Culture Wars and Climate: Look for the Overlap

The climate of culture wars

A strange thing is happening in the country right now. While most networks cover the January sixth insurrection, those who want to redirect your attention are stoking rage and pumping the populace full of information about other threats.

We can see blaming Black Lives Matter, for example as being more lethal and riotous than the capital attack. We are warned about CRT, critical race theory, doors, (or lack of armed staff) in school. We are told our kids are under threat from things like feminism, fights for equality, and LGBTQ people in schools. And, finally, there is little to no mention about the dangers of climate disasters.

That we are now in a heating period worse than any time in the last three million years is being downplayed.

Misinformation is primarily distracting

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Climate Action Against Disinformation, ISDCAAD, studies disinformation.

They note the culture wars are heating up at least as fast as our planet.

For example, the idea that green jobs would be less useful than fossil fuel jobs, or that the cost for them is too high, or too slow, is often suggested and blamed on out of touch liberals.

The coalition has found that to delay, distract, and misinform is best done through the culture wars. People who are completely distracted can find an outlet for their hurt and anger, and finding targets is an age-old tactic that clearly works.

When there is a delay in actionable effort, precious time is lost. There is less denial and doubt about the climate changing, but this continually moving delay sees to it that more and more rage and blame can be created.

We have seen the gun debate distraction efforts go on for decades. The idea of feeling safe by owning a gun, despite the fact that people are literally less safe, is powerful. It will be used again and again.

It takes a real fear, harm to one’s family, and provides personal empowerment in the form of a weapon.

Unfortunately, in the struggle for a habitable planet, our best weapons involve no scapegoating — we can’t just point at feminism, or China — because we need full buy in from all human beings. We need international participation.

Jennie Kind, the head of the institute, call this the ‘discoursed of delay’. It can be spotted by careful listeners, but human beings are notoriously resistant to ideas that don’t provide a scapegoat, and/or if they appear to ask for personal sacrifice.

Misinformation can be detected when one can identify special interests. Fossil fuel companies, politicians owned by them, “experts” hired and paid for the heavy data and low hope content they provide, are filling screens and heads with lots of data that goes no where.

It essentially says; the climate ‘elites’ are trying to change your lifestyle, or run the world. ‘Hypocrisy’ is easy to point out since it is quite true that even China and LGBTQ peoples, and indeed all marginalized people — all humans — do feel they must participate in buying gas and consuming goods. Personal empowerment is easy to downplay when you say “the elites and hypocrites” are going to try to force us all into a new world order.

This view also ignores that the wealthiest people, media, and corporations, are the actual ‘’elite, and certainly have the most power and influence.

When it comes to renewables, innovation, collaboration, and international cooperation, the technology is often dismissed, or called impossible. That the human spirit does find a way, that necessity is the mother of invention, is also downplayed. Green energy jobs are never considered as useful, or profitable to an economy as toxic fuel jobs, and our current agriculture and ‘way of life’ is somehow presented as non adaptable.

What we do has power and meaning

At the same time, misinformation campaigns can also say that what is inevitable must simply be accepted.

It is suggested that there is no point in trying too hard while those scapegoats are not going to pull their own weight.

That climate change is a ‘natural historic thing’ is sold as inevitable, so therefore, unaffected by us.

Yet, of course, if we do all that we can, we can — at every level from personal to governmental — we can and do make a difference in the world. It makes a difference in consumption, emissions, and pollution. It makes a difference in policy and public discourse. It makes a difference in our self perception of humanity.

To know if you are dealing with misinformation, follow the money, follow the agenda, and follow your instincts. Personal empowerment, not doom and gloom, is what creates a better world.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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