphasis on the urgent need to reduce carbon footprint, which is largely dependent on household size and consumption. Research is being conducted in these ambits to secure a safe and sustainable future for our succeeding generations.

In such a scenario, the climate change denial movement in the United States is gathering momentum due to massive support from large-scale corporations like Google. “Google said it was disappointed by the US decision to abandon the global climate deal, but has continued to support CEI (Competitive Enterprise Intitute)”, says Stephanie Kirchgaesner in her article in The Guardian dated 11th October, 2019.

It was revealed that a majority of the ‘beneficiaries of political givings’ in Washington were “organizations that that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections”. CEI is one of the most notorious of these organizations, being instrumental in getting the Trump administration to initiate the process of its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

Very recently, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled former Exxon scientists over the oil giant’s climate change denial, citing paperwork that documented their accurate predictions in pertinence to the global temperature rise.

The climate deniers come in many forms. There are those “who reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and driven by manmade activities including the burning of fossil fuels,” in the words of Brendan Demelle, the Executive Director of DeSmog. The CEI once ran baseless advertisements running the argument that carbon dioxide is necessary for survival, and is hence, not something to be reduced in numbers. The other groups of deniers acknowledge the adverse effects of climate change but consider it to be a part and parcel of the environmental dynamic and do not support a concerted effort to change the same. Some also believe that the human effort to reverse or mitigate the effects of climate change is futile and should not be pursued.

“It is also worth noting that climate deniers speak almost singularly about this issue without any regard for the health of our planet’s animal species and ecosystems — fixating solely on consequences for financial markets rather than viewing the economy as a wholly-owned subsidiary of our environment” says Demello in his article, ‘The Climate Denial Industry’.

United States President Trump’s climate denial, however, is worse than the ideological opposition to the scientific feasibility of climate change or to the reluctance to take action against it. In the words of Robinson Meyers from ‘The Atlantic’, it seems he “can’t quit carbon”. He belongs to the section of society who is not pragmatic or generous enough to see beyond the profiteering industrial agendas that shaped him as an individual and as a politician. On November 4, 2020, a day after the next Presidential elections, the biggest superpower in international politics is set to complete the process of exiting the Paris climate accord, a win for the climate science deniers of the privileged West.

(edited by Vaishnavi Deepak)