“It’s not okay anymore to be an outright climate denialist. No one’s going to listen to you.”
That’s what Rutgers University professor of media studies Melissa Aronczyk recently told the Washington Post’s Maxine Joselow, for a story about a new study on public relations companies and their work for the energy and environmental industries. Co-author Robert Brulle told Joselow that “the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Koch brothers” are “not really news anymore.” What is news, per Brulle’s paper, is the extensive work being done by the oil and gas industry “to greenwash their reputation and shift public opinion.”
Part of that is the industries’ adaptation to the changed climate conversation, and they’re not just pushing more “climate obstruction” instead of denial. The PR firms, Aronzyk said, “are changing the context in which climate communications take place. It’s even more insidious.”
First off, this is in no way a suggestion that the old school denial crew has turned over a new leaf. For example, Climate Depot just posted videos of a William Happer lecture and interviews, in which the founder of the CO2 Coalition says climate change is “not a problem at all and CO2 is not a problem at all.” Ironically, the second interview appears to be filmed near a fireplace, which is reflected in the window behind Happer making it appear as though the world is literally on fire as he assures viewers warming’s no big deal.
What’s the new style look like though? And how’s it different?
Let’s take a look at a piece by Trump advisor Kevin Hassett, headlined “Death by 1,000 Climate Faucis” in the Leading Conservative Magazine™, the National Review. On the smart side, he noted that he’s personally in favor of a carbon tax (the policy an Exxon exec admitted they only support because it’ll never happen) and he dutifully wears a mask and got vaccinated. But the point of his column is that he fears “the Left has found in the totalitarian Fauci state the playbook that takes this entire COVID farce to the next level.”
Hassett blends both the nuanced and savvy obstructionism targeting sophisticated suburban voters they need for swing states by making clear he’s not some sort of anti-vaxx nutcase, while also delivering exactly the sort of base denial his now anti-vaxx nutcase base loves.
Over at TownHall, Gabriella Hoffman offers a similar approach, contending that it’s “Radical environmentalism” that “poses grave threat to true conservation efforts.” Instead of merely embracing a platform of polluter profits over people to attack Biden over the Keystone pipeline, leasing on federal lands, and expanding National Monuments, Hoffman instead paradoxically asserts those environmental moves were actually bad for the environment. “True conservation,” Hoffman concludes, “calls for wise use, not no use, of natural resources” as that’s “the sustainable path forward.”
While it’s nice that Hoffman claims to support sustainability, readers with any sense of history might remember that when the GOP pretended to support environmental aims as cover for unleashing industrial pollution across America back in the 1980s, they called it the “Wise Use” movement. Does Hoffman, who seems like a relatively youthful voice in the sclerotic climate denial world, not know the history of the phrase, particularly its ignominious end with the resignation of Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt after he made a racist/sexist/ableist/anti-Semitic “joke”?
Or are fossil fuel fanatics now trying to un-cancel something that was championed by someone who was too racist even by 1980s' standards, all in the name of a new less-extremist and more palatable conservative climate communication style?
More importantly, does it matter?
Suggesting that No, nothing matters, is our final piece of the day, James Pinkerton’s Breitbart column charging that “Biden’s Green New Deal = China First. Pinkerton manages to weave together both the new and old, clever and kooky strands of denial, citing Alex Epstein and professor Michael Lind. Writing on the website of the left-criticizing, right-infantilizing, nuclear-boosting Breakthrough Institute, that Pinkerton errantly attributes to The Tablet instead of Breakthrough, Lind gives a very long and lofty-minded-sounding argument that really progressives are just using climate as a pretense for lefty policy wishlist fulfillment. Pinkerton then goes on to cite the Breakthrough correctly, citing Nobel nephew Ted Nordhaus to (basically) claim being rich makes you immune to extreme weather, and then cites Bjorn Lomborg himself saying about the same thing.
But after invoking these examples of the new climate solutions denial to build some credibility, Pinkerton pivots back to the Breitbart base, claiming “the entire solar system is getting warmer, most notably, the planet Venus.” (links original)
The citation for that patently wrong point that goes deep into the debunked cosmic ray theory is from the “Resonance Science Foundation,” an organization founded by Nassim Haramein. Haramein is a quantum physicist who also runs Advanced Resonance Kinetics, which sells “Technology for wellbeing,” namely ARK quartz crystals in a twenty-piece “precision-engineered” “titanium saddle” that’s manufactured using “electromagnetic treatment or modulation by the Harmonic Flux Resonator (HFR),” a technology Haramein invented “to generate a non-linear resonant relationship between the vacuum structure and plasma dynamics.”
These ARK crystals apparently “structure” water, and “the more highly structured and coherent water is, the more energy and information it contains… Highly structured water is easily absorbed by the cell, enabling more efficient and effective cellular signaling and transportation of nutrients and waste.” We tried to check their science, but we had to give them our email to get the report so… no thanks.
But, if this sounds to you like the sort of person we should be trusting with the planet’s climate, and wish to purchase an ARK crystal to structure your water, you’re in luck as the “ARK Coherence Bundle,” consisting of an ARK Crystal + Classic pendant, and ARK Crystal water bottle is on sale for a special low price of $1,250!
And if that seems like a good deal, then congrats, you're gullible enough to buy both new, and old climate denial!
