WEBVTT - The "Culture War" Embraces Climate 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.680 Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. A new report 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:18.439 was released recently from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:24.120 the twenty plus member Coalition Climate Action Against Disinformation. It's 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:29.280 called Deny, Deceive and Delay, and it documents and responds 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:34.280 to climate disinformation from the COP twenty sixth summit to today. 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:40.360 It also offers some suggestions for countering disinformation policies that 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:45.200 could help and messaging frameworks that might be helpful. Today, 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:48.240 I'm joined by Jenny King, who was the lead author 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.839 on the report, to walk us through some of the 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.120 findings and what to make of them. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:01:22.000 That conversation's coming up right after this quick break. 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.440 So I'm curious to hear maybe a little bit about 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:19.440 the process first, how you started looking at this issue 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.080 and how you kind of honed in on these super 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:25.279 spreader accounts in the first place. 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:31.520 Sure, my organization ISD has traditionally looked at the evolution 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.000 of extremist and conspiracist ideologies and the roles that they 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:39.560 are playing in undermining democratic processes and norms and ultimately 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.160 fueling haide speech and violence. And over the years we've 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.240 developed a very large portfolio in lots of different vectors 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:50.320 of disinformation, because obviously, disinformation is a key tool used 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.880 by both extremist and conspiracist movements and also used in 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.480 the effort to drive polarization in a number of societies, 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:00.440 and so working on climate change might seem like a 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.279 slightly left field choice. But the reason why we became 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.240 so interested and decided to build out an entirely new 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.560 portfolio of work in this space is because we noticed 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.000 that a lot of the communities we have been monitoring 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.720 for a number of years were beginning to espouse anti 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:21.040 environmental stances, and that there seemed to be a growing 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:26.520 confluence between the kinds of anti government, anti elite, broad 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.960 culture wars, and identity politics framing that you would find 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:34.360 in other really important issue sets like migration or sectional 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:38.720 reproductive health rights or hate speech incitement to violence, and 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:42.200 what was happening around climate change, and that to us 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.320 felt like an extremely concerning shift in the evolution of 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.640 rhetoric around this particular issue, and so we decided to 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.280 get into the weeds of why that was happening, who 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.480 it was being driven by, where it was taking place 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:59.079 across both social media and legacy media outlets, and more importantly, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:01.520 what could be done about it, And over the past 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:05.079 eighteen months or so, our efforts have then broadened out 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.280 into the formalization of this coalition Climate Action Against Disinformation, 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:14.200 which involves over twenty organizations globally that work either in 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.800 the counter disinformation space or in the climate science, climate policy, 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.040 and climate advocacy spaces, and that the combination of those 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:25.160 two sets of expertise has given us a really unique 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:28.919 lens in trying to understand what are the tactics at play, 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.400 not anymore really to deny that climate change exists, but 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:37.480 to make sure that meaningful policy is never implemented, either 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:39.840 at the dotstick or the multilateral level. 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.480 Do you think that there's any indication that this is 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.880 part of the sort of pivot to ecofascism. 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.200 You are certainly seeing the growth in eco fascist rhetoric, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.119 or at least the mainstreaming and the normalization of those 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.280 kinds of ideologies, and of course that fits with the 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:01.360 fact that racist rhetoric and particularly phobic and anti migrant 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.640 rhetoric has become so mainlined in a lot of political discourse, 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:09.680 particularly across Europe, across North America, across Asia Pacific. And 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.720 it's really worth noting that both the christ Church shooter 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:19.160 in New Zealand who committed mass atrocity against Muslim citizens 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:24.200 and the recent mass shooter in Buffalo who murdered a 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.159 number of African American citizens, that both of them, in 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:32.719 their online manifestos explicitly associated their own personal stances with 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:35.719 eco fascism and the idea that the only way to 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:41.800 solve environmental issues is by reducing population size, stopping the 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.040 spread of certain communities around the globe, and also linking 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.279 that to other extremely dangerous and harmful conspiracies like the 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:53.200 Great Replacement, which you claim that there is a white 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:57.640 genocide being enacted by some shadowy cabal of elites around 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:01.640 the world. It's certainly a growing body of content. I 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.960 wouldn't say that it's necessarily the narrative which is driving 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:09.560 most of the high traction discussions across social media, but yes, 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:13.279 I would say that far right political movements in general 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.839 are certainly engaging with environmentalism in many cases through the 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:24.080 lens of their other ideologies, which are you know, exclusionary, nativist, isolationists, etc. 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:31.359 Right right, Okay, So I'm curious how these sixteen accounts 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.320 that you highlight in the report what you were looking for. