By Enock Sithole
Rampant climate change misinformation is exacerbating the impacts of global warming, according to a report recently released by the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE).
The IPIE is an independent global science organisation providing scientific knowledge about the health of the world’s information environment.
Having reviewed 300 studies on how climate change is communicated around the world, the report revealed that climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information often disseminated by right-wing politicians and activists, fossil fuel companies and some governments.
“The primary actors behind the diverse challenges to and disruptions of information integrity about climate science have been powerful economic and political interests, from fossil fuel companies to governments and nation-states. These interests, moreover, have joined forces in alliances designed to obstruct and delay timely climate action. Among other actors, scientific hired hands have aided and abetted the dissemination of inaccurate information, while many media have not filled their classic role of providing consistent and reliable information to the public,” reads the report.
It adds: “The focus of communications undermining information integrity about climate science appears to have shifted from denialism toward scepticism, covering a variety of messages questioning the relevance, feasibility, and effectiveness of potential solutions.”
The report says climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions and the spreading of false claims about some climate-inspired events.
The study found that online bots and trolls were used to amplify false narratives, thus promoting lies about climate change.
Climate denialists, said the authors of the study, were targeting political leaders, civil servants and regulatory agencies, pressurising them to delay action to reverse climate change.
Other fora, such as the United Nations (UN), have called for the criminalisation of misinformation and greenwashing, according to the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera. It has also been reported that Brazil, host of the forthcoming COP30, will rally nations behind a UN initiative to act against climate misinformation.
Brazil’s proposed call for countries to strengthen measures to “fight climate lies” was discussed at last month’s climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, and the proposal was supported by the United Kingdom, France, Chile and Morocco, among others.
One of the authors of the report, Dr Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, told The Guardian newspaper: “If we don’t have the right information available, how are we going to vote for the right causes and politicians, and how are politicians going to translate the clear evidence into the necessary action? Unfortunately, I think the (bad actors) are still very, very active, and probably have the upper hand now.”
Dr Jensen reportedly added: “We have about five years to cut emissions in half and until 2050 to go carbon neutral. Without the right information, we’re not going to get there. So, the climate crisis being translated into a climate catastrophe is possible, unless we handle the climate information integrity problem.”
She echoed Morgera’s call for the criminalisation of misinformation and greenwashing by fossil fuel companies. Dr Jensen also wants the media and advertising firms to be criminalised for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies.
Last year, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for a ban on advertising by fossil fuel companies, calling the firms the “godfathers of climate chaos”.
In another effort to eliminate climate misinformation, the UN is leading an international effort called the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change.
The IPIE report comprehensively assesses those it says are producing climate misinformation, how they propagate it, what impact it has and how their actions can be combated. It argues that “misleading information has undermined public trust in climate science and other key social institutions. This crisis of information integrity is intensifying and exacerbating the climate crisis”.
The report says the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a “dual deception” of the public. First, the industry has denied the reality of climate change, obscuring its responsibility and obstructing action to fight climate change. Second, the fossil fuel industry deployed greenwash to portray itself as an environmentally sustainable enterprise.
Some of the misinformation the IPIE report highlighted was that of promoting fossil gas as a low-carbon fuel. It should be noted that the African continent has argued that, because of its developmental needs and the desire to balance energy security with climate goals, natural gas should be recognised as a “transition fuel” or low-carbon fossil fuel in the context of global climate efforts. They have argued that this recognition could help African countries to meet their energy needs while transitioning to cleaner energy sources.
Role of the media in misinformation
The role of the channels of climate change communication was also analysed and it was found that “while social and other digital media of communication have been attracting growing attention from citizens and scholars alike, traditional mass media remain important carriers of information, disregarding, circumventing, and undermining climate science”.
The report warned that “given the ubiquitous and pervasive nature of contemporary media and communications, everyone is a potential target of misleading information about climate change”.
The IPIE recommended that further studies should seek to establish the extent to which the public’s exposure to such information is incidental or targeted through specific strategies and tactics of interaction.
Climate education, reads the report, “constitutes a broad-based and long-term strategy of enabling people to access, process, and apply information about climate change, empowering them to respond both to the crisis of information integrity about climate science and the climate crisis as such.
“Research has indicated the need to cultivate, at once, science literacy and media literacy among citizens at large, so that they may secure conditions of survival and flourishing (eudaimonia) for themselves and others”.