Turning Away From the Ruckus

Sounding the alarm about climate change in 2007 got you a Nobel Peace Prize, but these days, not so much.

Today a journalist or academic writing about climate change often struggles to find an attentive audience. Why is that?

Social scientists around the world might be scratching their heads at this mystifying problem – but you don’t need a PhD to see that industry public relations plays a big role in public disinterest.

After Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award the oil and gas industry doubled down with its attack on climate science. They poured even more money into the front groups and fake experts trying to convince us that climate change is a hoax. But polls show they failed to persuade us with that message. Most Canadians and Americans know climate change is happening.

But the oil gas industry and their friends on the far right succeeded in something even more mischievous than attempting to convince us climate change was something under debate. They nudged us into believing we really can’t make a difference.

When we look to industry and government for action we instead see PR and politics.  We see elected officials and business leaders saying one thing and doing another. We know we can’t trust them to do much, so why should we bother?

Cynics like me believe this was their intention all along. They knew they would eventually lose the fake debate they created  about climate science,. Their strategy was not intended to persuade us with their message but to kindle a ‘why bother’ public reaction.

As Deborah Tannen so eloquently wrote, “When there's a ruckus in the street outside your home, you fling open the window to see what's happening. But if there's a row outside every night, you shut the window and try to block it out.”

And that's what's happened to public discourse around climate change in Canada. We’ve turned away from the ruckus, and that’s a dangerous reaction.

The campaigns that create pubic disinterest, mistrust and despair continue. Ottawa and Calgary are pouring millions into advertising designed to misdirect our concern away from the very serious problem of climate change.

And we go along with the greenwashing and the misleading ad campaigns from government and industry because that’s what we expect from them.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Pete McMartin use his considerable talents as a journalist to explain why people like Mark Jaccard, William Rees and Tom Pederson are so concerned and publicly outspoken about the need for action on climate change.

The math on climate change is bleak. And the remedy for that isn’t denial. It’s time to face the facts.

Pete McMartin deserves our gratitude; his latest piece is what good journalism looks like.

Perhaps in a future column, McMartin might try to convince the Harper Government and the oil and gas industry that advertising doesn’t reduce greenhouse gas pollution.  

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons