There’s no denying it: knowledge and understanding of climate change is just as far-reaching as its impacts as activism and involvement from people all over the world increases.
It is one of the greatest threats to America (certainly more so than ISIS or Ebola), yet despite the enormous body of evidence and increasing popular acknowledgment across the globe, there are people, companies, and organizations still in denial of the science, doubting either out of distrust of science in general or undermining scientific dissemination for financial reasons. These groups have blocked any sort of action on climate change for too long and we are beginning to see the consequences, from enormous species loss to the world’s largest ice sheets melting faster than predicted.
But as climate change denial becomes an increasingly unpopular (and difficult) position to defend, are climate deniers just another endangered species?
Climate Denial is typically thought of as being a belief held strongest by older people with conservative-leaning politics. But a survey of 20 countries in 2013 revealed that that is not necessarily the case; in the United States, 52 percent of those polled agreed with the statement “The climate change we are currently seeing is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time.” Possibly more surprising is that India tied with the U.S., and China a close second with 51 percent agreement. However, 91 percent of the Chinese respondents agreed with the statement that unless we change our habits we are headed for environmental disaster. Only 57 percent of American respondents said yes.
Climate Deniers have successfully hindered almost all progress towards international action by refusing the overwhelming body of scientific evidence and perpetuating the misinformation fed to them by politicians and their corporate sponsors that would suffer from any kind of climate change mitigation legislation. For years, these purveyors of misinformation have called the Republican Party home, but that is changing rapidly
There is a generational divide in the Republican Party and the newest generation of Republicans is more left leaning than their predecessors. According the Pew Charitable Trust, the entire Millennial Generation is more to the left across on the political spectrum than any other generation, with only a small portion firmly rooted in the far-right. In regards to environmental protection, 48 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning Independent Millennials think that “stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost.”
Climate Denial is also an increasingly unpopular position to hold in U.S. politics. In a speech U.S. Treaty Envoy Todd Stern gave last week at Yale Law School, he expressed his opinion that climate denial would be so unpopular that no politician who actually wanted to win an election would support it:
“I doubt, even a year from now, whether major political candidates will consider it viable to deny the existence of climate change.”
Over the past two and a half decades, climate science has not just been taught in schools, but broadcasted on TV and the Internet as science became mainstream. Take for example Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos or in HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.
Just last month, the People’s Climate March drew over four hundred thousand sup
porters to Manhattan, with events in 162 other counties, to show world leaders gathered for climate treaty talks at the U.N. headquarters how important an issue it is. The Pentagon just released a report describing climate change as “an immediate risk.” Even Fox News talking heads are beginning to take notice.
Climate change deniers are losing ground in the political system and they have only two options: they will either have to adapt their views to the changing environment around them, or they will sbmit to the passing of time and dwindle into the geological record as just another fossil.
(This article was originally published on Urban Times)
