Reflections on climate change denial #1 – why oversimplification has made global warming a cult

There I was having a nice cup of tea listening to Radio Four when Peter Hitchens came on to talk about why energy saving light bulbs are proof of the tyranny of the nanny state and that man-made global warming was a load of old hokey. This got me rather hot and bothered even though the heating was off and my tea was cold, but rather than internally fume I decided to think more broadly about what he is saying. On reflection, what occurred to me is that climate science has become so dumbed down for public consumption that people now find it hard to believe.

So let’s look at the oversimplification of climate science. Two years ago few people knew what a carbon footprint was, but now it has become so ubiquitous that I even saw a man in Westfield shopping centre yesterday wearing a sweatshirt that said, “keep your carbon footprint low dude”. Some might say that this means that the message is getting across, but I bet if I’d asked that man what his footprint was he wouldn’t know. What we – the communications people – have done by reducing a complex science down to neat digestable messages and "top tips for what to do" is create this simple equation:

man-made stuff = carbon emissions = 2 cm sea level rise in 2050

By essentially editing out great swathes of scientific information we have made it easy for people to believe or deny that equation. If we broadened it to reflect the actual components of the environmental situation, it might look more like this:

Growth of mass production and consumption of commercial products, livestock, food, transport, services, minerals, etc + population growth = Deforestation + acidification of oceans + mass agriculture + species loss + peak oil, etc = Pollution, greenhouse gases, unstable international relations, war, poverty, extreme weather events, flooding, etc.

Because the true picture is systemic: whether we like it or not, man is a species that sits within – not outside of – the eco-system which in itself is entirely interdependent. Noone would deny the dependence of plants on bees for pollination or animals on plants for oxygen, but too often we take ourselves –  man – out of the system altogether which in turn enables us to deny that our actions make any impact at all.

By simplyifying our impact into a short equation about carbon emissions, we further distance people from the multi-species holistic eco-system that we live in and we make “man” the villain and "earth" the victim. This of course polarises people into “for” and “against” camps because who, other than bleeding heart liberals like me, wants to admit to being the villain? So by oversimplifying a complex problem into a digestable message, we therefore make it possible to deny the existence of an environmental crisis altogether. And the media then sees it as an argument with two sides and TV producers can make films called “the Great Global Warming Swindle”, and silly people like James May and Peter Hitchens get air time on BBC 1 and Radio Four to say “I don’t believe in man-made global warming” like it is a cult or something.

Climate change in itself has become an easily thrown about soundbite with the polar bear as its charismatic mascot. In this oversimplification, we no longer look at man’s actual impact on the environment, but rather we choose between the option of man = villain or man = hero, and select which side of this totally unscientific binary argument we sit on. It’s not hard to understand where climate change denial comes from when you look at it like that. Even I'd rather be a hero than a villain.