Apathy and Malice

The Heralds of a Burning World

When did you know? That is what many of us want to know, upon waking from our own climate-ignorant sleep. We turn to those who were meant to be taking first watch and ask why did you not wake us? Well, it seems as though we have slept through quite a racket. The climate crisis and its anthropogenic cause have been apparent for decades, yet a willingness to accept this fact has often faltered. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accepted climate consensus in 1995 and declared “a discernible human influence on global climate” (Maskell et al,. 1996). Whilst a rhetorical advance, this did not represent some new finding, or instantaneous development. In fact as far back as 1965, US presidents were being warned of potential climate crises associated with human fossil fuel consumption (Oreskes and Conway, 2012). We had known for years but action was limited. Even when attempts were made to alter policy they often fell short of what was required. Agreements such as those made in Kyoto (2005) and Paris (2015) were publicly lauded as green victories but condemned by experts as toothless agreements that fell short of the necessary drastic action (Maizland, 2021).

So why then did our slovenly night-watchmen fail: for the same reasons most progress stalls - personal greed, corporate interest and perhaps most importantly, apathy. One tool used to serve these interests was a conscious and subversive politicisation of climate warnings. A cottage industry of manufactured doubt and experts for hire sprung up, sourcing those willing to expound political views under the veneer of scientific authority. Fredrick Seitz was one such agent. He used the media, scientific journals, panel appearances and really any means possible to claim that proposed climate policy was a pejorative attack on the principles of the free market and private property by climate ‘alarmists’ (Oreskes and Conway, 2012). He and others went on to claim such environmental concerns were naught but a thinly veiled attempt to goad governments into imprudent action that would jeopardise private interests and cause economic ruination. In short, he and others like him created a political mire of climate change. Similarly the right wing Marshall Institute, published and disseminated work that aimed to convince the powerful that climate policy was simply left wing radicalism (Oreskes and Conway, 2012). They attempted to obfuscate consensus by claiming warming was a natural and temporal effect of the sun on Earth’s atmosphere and were so prolific that they are credited with the stalling of climate policy under the Bush administration (Oreskes and Conway, 2012). Their claims were easily rebuffed; the stratosphere (outer layer of the earth’s atmosphere) was in fact not heating as would be expected if the sun was the cause of warming, but rather it was the troposphere (inner layer) which was heating. Scientists showed that heat retaining greenhouse gases (produced by human consumption of fossil fuels) were unable to escape the troposphere, thus driving temperature increases and helping prove the validity of the greenhouse effect. However, the damage was done, doubt became synonymous with discourse around global warming and the vast canon of faulty and disingenuous manufactured science is still out there today.

As though that were not enough, corporations systematically hid information and misled those around them in order to protect harmful industries and their profit margins.

As though that were not enough, corporations systematically hid information and misled those around them in order to protect harmful industries and their profit margins. Exxon was found to have purposely misled the public on climate change until 2014 (Grasso, 2019) and Shell too was found to have neglected to tell their shareholders about the causal relationship between its products and climate change for 16 years (Grasso, 2019). However, in spite of the actions of these individuals, organisations and corporations it would still be unfair to land them solely with the blame. Whilst these ‘bad actors’ pursued their own advancement, other, granted, less powerful voices, were making the case for progressive climate policy and warning us of the crisis to come. We had opportunities to listen but were often too apathetic or distracted to care, granting denialists their victory. Those who hid the truth counted on a preference to ignore rather than confront bad news, they expected us to write off a potential threat which we could not immediately see or feel as inconsequential. This was perhaps their most intelligent tactic. An acceptance of climate change requires us to admit our part in its cause and make uncomfortable changes to address its outcomes, as such by offering us an excuse, a reason to ignore the warnings they allowed us to avoid confronting the difficult truth.

Culpability then is in the hands not just of the plotters and beneficiaries but also the ordinary and uninterested. We cannot complain that the watchmen had to shake us awake, because we went to sleep with earplugs in.

Sarah Dewar