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Rebranding the Climate Change Counter Movement through a Criminological and Political Economy Lens
... Despite this, action on climate change has become an increasingly partisan issue with strong opposition voices discrediting scientists, and spreading scepticism and misinformation. One such source is climate change counter movement organizations, which are an amalgam of lobbyists, big corporations, conservative think tanks, and media corporations (Dunlap and Jacques, 2013;Boussalis and Coan, 2016;Farrell, 2016;McKie, 2018), whose aim is to fuel climate change scepticism (CCS). Public perception is influenced by the narrative presented to them (Fløttum, 2014;Fløttum et al., 2016), and CCS texts use neutralization techniques to build counter-climate narratives (McKie, 2018). ...
... One such source is climate change counter movement organizations, which are an amalgam of lobbyists, big corporations, conservative think tanks, and media corporations (Dunlap and Jacques, 2013;Boussalis and Coan, 2016;Farrell, 2016;McKie, 2018), whose aim is to fuel climate change scepticism (CCS). Public perception is influenced by the narrative presented to them (Fløttum, 2014;Fløttum et al., 2016), and CCS texts use neutralization techniques to build counter-climate narratives (McKie, 2018). ...
... Though initially developed in the field of criminology, it has been widely studied in different fields ranging from lack of corporate social responsibility (Cherry and Sneirson, 2010), to fast fashion (Joy et al., 2012), the tobacco industry (Fooks et al., 2013;Conway, 2010), andCCS (McKie, 2018). McKie (2018) argued that to fully understand the neutralization narrative around CCS, there is a need to break it down into specific techniques (e.g. denial of responsibility vs. denial of victim; see Section 3). ...
... The climate lunatics ... encourage them to wag school to protest for more action. The rise of this misleading information is part of a carefully crafted strategy by climate change counter movement (CCCM) organizations (Dunlap and Jacques, 2013;Boussalis and Coan, 2016;Farrell, 2016;McKie, 2018). These organizations use a formula consisting of a narrative structured around the principle ingredients of disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and hoax, sprinkled with the stylistic elements of sensationalism, melodrama, clickbait and satire, as can be seen in examples in Table 1. ...
... This can be attributed to the rise in opposing voices including the fossil fuel lobby, conservative thinktanks, big corporations, and digital/print media questioning the science and research around climate change. These organisations are collectively referred to as climate change counter movement ("CCCM") organizations (Oreskes and Conway, 2010;Dunlap and Jacques, 2013;Farrell, 2016; Boussalis and Coan, 2016;McKie, 2018). McKie (2018) argues that the motivation behind these organizations is to maintain the status quo of the hegemony of fossil fuel-based neo-liberal global capitalism. ...
... These organisations are collectively referred to as climate change counter movement ("CCCM") organizations (Oreskes and Conway, 2010;Dunlap and Jacques, 2013;Farrell, 2016; Boussalis and Coan, 2016;McKie, 2018). McKie (2018) argues that the motivation behind these organizations is to maintain the status quo of the hegemony of fossil fuel-based neo-liberal global capitalism. These organizations are found around the globe and can masquerade as philanthropic organizations to fund climate misinformation (Farrell, 2019), hide behind libertarian ideas (McKie, 2018) to question the scientists, and augment scepticism to promote pseudo science or 'alternative facts'. ...
The world is facing the challenge of climate crisis. Despite the consensus in scientific community about anthropogenic global warming, the web is flooded with articles spreading climate misinformation. These articles are carefully constructed by climate change counter movement (cccm) organizations to influence the narrative around climate change. We revisit the literature on climate misinformation in social sciences and repackage it to introduce in the community of NLP. Despite considerable work in detection of fake news, there is no misinformation dataset available that is specific to the domain.of climate change. We try to bridge this gap by scraping and releasing articles with known climate change misinformation.
... Jak ukázala McKie [2018], obdobné neutralizační techniky užívají rovněž klimaskeptici. Autorka modifikovala techniky popsané původně Sykesem a Matzou následujícím způsobem: -Popírání odpovědnosti: Klimatická změna se děje, ale nezpůsobují ji lidé. ...
The article is dedicated to reflecting the links between the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic crisis in the context of Czech social media, specifically on several blogging platforms. The processes leading to the climate and pandemic crises are highly intertwined, based in the way humans interact with the environment on a global scale. However, the circumstances and consequences of both crises, as well as the ways they are dealt with, also share common features. The authors identify such contexts as reflected on blogging platforms by undertaking a qualitative analysis of texts from an interpretative phenomenological perspective. Climate scepticism is connected to pandemic scepticism, on the one hand, and to acceptance of the pandemic as a real threat, on the other hand. Conversely, acceptance of the climate crisis can be associated with both acceptance of the pandemic and pandemic scepticism.
