{"id":80375,"date":"2025-08-19T16:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80375\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T16:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:54:10","slug":"the-nonsense-narrative-of-climate-change-as-an-existential-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80375\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nonsense Narrative Of Climate Change As An Existential Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The issue of climate narratives is something very much on my mind these days. Two years ago I wrote<\/a> about five climate change narratives (Scientific, Skeptical, Doomsday, Opportunistic, and Moral) and three months ago I wrote<\/a> that we need a new American narrative for climate change. Thus it was with great interest that I read the recent paper \u201cThe Science vs. the Narrative vs. the Voters: Clarifying the Public Debate Around Energy and Climate<\/a>\u201d by Roger Pielke, Jr. and Ruy Teixeira of the American Enterprise institute<\/a> (AEI). The paper is based on a survey of over 3,000 voters that was conducted for AEI by YouGov between September 20-26, 2024. The findings are fascinating and telling. They are also important to take into account when constructing a narrative about climate change in America that will lead to stable, long-term bipartisan policies. Political oscillations are as much of a challenge to dealing with climate change as climate change itself.<\/p>\n

\"Post<\/p>\n

Digitally generated post apocalyptic scene depicting a desolate urban landscape with buildings in ruins and cloudy sky. The scene was rendered with photorealistic shaders and lighting in UE4 (Unreal Engine 4.23) with some post-production added.<\/p>\n

getty<\/p>\n

The fundamental thesis of the paper is that \u201cBoth the public\u2019s views and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s (IPCC) scientific analysis differ in important respects from a narrative that has come to dominate the mainstream media discourse and public understandings of climate and energy.\u201d In short, the media has largely adopted a Doomsday scenario which is at odds with the position of the IPCC. At the same time, and somewhat ironically, the result is a public perception that the IPCC\u2019s views are more catastrophic than they really are. The AEI report notes that \u201cthe IPCC does not associate climate change with existential, apocalyptic, or catastrophic outcomes.\u201d Yet 77% of respondents answered \u201cYes\u201d to the question \u201cDoes the IPCC think there is a tipping point beyond which temperature rise from the current day will produce catastrophic results for human civilization?\u201d<\/p>\n

Especially telling is how stable this number is. My fellow Ph.D. sociologist Ruy Teixeira kindly provided me the detailed crosstabs for the survey. The range around 77% was tight and insignificant across age groups, gender, race, marital status, having children under 18 or not, full time vs. non-full time employment, union household or not, and income. Not surprisingly, the biggest ranges were along the political dimension. The highest percentage was for registered Democrats (86%), liberals (91%), and Biden voters (87%). Independents and moderates were at 77%. Republicans, conservatives, and Trump voters were all at 66%. This shows how pervasive the Doomsday scenario has become even as people are leaving mainstream media for their own social media echo chambers which tend to both have more misinformation and higher levels of engagement<\/a>. But you have to love the irony of the 66% groups being a bit less uninformed about what the IPCC has to say than the others.<\/p>\n

A stark image of a melting ice cap with its jagged edges contrasting sharply. Reminder of the impact of climate change on our planet.<\/p>\n

getty<\/p>\n

To be sure, the IPCC report discusses tipping points at various temperature levels\u2014such as species extinction, irreversible biodiversity loss, and loss of ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctic\u2014and these are serious. But they don\u2019t mean the end of human civilization. To be clear, I should also say that there is a great deal of uncertainty about tipping points<\/a>. They are low probability\/high impact scenarios which can be extremely consequential. They are \u201cfat-tail\u201d risks for which it is very difficult to assign a precise probability. These scenarios aren\u2019t something to ignore but to leap from them to the end of human civilization is bad science and a sure-fire way to alienate Americans who see climate change as a real issue.<\/p>\n

Americans\u2019 View of Climate Change<\/p>\n

Which is most of them. According to a Spring 2025 report<\/a> \u201cClimate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes\u201d by the Yale Program on Climate Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 69% of Americans believe climate change is happening vs. only 15% who do not. Sixty percent believe it is mostly caused by human activity vs. 28% who believe it is caused mostly by changes in the natural environment. And 65% are at least somewhat worried about it, including 29% who are very worried.<\/p>\n

Extreme Doomsday narratives are more part of the problem than part of the solution to dealing with climate change. Some people will find the Doomsday narrative noncredible. Just because a person said \u201cYes\u201d to some supposed claim by the IPCC doesn\u2019t mean they agree it\u2019s going to happen. Some will simply see the IPCC as no different from a very left wing NGO instead of a collection of scientific experts. If anything, it could lead to a thermostatic reaction of not taking climate change seriously at all. I\u2019d be surprised if a single one of those 3,000 survey respondents have read this report and no reason to expect them to. So they\u2019re going with a perception they\u2019ve picked up from a general narrative, not the report itself.<\/p>\n

