2024’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is a key moment for world leaders to express their convictions and plans to address the escalating stakes of the climate crisis. This month we sat down with Genevieve Guenther—author of The Language of Climate Politics, and founder of End Climate—to discuss the current state of climate activism and how propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has shaped the discourse.
Sarah Butcher: How did you first get involved in climate change activism?
Genevieve Guenther: I got really concerned about climate change after I had a child and started to worry about what kind of world he would inherit after I died. So I utilized my training as a scholar to master the field of climate communication, while learning about climate science and economics, in the hopes of using my expertise in the political effects of language to help move our climate politics forward. Eventually I began working on The Language of Climate Politics, and while I was writing it I also founded the group End Climate Silence to help push the news media to cover climate change with the urgency it deserves.
SB: How did you come to recognize that the language people–and more importantly the media—use was having an impact on efforts to actually create change?
GG: As recently as 2018, public-opinion surveys showed that even many Democrats felt some doubt that climate change was real. I could see that this doubt tracked very neatly onto the rise of the disinformation that there was a lot of scientific “uncertainty” around the issue. (Scientists were projecting a range of possible outcomes from rising carbon emissions, but they were definitely not saying that climate change was fake.) I realized that voters had heard about this supposed uncertainty because, at the time, news outlets were platforming so-called “climate skeptics” to provide what they called “a balance of opinion” about climate change. Later I discovered that most Americans learn everything they know about climate change from the news media. So it became apparent to me that how journalists talk about climate change had, and still has, a great deal of influence over America’s climate politics!
SB: Do you have any examples of fossil-fuel propaganda that you share with people to illustrate the scope of the problem?
Image courtesy of Genevieve Guenther, used with permission.
GG: Fossil-fuel propaganda is a huge phenomenon! There are many lies about climate change and clean energy floating around. You may have heard that developing off-shore wind turbines is killing whales (it isn’t), or that fossil fuels are the most reliable form of energy (they aren’t), or that focusing on your personal carbon footprint is the most important thing you can do to fight climate change (it definitely isn’t). But the propaganda I investigate in my book is the complex of lies, myths, and incorrect assumptions that create the false and dangerous belief that we can keep using coal, oil, and gas but still deal with climate change anyway. We cannot! So I expose the scientists, economists, lobbyists, and journalists who propagate this false belief, illuminating the bankruptcy of their ideas and giving readers clear, actionable messages to counter mis- and disinformation in their own conversations about climate change. Focus-group polling shows that these messages increase concerned Democrats’ and Republicans’ support for phasing out fossil fuels by up to ten points.
SB: What are the biggest misconceptions you see around fossil-fuel propaganda?
GG: That it spreads only among the uneducated or the right wing. My book shows how some scientists, economists, journalists, and even climate advocates sometimes inadvertently echo the core fossil-fuel propaganda and thereby normalize it, shaping mainstream views about climate change.
SB: What sets your book on the climate change crisis apart?
GG: I think my book is personal and accessible, but also has a real scope. I try to sort out the whole kaleidoscope of climate disinformation, so we can see and counter it clearly. The book discusses what the science says will happen to the US and the UK if we don’t phase out fossil fuels; how past economic models have low-balled climate damages and what the new economic models project for the future; the promise and challenges of climate technologies; the recent history of US and international climate politics; advice for coping with climate change emotionally and helping to build a more powerful climate movement; and more! The climate journalist Amy Westervelt said in her endorsement that the book “takes the whole overwhelming universe of fossil-fuel propaganda and distills it,” providing “one of the best explanations I’ve read of how the heck the climate crisis has gone unchecked for so long.” And Kieran Setiya, who’s not even a climate person, but a Professor of Philosophy at MIT, said: “if you want to understand the climate crisis and you only have time to read one book, this should be it.” I’m pretty proud of that, honestly.
SB: What was the most surprising thing you discovered working on this book?
GG: That China has enacted a whole-of-government, whole-of-society climate policy, called the “1 + N” policy, to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. That was a huge surprise! I hadn’t known that China had passed comprehensive climate legislation. I don’t think many people in the West know this either. But I describe the provisions of China’s climate policies in Chapter 4, so hopefully now more people will understand the depth of China’s commitment to decarbonization.
SB: Is there anything in the current debate that gives you hope about our climate future?
GG: I try not to deal in hope. Hope keeps my focus on things I cannot control. Instead, I try to embrace what I think of as intellectual humility—I don’t know what’s going to happen politically, because no one does—and I try to accept what I take to be my duty. That is, I feel like, being alive with relative privilege at this historical moment, I have a responsibility to help resolve the climate crisis, so that at the end of the day I can say I did my best. I mean, that’s all that can be asked of us, right?
SB: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
GG: I hope they feel equipped to resist the dominant forms of climate disinformation in public discourse and feel empowered to talk about the climate crisis in ways that will focus the conversation on phasing out fossil fuels. And I hope they feel fortified and inspired to do that work!
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