The UN IPCC’s latest report on the fight against climate change has the standard bad news you’d expect, but also some encouraging signs, and some great news for disinfo haters.
The bad news is that people all over the planet are continuing to experience worsening impacts of fossil fuel pollution, and we’re on track for ever-more costly disasters if warming continues. Current pledges aren’t enough, and current fossil fuel infrastructure is enough to increase warming beyond the 1.5°C limit. Ending subsidies is a start, and of course we can’t build any new fossil fuel infrastructure. Instead, we need to peak emissions by 2025, and if not, we will pay dearly, in dollars and lives.
The good news is that we still have some time to avoid the worst of it, if we quickly transition away from fossil fuels. And that’s feasible, because renewables are so cheap there’s no real reason to build new fossil fuel infrastructure. The challenge of this transition is not primarily technology- we have the tools to do it and the money to afford it.
The barriers now are the fossil fuel industry’s politicians, pundits, and propaganda.
Buried in the report’s Technical Summary are a few key mentions that explain why the global community is failing to act in its own obvious best interest. Or, more accurately, who is erecting barriers to acting on the global consensus that we need to reduce warming to under 1.5°C.
“Opposition from status quo interests” to things like funding for climate programs “act as barriers to establishing and implementing stringent climate policies covering all sectors,” according to the IPCC report.
What’s more, the report notes that an increase in engagement with the climate issue doesn’t necessarily translate directly into “overall pro-mitigation outcomes” because, in part, “accurate transference of the climate science has been undermined significantly by climate change counter- movements, in both legacy and new/social media environments through misinformation.”
And while the mainstream media's coverage of climate has been increasing and improving, the report describes how “the propagation of scientifically misleading information by organized counter-movements has fueled polarization, with negative implications for climate policy.”
Or translated into plain English: people who profit off of the fossil fuel pollution and other causes of the climate crisis are using their wealth and power to thwart climate action by lying to the public about the science and making climate action a controversial political issue.
That’s why it’s so important for climate policy that we take action on climate disinformation.
Which, if you’re reading this, you probably already know!
