Are we all climate change denialists?
Mouse-over links for notes ... apologies to mobile readers!
In November 02009, @jackofkent in his blog post On Denialism asked:
Is Denialism a helpful term?
and gave this answer:
For some time I have been troubled by the tone of climate change and global warming discussions, especially the use of the terms Denialism and Denialist.
As a layperson, I regard Denialism and Denialist as rather unhelpful terms.Indeed, I would even propose a general rule.Whatever the other merits of making an accusation of Denialism, it will usually tend to be a public engagement FAIL.
I'm torn between agreeing with Jack that insulting people isn't going to win a debate, and fearing that whoever's left in the future will use an even harsher name: climate change collaborators?
But it seems to me that an additional reason for caution with the term denialist is that if we use it at all, we may need to accept that most of us are denialists to some degree.
Consider the following propositions, onto which for the sake of linearity I've forced a dubious total ordering:
| n+1 | Proposition | Example? * |
| 11 | The world is not warming: it's cooling, and there will be an ice age. | Bob Carter |
| 10 | The world is staying at the same temperature. | |
| 9 | The world is warming but it's natural and nothing to worry about. | |
| 8 | Global warming is occurring, and it's anthropogenic (caused by human activity), but we can deal with it through market mechanisms like cap and trade, and technology like carbon capture. | Most political leaders |
| 7 | Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is occurring, but green technology, lessening consumption and individually simplifying our lifestyles will handle it. | Duane Elgin |
| 6 | AGW can be stopped by a new empathic, distributed capitalism. | Jeremy Rifkin |
| 5 | AGW can only be stopped if we end and reverse economic growth. | Tim Jackson |
| 4 | AGW can only be stopped if we end capitalism, because growth is intrinsic to capitalism. | John Bellamy Foster |
| 3 | AGW can only be stopped if we end civilisation and return to living in our original state. |
John Zerzan |
| 2 | It is too late to stop AGW by any means: there will be a massive collapse of planetary systems. |
Dark Mountain |
| 1 | Global warming is caused by growth which is intrinsic to life (which will evolve again even after man), and cannot be stopped till the whole planet is inorganic. | |
| 0 | Not good enough: even then growth would start up again unless we remove carbon from the periodic table. |
* Apologies if in suggesting examples I've misunderstood anyone's position.
Suppose we call a person who asserts proposition n + 1 but denies proposition n a "denialist of strength n". Bob Carter would be a strength 10 denialist.
John Bellamy Foster, in the Monthly Review article "Why Ecological Revolution?" linked above, writes:
[H]umanity is facing an unprecedented challenge. On the one hand, we are confronting the question of a terminal crisis, threatening most life on the planet, civilization, and the very existence of future generations. On the other hand, attempts to solve this through technological fixes, market magic, and the idea of a “sustainable capitalism” are mere forms of ecological denial: since they ignore the inherent destructiveness of the current system of unsustainable development — capitalism. This suggests that the only rational answer lies in an ecological revolution, which would also have to be a social revolution, aimed at the creation of a just and sustainable society.
I agree. That makes me a denialist of strength 3, because also (sorry to be wishy-washy) I'd find civilisation hard to give up.
Where are you on the scale?
Update 6 Feb: After feedback from @josswinn, I've changed the first column header in the table from "n" to "n+1" to help clarify the strength ratings. Joss also suggested, I think rightly, that 3 and 2 could be swapped:indeed Dark Mountain's uncivilisation is more positive than Zerzan's anti-civilisation, so perhaps also less more "denialist".


