One of the strangest new approaches deniers have successfully pushed into the mainstream is that bad things happening now will happen more if we take climate action.
For example, taking her cues from the WSJ’s editorial board and other deniers, Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times wrote about how people are (wrongly) blaming renewables for the blackouts. Specifically, she quotes from a variety of fossil-fuel-funded pundits at length to give the impression that renewables are at fault, but to her credit, does quote a California official stating clearly that “renewables have not caused” the rolling blackouts. (It’s actually a somewhat impressive example of how biased outlets can give readers the sense that what they want to be true is true by burying the direct quote stating the allegations are false in amongst numerous quotes from those making unfounded accusations.)
But a California example doesn’t quite have national appeal, so deniers are also using the coronavirus lockdowns to fearmonger on climate in outlets large and small, fringe and mainstream.
For example, once upon a time the conspiracy nuts at the American Thinker would be considered fringe voices of the far right. But these days, the Thinker’s embrace of birtherism, white nationalism, and Islamophobia are becoming standard fare for the right. So an absolutely nutty piece from the American Thinker about how both COVID-19 and climate are secret Trojan Horses for government control and “how dictatorships begin” has an only slightly more polished counterpart at the Wall Street Journal, where Paul Tice argues, per the headline, “if you like lockdowns, you’ll love the carbon-free future.”
Whereas Dr. Brian C. Joondeph, the eye-doctor-turned Q-Anon guy writing in the American Thinker, questions whether the “empty gestures” to contain COVID-19 by “totalitarian wannabees serving as mayors or governors” are really “trying to advance a political agenda” like they are with climate policy, the Much More Respectable Mr. Tice merely points out that since the lockdown “choked off demand for crude oil and refined products,” that “this is what a world without fossil fuels looks like.” (Apparently Mr. Tice has never heard of electric vehicles.)
While Dr. “posts misogynistic boomer memes on Facebook” worries in the American Thinker that “the Chinese virus doomsayers, like Fauci, and Bill Gates” are out to make money on curing Covid just like Al Gore is on climate, Mr. Tice thinks the $3 trillion added to the debt by the bailout packages means “there’s no money left to subsidize green energy.” (Apparently Mr. Tice missed the GOP’s $6 trillion tax cut, which could always be reversed…)
Don't let the obvious difference in the tone and tenor of the two pieces fool you. Their arguments are, at their core, the same: the government shouldn’t protect the public if that protection comes at a cost to the status quo.
Which, as far as denial propaganda goes, isn’t actually all that strange!
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