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.320 That made it clear that, Okay, these people are really 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:39.719 like central hubs of this stuff. 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.120 So what became very acute to us as a new 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.440 trend is the fact that a large amount of online 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:49.320 discourse is being driven by actors who we are referring 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.479 to as non climate influencers. And by that what I 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.680 mean is that these are accounts or individuals for whom 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:57.960 climate has never been a key part of either their 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.640 brand or their public outputs in the past. So they're 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.200 not the historic deniers that have been active in this 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.520 space and determined to maintain the status quo for decades. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:10.600 These are people for whom environmentalism as part of their 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:15.800 public platform is potentially relatively new, and that rather than 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.240 being a preoccupation in and of itself or them having 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.560 a particular interest in that as an issue, it has 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:28.239 become symbolic or indicative for them of broader societal trends, 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:32.599 in particular the woke, agender and identity politics, and therefore 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.360 it provides a very useful vector for them to get 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:41.160 other worldviews, other incendiary and sensationist ideas into the mainstream 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.320 and to galvanize an audience against climate action. What we 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.159 began to see is if you looked at keywords that 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:52.440 very clearly situated climate within that culture wars frame. It 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:57.320 was people like Jordan B. Peterson, who boasts a followership 0:06:57.360 --> 0:06:59.920 of over ten million across his digital footprint if you 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.159 combine his Facebook into Twitter, spreadit and his TikTok et cetera, 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.400 or other people that broadly sit in They often refer 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:11.320 to themselves as the quote unquote intellectual dark web that 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.320 suddenly they had moved into the climate space, and that 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.560 they clearly saw it as being a very useful framing 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.960 mechanism for the discussions that they wanted to have about 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:26.480 power and states of stimulations and infringemental civil liberties and 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:28.440 other perceived grievances. 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.440 So I know that there's been a debate within the 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.040 climate movement for quite a while about whether or not 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:42.560 climate should be connected to other social justice issues or 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.640 this idea of like, look, climate is an intersectional issue. 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:52.480 You don't necessarily get climate crisis without massive power and 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.520 balance that precedes it in all these other ways. And 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.440 I don't know how people can sort of take this 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.480 in from me and use it without being like, Okay, 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.200 we need to start talking about those things because the 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:07.480 rail is going to weaponize it. 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.640 Yeah, it's a really valid point, and I think to 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:12.920 some extent, you know, the way that you're seeing is 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.640 being co opted and weaponized within the culture wars in 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.680 a more far right media ecosystem is sort of the 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.200 reverse side of the coin of the climate justice movement, 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:25.560 which is doing absolutely essential work in pointing out the 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.520 intersectionality the inequities in our approach to the climate response, 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:32.839 whether that's within countries or between the global North and 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.320 the global South, etc. My own personal take on this 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.240 is that it's absolutely not about saying, oh, we need 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.440 to disentangle climate from other contentious issues because they're holding 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.360 climate back and we want to be as far removed 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:50.199 from these other major battles of our time, like reproductive 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.840 health rights or migration. And it's more pointing out the 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:58.440 cynical and in many ways disingenuous use of moral panic 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:03.760 in other areas to drive opposition to climate action. So 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.800 it's about pointing out and being really explicit in saying 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:14.440 these actors are using racist rhetoric around Black lives matter, 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.600 or the enormous moral panic that we're seeing in society 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:23.880 around the trans community, as a point of entry to 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:28.760 mobilize outrage and grievance in relation to climate change, right, 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.400 And that is a deliberate tactic and it's part of 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.720 their playbook, and it needs to be consciously challenged. 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.240 I wanted to ask you about the free speech stuff 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:39.440 because I feel like this comes up all the time, 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:43.000 and I really appreciated how it's dealt with this report, 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:47.600 because I know in the US in particular, really any 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:55.319 time you try to say anything about how disinformation needs 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.160 to be dealt with, you immediately sort of get this, Well, 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.240 we don't want to censor people, we don't want to 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.600 infringe on free speech rates and all of that. But 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.600 I know this media exception thing shows up even in 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.640 really tiny ways, like when Twitter tried to say they 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:14.679 weren't going to allow political ads, the oil companies immediately 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.160 just started working with media outlets to get their ads 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.200 kind of smuggled in through media accounts. Anyway, So yeah, 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.840 I'm curious, like what kind of of pushback you see 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.160 using this kind of free speech argument. