Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe
Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.
It found climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies.
The researchers found climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain.
Online bots and trolls hugely amplify false narratives, the researchers say, playing a key role in promoting climate lies. The experts also report that political leaders, civil servants and regulatory agencies are increasingly being targeted in order to delay climate action.
Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised. On Saturday, Brazil, host of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, will rally nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.
'It is a major problem,' said Dr Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the Ipie review. 'If we don't have the right information available, how are we going to vote for the right causes and politicians, and how are politicians going to translate the clear evidence into the necessary action? Unfortunately, I think the [bad actors] are still very, very active, and probably have the upper hand now.'
Jensen added: 'We have about five years to cut emissions in half and until 2050 to go carbon neutral. Without the right information, we're not going to get there. So the climate crisis being translated into a climate catastrophe is possible, unless we handle the climate information integrity problem.'
Morgera said in her report last week that countries must 'defossilise' information systems, after decades of misinformation from the powerful fossil fuel industry.
She said states should 'criminalise misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry' and 'criminalise media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies'. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called in June 2024 for a ban on advertising by fossil fuel companies, calling the firms the 'godfathers of climate chaos'.
The UN is leading an international effort called the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change. Brazil will call for countries to strengthen measures to fight climate lies at climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, with the UK, France, Chile, Morocco and others already signed up to the initiative. Audrey Azoulay, the Unesco director general, said: 'Climate-related disinformation [is] running rampant on social media.'
The Ipie report is a comprehensive assessment of who is producing climate misinformation, how they propagate it, what impact it has and how it can be combated. It concludes: 'Misleading information has undermined public trust in climate science and other key social institutions. This crisis of information integrity is intensifying and exacerbating the climate crisis.'
The misinformation ranges from industry promoting fossil gas as a 'low-carbon fuel' to bizarre conspiracy theories such as that wildfires in southern California this year were planned by officials in order to destroy child-trafficking tunnels.
Among the findings are that the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a 'dual deception' of the public, first denying the reality of climate change, obscuring its responsibility and obstructing climate action, and, second, deploying greenwash to portray itself as an environmentally sustainable enterprise. The report says other sectors have also promoted climate misinformation: US electricity companies, animal agriculture, airlines, tourism, and fast food.
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Donald Trump, who has called climate science 'a giant hoax' and 'bullshit', is identified as a key influencer, 'whose logical fallacies, unfounded claims and cherrypicking of findings were heavily' reposted by other social media users, including many bot accounts. The report says Russian intelligence has used troll farms to disseminate disinformation about climate change.
However, Jensen said the problem was deeper than social media. 'Alliances of industry and conservative thinktanks actually target misinformation at the key people who will be making decisions. Those links are particularly worrisome because it's something approaching a conspiracy.'
In the European context, rightwing populist parties are 'actively contravening climate science', the report says, including the AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, and the National Rally in France. Media outlets with conservative or rightwing political ideologies give priority to and amplify denial, scepticism and conspiracy theories regarding climate change, the report says.
Measures to fight climate misinformation include regulation to improve the moderation of content by social media companies, as with the EU Digital Services Act, and requiring fossil fuel companies to make standardised declarations of their emissions. Jensen said some legal cases against purveyors of climate misinformation were already under way. In the longer term, improved climate education would enable citizens to identify misinformation.
Jensen also said more research was needed as the studies to date were overwhelmingly on English-language misinformation and western nations, with, for example, just one study out of the 300 focused on Africa.
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