Plant growing inside the light bulb, miniature house on the grass and United States Flag. Renewable energy. Electricity prices, energy saving in the household.<\/p>\n

getty<\/p>\n

For other people, this narrative only makes things worse when it comes to addressing the issue. There is extensive behavioral science research showing the apocalyptic depictions can get people\u2019s attention in the short term, over the long term they can lead to anxiety, fatalism, or disengagement, especially among those already facing social or economic stress. Consider these numbers from the Yale\/George Mason report about how Americans feel about climate change: Many Americans say they feel the following emotions about global warming: interested (58%), sad (44%), disgusted (44%), afraid (39%), anxious (39%), angry (39%), hopeful (38%), outraged (36%), hopeless (34%), or depressed (28%). I fail to see how a message of \u201cWe are all doomed unless you drive an EV and become vegan\u201d is very helpful to addressing the problem. What Americans need to know is that climate change is a serious challenge but one we can address if we come together, ignore the extreme climate activists and climate change deniers, and develop have sensible bipartisan policies that enable rather than interferes with market forces. This is the message in a book I\u2019ve just finished which will come out early next year.<\/p>\n

Origins of the Doomsday Narrative<\/p>\n

Pielke and Teixeira do a nice job of explaining how the Doomsday narrative came about and the role of individuals (e.g., Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, Greta Thunberg David Wallace-Wells) and organizations (e.g., 350.org, Earthjustice, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Sunrise Movement) in making this happen. They summarize this dominant narrative in mainstream media in seven points which I can summarize in three:<\/p>\n

Fossil fuels and anyone associated with them are evil, including you if you don\u2019t agree with this.
\n Renewable energy can solve everything and has no downside.
\n The only thing preventing a dramatic, even total, shift from fossils fuels to renewable energy is the lack of political will due to ignorant and\/or corrupt people.<\/p>\n

This narrative has \u201cmade it the conventional wisdom of the college-educated left, much of the center, and the mainstream media.\u201d They explain how this narrative basically took over the Democratic Party\u2019s position on climate change from the 2012 Obama era of \u201call of the above\u201d when it comes to energy sources to the \u201crenewables or bust\u201d one today.<\/p>\n

Women electrical engineer while working near to high voltage tower<\/p>\n

getty
\nThe Ecoright<\/p>\n

Something else has changed over the past dozen years or so. The emergence of the so-called \u201cEcoright\u201d which I discuss in this RepublicEn podcast<\/a>. These organizations are focused on climate change but from a conservative perspective. Over the past two years I\u2019ve gotten to know many of them and have worked with them in a variety of ways including Alliance for Market Solutions, American Conservation Coalition, C3 Solutions, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, ClearPath, Climate Solutions Fund, DEPLOY\/US, RepublicEN, and the R Street Institute. I think the work they are doing is far more important for addressing the challenge of climate change than the loud and shrill rhetoric and performative actions (e.g., protests, boycotts, and some shareholder proposals) coming out of the far left climate catastrophe crowd.<\/p>\n

The Ecoright has no illusions about the seriousness of climate change. It acknowledges the importance of mitigation but pays more attention to adaptation than the Doomsday diktats. It has an \u201call of the above\u201d approach to energy sources with an emphasis on market forces. They are no more enthusiastic than I am about the Statist approach Trump is taking to emphasizing fossil fuels over wind and solar than I am. The Ecoright recognizes the importance of innovation and new technologies, including those that are unpalatable to the far left such as nuclear and carbon capture and storage. It is very pragmatic about the importance of issues such as improving the electrical grid and making permitting easier, topics rarely discussed on the left since it\u2019s so busy screaming about fossil fuels. It also recognizes the important role that public policy and regulation has to play, and that it needs to be bipartisan.<\/p>\n

Do I agree with them on everything? Of course not. And they don\u2019t all 100% agree with each other. Climate change is an incredibly complicated topic and we need many ideas to test and discuss. I support a price on carbon; some of the Ecoright do and some don\u2019t. I\u2019m more comfortable with regulation than they are. I\u2019m more supportive of sensible subsidies for wind and solar for a limited period then they are.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing and I find it very telling. All of these folks know I\u2019m a liberal with very different political views than theirs. Yet it\u2019s easier for me to have civil and constructive discussions with them about climate change than with the people and organizations on the far left. The diehard climate activists have an orthodoxy from which even the slightest deviation is apostasy. Fall completely into line or you\u2019re cast out of the Climate Church and branded as a climate-change denier or, even worse, a Republican!<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe me? Send this little piece to some of your diehard climate activist friends and see what they have to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The issue of climate narratives is something very much on my mind these days. Two years ago I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[61082,61081,64,63,68,61078,61079,75,61080,61077,61084,61083,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-80375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-american-enterprise-institute","9":"tag-americans-views-on-climate-change","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-climate-change","13":"tag-doomsday-scenario","14":"tag-ecoright","15":"tag-environment","16":"tag-far-left","17":"tag-narratives","18":"tag-roger-pielke-jr","19":"tag-ruy-teixeira","20":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}