The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann

Author:Michael E. Mann [E. Mann, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Doomism is a form of “crypto-denialism,” or, if you like, “climate nihilism.” The boundary between what constitutes denialism and what constitutes nihilism is fuzzy. As clean-tech author Ketan Joshi put it, “Doomism is the new denialism. Doomism is the new fossil fuel profit protectionism. Helplessness is the new message.”9 So it has been stoked by inactivists, primarily because it breeds disengagement.

This is hardly the first time it’s been used in that way. In his 2011 book Winston’s War, British historian Max Hastings made a compelling case that doomist framing was employed rather effectively by isolationists opposed to US involvement in World War II.10 Hastings described how those opposing US involvement in the war transitioned rapidly from the argument that “our involvement isn’t necessary” to the argument that “it’s too late for our involvement to make a difference.” The parallels with climate inactivism are compelling, and indeed, rather chilling. And the metaphor is worth extending, because it is arguable that what is needed to combat the climate crisis is in fact a World War II–like mobilization effort.

Climate doomism can be paralyzing. As one observer noted, “[climate] doomism has been used as a tool to turn people off action and to pervert election results.”11 That makes it a potentially useful tool for polluting interests looking to forestall or delay action. With many on the political right already opposed to meaningful climate action for ideological and tribal reasons, doomism provides a means for co-opting those on the left. It’s a brilliant strategy for building a truly bipartisan coalition for inaction.

It is easy to understand why climate advocates have become somewhat disillusioned. In the space of a few years, we saw the United States go from playing a leading role in international climate negotiations to being the sole nation to renege on its commitment to the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is in this environment that doomism has flourished. Indeed, a September 2019 CBS News poll found that 26 percent of those who don’t feel climate change should be addressed cite the belief that there is “nothing we can do about it,” a larger percentage than those citing the belief that “it’s not happening.”12 Doomism, it seems, now trumps denialism as a cause for inaction.

Doomist thinking has become widespread today even among ostensible environmental advocates. Consider in this vein the words of Morgan Phillips, codirector of The Glacier Trust, a not-for-profit organization that aims “to help communities at altitude adapt to and mitigate climate change.”13 Responding on Facebook to my June 2019 USA Today op-ed on the importance of systemic climate solutions, Phillips wrote, “You can’t save the climate.… [T]he political, cultural and technological change required is impossible now.… We’re very likely in the midst of a mass extinction event.… [I]t looks to me to be far too late to avoid runaway warming now.”14

There is no scientific support whatsoever for such a claim. The state-of-the-art climate model simulations used, for example, in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (2014) provide no support at all for a runaway warming scenario at even 4° or 5°C (7.

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