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:32.000 I fully anticipate that the what the pushback is on 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.640 the horizon, and any time that you try and draw 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:39.840 parameters around what isn't missed or disinformation. You are always 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:41.760 going to have a body of people that claim this 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:46.640 is about censoring certain opinions from public discourse, and I 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.600 hope that the report is very clear in saying that firstly, 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.960 this is not necessarily about content removal or even deplatforming, 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.320 and that is very often the first line of attack 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.160 that you get from actors in this space who are 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.679 exercised about cancel culture and who try to distract from 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.280 the entire conversation by saying or they're trying to read 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:09.840 everybody that they disagree with out of the Internet. We 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.320 don't advocate for that at any point in this report, 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:16.920 except where accounts are actively violating the platform's terms of service, 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.760 which they define and they are perfectly within their rights 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.680 to do as private companies, and we do encourage that 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.440 if they're going to have those community guidelines in terms 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.400 of service in place, they should be enforced. Otherwise they 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.720 are somewhat meaningless and don't produce the kind of value 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:37.040 sets and architecture for their products and services that they intend. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:40.200 But beyond that, what we're trying to emphasize is that 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.560 there are so many mechanisms at our disposal, both as 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:48.240 a society as regulators and policymakers, and as tech companies 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.559 that can help to reduce the prominence and the impact 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.680 of these patently misleading and false claims without telling people 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:57.880 you're not allowed to have these opinions and you're not 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:00.600 allowed to say them anywhere on social media. To me, 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:05.240 it's a false dichotomy, and it's used deliberately to make 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.400 this a question about censorship rather than a question about 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:14.439 algorithmic amplification, arout gaming of social media, about the monetization 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.080 of myths and disinformation, about the opaqueness of the ad 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.920 tech industry, and all these other solvable problems. And I 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.680 guess the neatest way to summarize how I feel about this, 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:27.720 and I guess what is maybe more of a European 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.920 approach enshrined in things like the Digital Services Act, is 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.920 that freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of liberal 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.800 democracies and we should preserve it at all costs. And 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:41.880 of course America has historically taken a more absolutist view 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.679 or purest view of what free speech entails. But free 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:49.600 speech is not the same as freedom of reach right 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:55.720 and your own ability to espouse an opinion. However, extreme However, 0:12:55.840 --> 0:13:01.120 unpalatable is totally different from being able to mobilize the 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.920 biggest megaphones that exist in the modern world to get 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.480 those opinions out to millions or hundreds of millions of people. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.480 And I think that we need to draw a clearer 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:13.480 delineation between those two things. 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:18.480 There's something happening here where corporations have for a long 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.240 time been on this path of continuously broadening their free 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.840 speech rights, and that there's another kind of effort perfectively 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.800 arguing to blur the line between fraud and free speech 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:34.640 in a very concerning way. I'm curious what you think 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:40.040 about how this plays into some of the organizations or 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:46.440 corporations that might be funding and supporting disinformation, given that 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.440 they kind of operate in a slightly different legal framework. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.480 There are two elements of the way that corporate entities 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.640 seem to be interacting with this issue across the digital 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:00.720 ecosystem and not just social media platforms. The first is 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.920 the ability of what we would call carbon majors, So 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:06.720 these are the one hundred companies that are responsible for 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:11.000 around seventy percent of historic carbon emissions. Their ability to 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.880 use products and services online to spread their greenwashing narratives 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.280 and to mislead the public about what the viable solutions 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.400 to let's say, mitigation and adaptation of climate change are 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.760 going forward. One of our partners called ecobotnet, did a 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:29.480 study in the first nine months of twenty twenty one, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.440 and they found that just sixteen companies had posted seventeen 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.480 hundred adverts to Facebook, which had garnered one hundred and 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:41.520 fifty million impressions and more importantly, had generated nearly five 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.560 million dollars worth of revenue for the parent company Meta. 