... Dunlap, 2013;Lahsen, 2013) countermovement, a term that defines those actors who work in the same direction, but not necessarily in coordination, to undermine climate science and policy (e.g. Dunlap & McCright, 2015;McKie, 2017) contrarians, used to define those who oppose climate action (e.g. Boykoff, 2016;McCright, 2007) delayers, whose discourses question measures to curb climate change and promote inaction (Lamb et al., 2020), and, more recently obstructionism, a term that describes those who in some way boycott or obstruct political action to reduce emissions and pollution in general (e.g. ...
El cambio climático ha sido objeto de estudio frecuente desde distintos ámbitos de las ciencias sociales en las últimas décadas, también desde la comunicación. Gracias a ello, se ha generado una cada vez más abundante evidencia de la realidad compleja que se esconde tras la inacción política al respecto. Sin embargo, a la hora de comunicar esta realidad, los medios de comunicación, y una parte de la academia, han tendido a simplificar esta complejidad poniendo el foco en el contramovimiento climático y el negacionismo literal del fenómeno. Este contramovimiento ha sido abundantemente estudiado en los Estados Unidos, lo que ha puesto en evidencia la existencia de un negacionismo del cambio climático antropogénico muy influyente en ese país. Pero la investigación académica ha hecho también evidente que la inacción política al respecto del clima no puede explicarse solo con el concepto de negacionismo; ni en los Estados Unidos, ni mucho menos en Europa. En este artículo problematizamos el uso del concepto negacionismo en su uso indiscriminado actual y sugerimos incorporar un marco conceptual y de análisis más sofisticado, que aporte más matices y se alinee con las evidencias de la investigación académica. Se trata no solo de comunicar de forma crítica la realidad de la inacción política con respecto al clima sino de hacerlo también identificando todo el espectro real de responsabilidades, que no se reducen a negar o no negar el cambio climático.
... The author identified each organisation employing a unique coding framework to create a preliminary international census of CCCM actors. First, the dataset was created by triangulating data from existing sources, including Plehwe [4], Brulle [7], Greenpeace [16], Corporate Europe Observatory [17], and Union of Concerned Scientists [18]. Second, affiliated or partnership organisations were identified using snowball sampling, where each subsequent organisation had to meet a series of criteria to be included in the dataset. ...
In this article, we provide a preliminary exploration of the Climate Change Counter Movement Hyperlink Network. Recognising the international growth of the Climate Change Counter Movement, we use a hyperlink analysis to 1) identify if the counter movement uses this platform, 2) identify the structural dynamics of the hyperlink network, and 3) if and how do movement organisations connect across countries. Our findings reveal that a combination of USA and non-USA actors are operational in the hyperlink network, where climate delaying and obstruction discourse can diffuse across countries. In addition, we found cohesive subgroups illuminating an alignment of interests between think tanks across countries on climate change, a distinct role played by blogs, and a small group of connected coal-related organisations promoting information on clean coal technologies. Lastly, we observe an alignment between climate change counter movement organisations and representative organisations of the traditional Wise Use Movement. These findings provide an intriguing account of the operations of a counter movement hyperlink network, expanding our knowledge on the transmission of counter movement across countries and what this means for further developments in this area of scholarship.
... During such events, it is not uncommon to see claims of questionable scientific merit with headlines such as Climate Change has caused more rain, helping fight Australian wildfires. 1 This kind of narrative seeds scepticism (Oreskes and Conway, 2010), discredits climate science and scientists (Anderegg et al., 2010), spreads misinformation (Farrell, 2019), and neutralises debate on key issues (McKie, 2018), thereby turning it into a partisan issue (Benegal and Scruggs, 2018; Van der Linden et al., 2017) and leading to inaction. To check for 1 https://bit.ly/2H9xivN ...
There is unison is the scientific community about human induced climate change. Despite this, we see the web awash with claims around climate change scepticism, thus driving the need for fact checking them but at the same time providing an explanation and justification for the fact check. Scientists and experts have been trying to address it by providing manually written feedback for these claims. In this paper, we try to aid them by automating generating explanation for a predicted veracity label for a claim by deploying the approach used in open domain question answering of a fusion in decoder augmented with retrieved supporting passages from an external knowledge. We experiment with different knowledge sources, retrievers, retriever depths and demonstrate that even a small number of high quality manually written explanations can help us in generating good explanations.
... Simply put, the destruction of nature is inherent in capitalistic production (and consumption) (see Lynch et al. 2013 as related to the Treadmill of crime) and climate action will compromise the ability to sustain and increase the accumulation of capital (Levy and Egan 2003). These organizations then operate to protect what McKie (2018) argues is a fossil fuel-based global capitalist economy; that is, CCCM organizations operate as a network attempting to protect a fossil fuel-based economic system challenged by the rise of environmentalism and environmental policy. This is because the economic system continues the intensification of carbon-intensive production and consumption practices that greatly contribute to climate change (Foster 2011). ...
