Trying to talk to a climate denier is not an amusing experience. They have their talking points to justify denial and FOX/talk radio/the Republican Party are always supplying new ones as the old ones crash and burn.
Just because I have too much time on my hands (and am procrastinating to keep from doing things that I really need to get around to), I’ve developed some questions to challenge them with, which completely avoid talking about climate change. There are other reasons to get off fossil fuels, and here’s a few.
Feel free to copy and paste.
Let’s try this.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that climate change is a hoax and there is no need to get off fossil fuels for a hoax.
All the stories about people dying from a heat wave in Europe and elsewhere right now, airports closing because the runways are melting in the heat, railroads shutting down because heat is buckling the rails, that forest fires are burning out of control because of heat and drought – let’s pretend that all of that is fake news to get ratings. (And we won’t talk about what it is doing to wildlife around the globe, or food supplies.)
Let’s pretend all the warnings from scientists going back decades that predicted what we are seeing now (that fake news) were all just part of a conspiracy to get funding, and 99.9% of scientists around the world are all in on it.
Rising sea levels, melting glaciers and ice caps, bigger storms, extended droughts, etc. have nothing to do with greenhouse gas levels rising in the atmosphere from human activity, that it’s all because of the sun, or because there have always been hot days, or because we have always had big storms, or because the climate is always changing. Whatever.
Okay – let’s pretend all the above for the sake of argument. Now for some questions:
Oil prices are set on the world market. Would you be okay with Biden or any other president banning the export of domestic oil and gas to ensure we have enough in America for our needs, and do you think that would keep prices low here in America?
Keep in mind that would probably require nationalizing the oil industry and the government setting prices. Would you be okay with that?
There are places where the government can sell leases for gas and oil. If the answer is to tackle the energy situation from the supply side, do you think the oil companies will take those leases and spend billions to develop them to increase the domestic supply to bring their prices and profits down?
Do you think oil companies are going to want to spend money on those wells when it takes months before they see any profit – and the growing market share of electric cars is cutting demand for gasoline?
Keep in mind that the petroleum industry is seeing record profits with things as they are. Do you believe the petroleum industry is going to spend money they don’t have to spend just to provide us with cheaper energy?
Do you think their stockholders would be okay with that?
What do you think would happen with the rest of the world that relies on fossil fuels? We import a lot of stuff. Do you think higher energy prices will not show up on all that stuff coming in on container ships from overseas even if we lock down our own supply?
Let’s talk about the national security angle. Petroleum props up some of the most oppressive governments in the world. All they need to do to cripple the global economy is restrict supply. It has happened in the past and it is happening now. Are you okay with relying for energy on a resource that can be used for blackmail?
Fossil fuel supplies are finite; there is only so much. Do you think it makes sense to keep using an energy resource that is only going to get harder to extract and more expensive as supplies dwindle?
You say that electric cars are bad for the environment because of the mining needed to produce batteries for them. (Of course, we could also be using electric cars powered by clean hydrogen.)
Are you okay with the decades of land ruined by strip mining for coal, mountain top removal, and the toxic runoff from abandoned coal mines?
Are you okay with the damage done by oil spills and the mining of tar sands to extract oil?
Are you okay with the damage done to water supplies by fracking and the waste it generates?
You mention clean coal. Do you think that because you don’t see any smoke coming out of the chimney there’s nothing bad in there?
Do you think coal ash is clean waste – especially on the scale needed to generate power at utility levels?
Suppose you are descended from several generations of coal miners. Would any of them want you to work in a mine? Would you want your children to work in a mine? Would you want to live next to one, or have a coal burning power plant upwind of you?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, perhaps you might want to consider looking for better answers. They are out there.
Most of these kinds of debates are being fought out on an emotional basis. This approach is one way to shift the debate around.
Instead of battling ‘facts’ with real facts, and arguing over what news is truly fake, taking climate change out of play for this maneuver forces the deniers to either walk away, resort to insults, try to deflect…. or have to think about their answers.
I don’t promise this will be effective, but it might put deniers on the defensive and make them reconsider what they ‘know’ to be true.