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.240 And that business model needs to be called out and 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:49.840 it needs to be undermined. We should not continue to 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.360 allow actors who we know have been bad faith and 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:58.080 indeed who are being asked to testify at congressional hearings 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:01.280 in the US or hopefully in the hearings in the 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:05.000 EU on their historic role in causing issues in the 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:09.440 information space and delaying action and progress on climate Who 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.880 shouldn't allow them to continue spreading content with impunity and 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.560 using the huge amounts of financial resources at their disposal 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.880 to get undue oxygen. But that applies also to their 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.640 known front groups and lobbyists, many of whom have very 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.960 clear affiliations with industry and who have been exposed or 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:32.680 detailed by investigative journalists to date. The other side of 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:36.920 this is the monetization that exists through the broader ad 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:40.280 tech system online and the fact that many outlets who 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.280 have a well known track record of spreading myths and 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:48.480 or disinformation or active propaganda and hate speech are still 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.520 able to generate revenue through adverts that appear on their 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:57.000 websites or on their channels, and historically brands have claimed 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.320 that they were ignorant of that fact or of where 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:02.880 their adverts were appearing. So you know, if you had 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:07.800 something from to take a completely random example, you Unilever 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.640 that was appearing next to a bright art article calling 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.600 climate change of hopes, they might have said, because we 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.000 have so little sense of what happens in between us 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.320 using an ad tech system and where the final product 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.880 ends up, we didn't know that this was happening. I 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.080 think now it's probably fair to say that it's either 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.880 wilful or woeful ignorance on behalf of the private sector, 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:32.840 and that there is also a lot of lobbying and 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.280 advocacy that can and is being done by organizations like 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.800 check my Ads, The Conscious Advertising networks sleeping giants. That 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:46.720 is saying you hold enormous leverage, financial leverage in this system, 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.960 and if you are more stringent in the parameters of 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.480 where you do and do not want your adverts to 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.160 appear on what you think is acceptable, you have the 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.960 opportunity to pull the rug out from under this entire 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:05.960 kaya business model of disinformation and propaganda. And there was 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.960 one study done last year which estimated that two point 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.800 six billion dollars a year is spent advertising on some 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:16.280 of the worst perpetrators of missing disinformation. That's not sustainable 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:16.920 going forward. 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:22.040 That's really interesting. I know, we definitely saw this culture 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:27.639 war messaging around gas prices and the Russia Ukraine war 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.000 here in the US. In that Influence Map study, I 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.200 think they found that one of the top three messages 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.560 was this like, you know, climate policy is something that 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.760 only elite, woke liberals want and it's the thing that's 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.680 driving up gas prices and whatever. But I'm wondering if 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:47.800 you have a sense of when exactly that messaging framework 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.119 started to appear and if there was any kind of 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.680 catalyst for it, or if it just sort of has 0:17:55.760 --> 0:18:00.160 slowly started to bubble up as a dominant message. 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.080 I think over probably the last decade, we have seen 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:08.359 a broader societal and global level shift from what's often 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.920 referred to as identity based polarization, so we hold polar 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:18.359 opinions or stances on a particular issue, through to effective 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:22.439 or identity based polarization, which is we might actually agree 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:25.600 on the topic, but because I call myself X and 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.040 you call yourself why, and we associate with different tribes, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.960 I automatically view myself in opposition and antagonism to you. 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:37.040 So I think that that's something which is well beyond climate. 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.679 It's applying to almost every aspect of public life, but 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:45.080 has unfortunately also seeped into and ended up dominating the 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.760 discussion around environmental issues. I see have only been doing 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.800 research in this space for eighteen months, But one really 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:54.919 acute example that I can give which shows how there 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.800 is a lot of opportunism by adversary actors or those 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.080 who oppose climate action, which is to piggyback on whatever 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.720 else is happening in the news cycle in order to 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:08.600 insert their pre existing world views and stances. And one 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:10.560 that we saw in the last couple of years is 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.720 that right from the beginning of the COVID nineteen pandemic. 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.919 In March twenty twenty one, there were a number of 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.240 individuals who were trying to land the idea of climate 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:25.000 lockdown as a conspiracy, including a couple of actors associated 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.520 with the Heartland Institute, where I'm sure many of your 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.639 listeners will unfortunately be aware of the central hub and 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.199 historic hub of climate denial climate skepticism, both in the 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:35.640 US and transnationally. 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:40.040 Yeah, I remember seeing like Steve Molloy, for example. 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.240 So Steve Manoy, you know, was really committed. He was 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.719 putting out to meet right from marchway twenty one. And 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.440 unfortunately for Steve Malloy, he does not boast a great 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:51.359 organic reach on Twitter. 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.879 I'm going to make him cry when he listen to this. 