ExxonKnews
August 29, 2024
Is combating climate disinformation an essential part of the climate fight, or a “condescending,” “cheap hack” of the elite?
A much-discussed piece by academic and author Holly Jean Buck in Jacobin this week argues the latter. Buck laments that “much of the climate movement” — exemplified in her account by lawmakers leading Congressional hearings, academics convening conferences, reporters covering what a UN official said, and nonprofit organizations founded to track and counter disinformation — is “obsessing” over “an information war focused on uncovering what Big Oil knew and policing speech.” In Buck’s opinion, focusing on disinformation is distracting from the real work of engaging with communities empathetically to understand the challenges of a clean energy transition and to implement funds granted by the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA).
Buck, who previously worked in communications for the Department of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, relies on the valid trope that D.C.-based writers and pundits often misunderstand the real concerns of many Americans. But she uses it to claim that “When the anti-climate disinformation movement redefines all opposition to green transition efforts as ‘climate denial,’ the effect is to cast reasonable disagreements about the best way forward in terms of disputes over the truth.”