The Climate Change Counter Movement has been a topic of interest for social scientists and environmentalists for the past 25 years (Dunlap and McCright, 2015). This research uses the sociology of crime and deviance to analyze the numerous arguments used by climate change counter movement organizations. Content analysis of 805 statements made by climate change counter movement organizations reveals that the theory Techniques of Neutralization (Sykes and Matza, American Sociological Review 22(6):664, 1957) can help us better understand the arguments adopted by these organizations. Taking two observations from two time points, the author examine not only the composition of the messaging adopted by Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM) organization, but how these messages have changed over time. In all, there were 1,435 examples of CCCM neutralization techniques adopted by CCCM organizations across these two points in time. This examination of the movement provides valuable insight into the CCCM and the subsequent environmental harm that is partly facilitated by their actions.
Predominantly focusing on Western Europe, although not exclusively, this chapter explores a strategic alliance of think tanks and individuals that operationalized discourses of delay across and beyond Europe, intending to spread ideas and doubt to impact legislation and public opinion. It begins by accounting for the importance of the political economy and the ideological foundations that fostered the conditions for which countermovement opposition has emerged. Directly tying this to the countermovement, it then explores the role of Anthony Fisher in crafting what would become a network of think tanks that would reflect the political and economic shifts to a neoliberal global society and the spread of ideas from politics into policy. What follows is a reflection on how these ideas interlock with the rise of countermovement oppositions in the USA and other countries.
In the late 1950s, the fossil fuel industry began its coordinated effort to undermine environmental and later climate-related legislation to protect the industry from increasing regulation, oversight, and accountability. Headed by fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil and the industry association the American Petroleum Institute, a multi-decadal campaign would emerge to undermine climate legislation and influence public opinion on the issue of climate change. This chapter recounts and describes the formation of the CCCM, first looking at the early and organized opposition from coalition groups of fossil fuel companies and other interested parties, to the emergence of a network of think tanks predominantly funded by fossil fuel corporations and conservative donors. It then explores how these organizations successfully helped create doubt that led to inaction during the George H.W. Bush administration before escalating their campaign throughout the Obama administration.
Neoliberal and conservative actors, financed by the fossil fuel industry, have been identified as crucial parts of a climate change denialist counter movement since at least the 1980s. We claim that this intersection stems from more than just vested interest fuelling advocacy groups. By focusing on the intellectual developments and social networks of core actors in the environmental debate in Sweden, we trace the history of opposition to environmental regulation in a country proclaiming to be an environmental pioneer. Our analysis shows that while the framing of climate change in terms of complexity initially provided actors with arguments for neoliberal policies, the obstruction of climate and environmental action was steeped in a neoliberal thought style. Our findings demonstrate the importance of scrutinising economic paradigms and thought styles that has enabled the delay of climate policy as well as the continued need for historical and geographically specific studies of obstruction.
The rejection of climate change science is organized by a countermovement, a collective effort to oppose a threatening social movement, in this case global environmentalism along with climate mitigation efforts. This chapter shows that, from a comparative perspective, the Anglo group of countries are quite alone in organizing the Climate Change Countermovement (CCCM), even though climate denial manifests in an unorganized way more broadly. This chapter offers the theoretical possibility that this Anglo climate denial emerges as a defense of imperial privilege threatened by the social change required to address a warming world. The theory is then supported by selections from authors of books who reject climate change and that evidence a fear of loss—of US power, of possessive individualism, and of Western progress.
This paper updates the analysis of funding of the Climate Change Countermovement from 2003 – 2010 to 2003 – 2018, doubling the time period of the previous analysis. Funding for the organizations in the CCCM has continually increased at a rate of 3.4% throughout the time period. The source of the vast majority (74%) of this funding cannot be identified. Where funding can be identified, it is dominated by contributions from a few large conservative philanthropies.
The key actors involved in producing climate change denial misinformation are identified and discussed, along with their connections to one another. The first set includes those acting primarily out of economic self-interest: the corporate world, front groups and coalitions, public relations firms, and astroturf groups and campaigns. The second includes those with strong ideological (as well as varying levels of economic) motivations: conservative philanthropists and foundations, conservative think tanks, contrarian scientists, conservative media, denial bloggers and advocates on social media, and the Republican Party. This large ecosystem of actors, some more central than others and their importance varying over time, tend to work in coordination. They have played a major role in hampering effective action to ameliorate climate change in the U.S. and internationally. Various strategies for combatting their misinformation are discussed.
This article examines the post-truth debate and questions the argument that post-modernism and social constructivism is responsible for post-truth and alternative facts, including in climate denial. The article argues that social constructivism is not the problem but rather an epistemological orientation that helps us better understand the rise of post-truth. Toward this end, the essay examines the way empirical findings are translated into political knowledge and the role of science in “truth regimes”. From this perspective, there is no amount of fact-checking alone that will resolve the post-truth problem. The argument is illustrated with the case of climate denial.
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