DENIAL

Denial is a psychological defence mechanism whereby a person refuses to accept a reality or fact, acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling didn’t exist. We all use denial to varying degrees to avoid dealing with difficult feelings or circumstances. By denying there is a problem we abrogate our responsibility to act.

The climate crisis is a terrifying reality. It threatens our food and water supply, the air we breathe, the ill health we suffer and the liveability of our planet. It’s understandable that climate change denial is psychologically attractive because recognising the extent of the problem is overwhelming and hard.

Sadly, the fossil fuel propaganda machine has taken full advantage of denial and weaponised it to stymie transition to a renewable energy world. They use denial in the following ways:-

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  • Science denial: a common gambit whereby the science of global warming is discredited, usually by saying that not all scientists agree or that climate change is part of a natural cycle. These arguments are false. The science of climate change is settled with consensus amongst the scientific community.

  • Economic denial: statements that it is too expensive to fix climate change are a dangerous form of climate denial. If you claim it’s too expensive you are saying that it’s not worth fixing, that the problem musn’t really be that bad. These claims minimise the extent of the climate crisis and are also factually wrong. Economist suggest that we could fix climate change by spending just 1% of the GDP.

  • Humanitarian denial: where people argue that climate change is actually of benefit to us. They cite that plants need carbon dioxide to grow and therefore climate change will improve yields. Whilst on the surface this is true, the whole story is more complicated. Increased carbon dioxide means grains are less nutritious and decreased rainfall and hotter temperatures make farming harder, reducing food security.

  • Political denial: here people argue that there’s no point taking action if others aren’t taking action too. This argument gets trotted out a lot in Australia because our domestic carbon footprint is 1.2%. However we are the biggest coal and gas exporters on the planet and our per capita emissions are amongst the highest in the world. If we all wait for other people to act, then no-one acts and nothing changes. If we use that argument on other countries, they can use the same argument on us.

  • Crisis denial: this is used when deniers minimise the effects of climate change. An obvious example is the argument that the catastrophic bush fires we are seeing in Australia are part of the natural cycle, despite more extreme fires being predicted by climate scientists.

All these forms of denial serve the interests of the highly profitable fossil fuel industry to slow down much needed global action and maintain the status quo. This is deeply upsetting, not only because of the increased suffering of inaction but also because the fossil fuels industry has the money and the infrastructure to lead the transition to a green economy. They could help, but they choose to hinder.

Changing a deniers mind can be very difficult. Attacking or deriding someone just serves to put them on the defensive, especially if done in public. We need to be respectful of other people, take the time to go through the reasons for their denial and then frame climate change as a shared experience that requires concerted action to resolve.

references

https://theconversation.com/the-five-corrupt-pillars-of-climate-change-denial-122893

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-change-scepticism

https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-defense-mechanisms/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/03/climate-change-denial-changing-minds