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.280 Sorry, really know that the data speaks to itself. He 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.760 was getting two or three or retweets. However, by September 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.080 twenty twenty one, an article was released by a very 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:11.280 renowned economist called Marianna Mattakato which was looking at environmental 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.280 issues in the context of COVID nineteen and saying the 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.520 kind of mobilized systemic global response that we've had around 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.399 this pandemic, why are we not replicating that sense of 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:25.080 urgency to climate change which poses an existential threat. And 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:28.439 the article mentioned the language around climate lockdown, but not 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.919 as something that in any way should be advocated. In fact, 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.240 what the article was saying is if we don't take 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:37.480 the necessary mitigation and adaptation steps, we may end up 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.879 in a position where we don't have other options like 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.880 we've had with the pandemic. And this was the point 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:46.080 where the conspiracy went from being something on the fringe 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:49.080 that was really not gaining traction and was absolutely failing 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.480 to become a phenomenon into something that was turbocharged into 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:57.240 the mainstream and has now become a central conspiracy in 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.359 a number of anti climate movements. And the reason, in 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:04.919 part is because so many of these conspiracies rely on 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:09.320 a perceived reactionary dynamic with the mainstream media. So they 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.960 saw this as perfect evidence. This provided the fodder or 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:15.560 the grist to the mill for them to say, see, look, 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:18.800 they've said the quiet part out loud. This pandemic is 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:21.960 just a test bend for the kinds of green tyranny 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:24.840 that is just looming on the horizon. And if you 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.200 think that the kind of infringement on your civil liberties 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.760 that are happening now are bad. You should see what's 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.280 going to happen when the great reset happens for climate change, 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:37.640 and what was so depressing to watch happened in real time, 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.680 and IC have produced a whole report that really forensically 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.520 tracks the evolution of this conspiracy, of the way that 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.639 it moved then from being on the fringes driven by 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.040 a small set of actors, to being taken up by 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:53.600 the right wing media ecosystem Fox News, etc. And where 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.840 it eventually ended up was in the QAnon telegram groups 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.240 and the anti vaccination groups and the anti loocko on 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:05.280 telegram groups, because it absolutely fit the same rhetorical and 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:08.440 narrative frame, which is, you know, there are a group 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.159 of people who are trying to take away your fundamental 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:15.679 freedoms and change your life beyond all recognition. And it 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:18.520 doesn't matter whether it's around public health or around environment. 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:21.800 This needs to be opposed at all costs. And so 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:26.440 it was such a neatly articulated case study of piggybacking 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.280 on the news and exploiting the fact that people have 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:32.880 real and genuine trauma in related to the pandemic. It's 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:38.359 been an unbelievably distressing and difficult time for people around 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.919 the globe, and lots of people do have legitimate grievances 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:44.760 around the ways that their government have managed this pandemic 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.520 and the kinds of measures that have been instituted, and 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:51.840 they have cynically used that trauma to suddenly turn people 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.600 against climate change as an issue and against climate action 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:57.400 as a policy platform. 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:01.320 It's so interesting just the flow of information and the 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.159 way that it moves. I have seen a tendency to 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:08.800 silo climate disinformation out as like a a separate thing, 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:11.919 even from the government here. It's like they'll have all 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.959 these hearings about disinformation in general that's very focused on 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:20.199 like electoral politics and social media platforms and whatever, and 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:24.000 then they'll have this separate side thing for climate disinformation. 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:27.119 I'm just curious what you think about that. Why so 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:31.400 many of the folks who have focused on disinformation kind 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:34.400 of see climate as a whole separate thing. 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:38.119 I think one of the reasons is that, up until now, 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:42.119 there has been a very poorly defined taxonomy of harm 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.000 for climate disinformation. What I mean by that is that 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:49.440 in other areas like public health or electoral integrity or 0:23:49.520 --> 0:23:52.760 you know, extreme hate speech. There is a clear through line, 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:55.840 or a clearer through line between a piece of content 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:58.280 online and the imminent harm that it can pose in 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:02.480 the real world. If somebody spreads information about a supposed 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:05.040 cure for COVID nineteen and people take it and end 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:07.399 up in a and E, that poses a real present 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:11.560 danger for individuals and for society. If people spread false 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:15.120 and misleading claims about an election being stolen, it can 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.480 lead to an insurrection at the capitol, and so on 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:22.040 and so forth. And where bad actors in the climate 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:26.080 space have been very clever is in keeping it abstract 0:24:26.200 --> 0:24:29.160 enough that it feels like it can't be acted upon 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.000 because it doesn't have that through line to real world harm. 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:35.640 But I don't think that we can justify that anymore 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:39.399 because the IPCC themselves, for the very first time this year, 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:42.680 in their three thousand plus plage report on Climate Change 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:49.840 in Mitigation, explicitly said that misleading content, including from industry 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:54.000 actors and those with vested interests, had actively provided a 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:56.679 block to achieve in climate action in line with the 0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:00.119 goals of the Paris Agreement and with scientific consensus. So 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:03.399