Floods here, forest fires there: climate change can be felt everywhere. Therefore, the climate change deniers are now changing their tactics, says scientist Michael Mann
Fridays for Future in Germany were abused on social media for rubbish that they allegedly left in the squares of their demonstrations. In your book you mention such allegations from Great Britain. Is that a universal strategy?
In any case. One of the primary tactics in what I call the “new climate war” is to accuse leaders of the movement of hypocrisy. It is a very effective way of discrediting important ambassadors. There is no question that certain actors, by that I mean the fossil-fuel lobby and also state actors, especially Russia, have used social media as a weapon to get these kinds of messages out. This is a classic example. It shows that they will stop at nothing, because in this case they are literally after children to further their agenda of inactivity.
Which corporations did that?
This is very nebulous because a lot of it is done by bot armies. I document in my book how many of these armies of bots on Twitter and Facebook that are spreading these messages seem, in some cases, linked to fossil fuel lobbying organizations. But above all with state actors like Russia. With the help of digital forensics, various organizations have been able to show that these messages are being distributed by bot armies used by Russia and other actors. It is difficult to assign the attacks correctly. It happens in an indirect way. But we do know that these bot armies that deny climate change are spreading messages that attack climate activists and are trying to divide the climate movement.
In your book you refer primarily to the United States on the subject. Do you think that this is also the case in Germany and Europe?
Social media is global, and while some of these efforts target specific countries, such as the United States and Canada, especially in the run-up to critical elections, they are influencing online discourse around the world. While German climate policy is generally much more proactive than that in countries like the USA and Australia, there are still arguments about things like the construction of the Russian-German pipeline, which is favored by the current government. I suspect that the fossil fuel stakeholders will work hard to maintain support for this project using the usual tactics.
You already mentioned what you call “the new climate war”. How does it differ from the “old climate war”?
The “old” climate war was an attack on science. Fossil advocacy groups and those acting at their behest, how conservative media and politicians tried to discredit the science behind human-made climate change. Often through attacks on the scientists themselves. I found myself in the crosshairs of those attacks on the now iconic hockey stick curve that my colleagues and I published a few decades ago. We know that these forces of inactivity, or inactivists as I call them, have largely moved away from this endeavor lately because it is no longer believable. People can see that climate change is taking place. That doesn’t mean that they gave up, on the contrary. But they have turned to other tactics.
Namely?
They are trying to discredit the ambassadors, or to convince the public and policymakers that while climate change is real, it is not a problem. Or that we can pull ourselves out of the affair through so-called geo-engineering. The fossil fuel industry also uses diversionary campaigns.
How do such distraction campaigns work?
One example is the campaign by British Petroleum, BP, which published the very first individual carbon footprint calculator in the early 2000s. They wanted us to focus so much on our individual carbon footprint that we don’t pay attention to theirs. But 70 percent of global carbon emissions come from just 100 polluting companies. This is one of the primary tactics I point out in my book. They are much more difficult to discover, more subtle. They really are the only obstacles that stand in our way now as we are, in some ways, so close to finally taking the necessary action.
Many climate activists are also promoting it and calling on people to eat less meat, for example. Is that harmful?
To person
Michael E. Mann, 55, is Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University in Pennsylvania.
In 1999 , together with a colleague, he published the so-called hockey stick diagram – a graphic that shows the temperature profile of the last millennium in the northern hemisphere and thus makes global warming clear. After this diagram was published in the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and thus became better known, Mann got caught in the crossfire of climate change deniers: inside.
No i think it is important. We should all do things in our daily life that reduce our environmental impact, our carbon footprint. In many cases, these are things that make us healthier, save us money, and make us feel better. We are also a good example to other people. What we cannot allow the inactivists to convince us that it is THE solution to replace the necessary systemic changes in politics. We cannot price carbon as individuals, we cannot subsidize renewable energies, we cannot block new fossil fuel infrastructure. We need our governments to do that.
Another tactic you mention is splitting the climate movement.
I’m talking about pointing fingers at others. That does several things. First, it allows the inactivists to point at John Kerry or Greta Thunberg and accuse them of being hypocrites. Because Greta crossed the Atlantic in a boat that was made of plastic. Pointing the finger at others and blaming each other also leads to discord and division within the climate movement. The inactivists want us to be divided so that we cannot speak with one voice and demand action and change.
In your book you also write about the danger of combining social policy or criticism of capitalism with the climate debate. Why do you think this is a problem?
There is a new development in which more and more people in the left environmental movement are opposing one of the most important means of solving the problem, namely the pricing of carbon. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think it’s a deliberate attempt by inactivists to turn them against it. Conservatives are traditionally against market mechanisms in dealing with climate change. Now, this is a way of getting even some progressives to oppose it. For those who believe that capitalism itself is the problem, carbon prices are a liberal economy tool and therefore bad. Ultimately, I agree with the critics that we need to have a conversation about our current extraction-driven global economy and whether it is compatible with a sustainable existence on this planet.
But?
But we have to tackle the climate crisis now. That means we have to work within the economic framework that exists now to solve this problem. If we believe that we must overturn our current global market economy system before we can address climate change, we are just putting the problem ahead of us.
You said we are already close to taking action on climate change. What makes you so hopeful?
I expressed cautious optimism in my book. The events that have played out since the book went to press last August have reinforced that message. The US is back on the world stage trying to take a lead by working with other nations to overhaul the Paris Mechanism en route to the next COP26 climate change conference later this year. The International Energy Agency, which has traditionally been a very conservative institution and has downplayed the importance of renewable energies in the past, has announced that it is possible to avert catastrophic warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But then there shouldn’t be a new infrastructure for fossil fuels. The US has made a commitment, the EU has pledged to do so, the UK and even China are now hinting that they are ready to tighten their own commitments. These are reasons for cautious optimism. But at the same time we are still dealing with the massive efforts of the fossil fuel industry to block progress, to block the way forward.
If I want to contribute as an individual and I am already doing what I can do individually, what else can I do?
The most important thing we can do as individuals is to use our voice. That can be done by voting for politicians who are ready to do something. This political change requires collective action, massive individual action when it comes to voting.
And how does the political change succeed?
We have to hold politicians accountable by writing letters. Climate change needs to be part of our daily conversations with our family members, friends, work colleagues, schoolmates and everyone else. One way to increase one’s influence is to become a member of organizations. These represent large groups of people and have the resources to try to hold policymakers accountable in order to implement climate and environmentally friendly policies. Being active in every possible way is the most important thing an individual can do. Because even people who may not believe that climate change exists or who don’t care about climate change need to reduce their footprint. And the only way we can do that is to change the system.
