Climate action (or climate change action) refers to a range of activities, mechanisms, policy instruments, and so forth that aim at reducing the severity of human-induced climate change and its impacts. "More climate action" is a central demand of the climate movement. [1] Climate inaction is the absence of climate action.
Some examples of climate action include:
Environmental skepticism is the belief that statements by environmentalists, and the environmental scientists who support them, are false or exaggerated. The term is also applied to those who are critical of environmentalism in general. It can additionally be defined as doubt about the authenticity or severity of environmental degradation. Environmental skepticism is closely linked with anti-environmentalism and climate change denial. Environmental skepticism can also be the result of cultural and lived experiences.
Denial, in ordinary English usage, has at least three meanings: asserting that any particular statement or allegation is not true ; the refusal of a request; and asserting that a true statement is not true.
The politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, certain industries like cement and steel production, and land use for agriculture and forestry. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have provided the main source of energy for economic and technological development. The centrality of fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries has resulted in much resistance to climate friendly policy, despite widespread scientific consensus that such policy is necessary.
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank known for denying the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.
Anti-environmentalism is a set of ideas and actions that oppose environmentalism as a whole or specific environmental policies or environmental initiatives.
Climate change denial is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.
DeSmog, founded in January 2006, is an international journalism organization that focuses on topics related to climate change. DeSmog's emphasis is investigating and reporting on misinformation campaigns and organizations opposing climate science and action. The site was founded, originally in blog format, by James Hoggan, president of a public relations firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. DeSmog is a partner in the Covering Climate Now project which organizes and assists news organizations cover climate change worldwide. DeSmog also maintains several databases of persons and organizations engaged in misinformation and lobbying against addressing climate change.
Public opinion on climate change is related to a broad set of variables, including the effects of sociodemographic, political, cultural, economic, and environmental factors as well as media coverage and interaction with different news and social media. International public opinion on climate change shows a majority viewing the crisis as an emergency.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.
Media coverage of climate change has had effects on public opinion on climate change, as it conveys the scientific consensus on climate change that the global temperature has increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.
Kari Marie Norgaard is a Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, a post she has held since 2017. She is known for her research into Indigenous environmental justice, climate change denial and the politics of global warming.
Robert J. Brulle is an American environmental sociologist and professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University. He is also an associate professor of public health at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He advocates aggressive political action to address global warming.
Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand is a 2011 non-fiction book about climate-change denial, coauthored by Haydn Washington and John Cook, with a foreword by Naomi Oreskes. Washington had a background in environmental science prior to authoring the work; Cook, educated in physics, founded (2007) the website Skeptical Science, which compiles peer-reviewed evidence of global warming. The book was first published in hardcover and paperback formats in 2011 by Earthscan, a division of Routledge.
From the 1980s to mid 2000s, ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking.
Climate Change Denial Disorder (CCDD) is a satirical short film which parodies climate change denial and perspectives on climate change through discussion of a fictional disease. The film stars actors Ed Begley Jr., Timothy Brennan, and Susan Yeagley. It was directed by Carly Usdin, written by Nicol Paone, and produced by Brianne Trosie. The film was released on April 14, 2015, by comedy video website and film/TV production company Funny or Die and on April 16 to YouTube.
Climate communication or climate change communication is a field of environmental communication and science communication focused on discussing the causes, nature and effects of anthropogenic climate change.
The psychology of climate change denial is the study of why people deny climate change, despite the scientific consensus on climate change. A study assessed public perception and action on climate change on grounds of belief systems, and identified seven psychological barriers affecting behavior that otherwise would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship: cognition, ideological worldviews, comparisons to key people, costs and momentum, disbelief in experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and inadequate behavioral changes. Other factors include distance in time, space, and influence.
The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer. Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.