Climate misinformation campaigns run by fossil fuel firms and right-wing populist groups have become more sophisticated and capable of influencing policy-making through “backdoor channels”, according to the authors of a major new report.
Based on a review of over 300 scientific papers, the study from the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) found that the dissemination of false and misleading information has shifted from denying the existence of climate change to sowing doubt over its causes and solutions.
“Strategic scepticism has been taking over from basic climate denialism,” said Professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen, chair of the IPIE’s scientific panel on information integrity about climate science.
“Much of the information is more muddied. It’s not a clear denial of climate change but it’s in a sense more sophisticated,” he added. “It’s suggesting to people, ‘Well, is this really the fault of particular emitters? Will the solutions being proposed both by scholars and policy-makers really work?’.”
The aim is to erode trust, delay responses to climate change and obstruct political and economic interventions, such as the transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy, the report said.
To that end, misinformation is increasingly targeting political leaders, civil servants and other public officials who hold the power to turn climate science into real-world action.
Brazil: Let’s deliver on our old climate promises before making new ones
While the general public is more likely to come across distorted information on traditional news outlets or social media, policy-makers are primarily targeted through channels that go “under the radar”, the report’s authors said.
Those include corporate sustainability reports painting a misleading picture of polluting industries, greenwashing public-relations (PR) campaigns, partisan policy briefs drafted by lobby groups or think-tanks and personal relationships between business and political leaders.
“It’s kind of a backdoor channel to gaining influence in both policy circles and through public debate,” said Jensen.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
As an example, the report cited a study based on 725 corporate sustainability reports that found substantial divergence between what companies say and what they do, including exaggerated claims about their positive impact on the environment.
It also highlighted the use of legal filings by fossil-fuel and other polluting companies involved in court cases addressing climate issues to spread narratives downplaying their role in the climate crisis and delaying action.
Growing influence of think-tanks
Ece Elbeyi, one of the report’s authors, underlined how purveyors of misinformation increasingly operate through an interconnected system that delivers key messages to policy-makers.
“Think-tanks have become especially important because they serve as a bridge between important actors such as political parties, policy-makers and sectoral players such as fossil fuel corporations,” she added.
In the US, conservative think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation promote climate-denying views and hold sway over the Republican Party led by President Donald Trump.
The Heritage Foundation coordinated the so called ‘Project 2025’, the controversial 900-page policy blueprint for reshaping the federal government. Amongst other things, it called for an end to “climate fanaticism” and the rollback of US funding for climate action at home and abroad.
As Trump upends aid and markets, who will pay for green development in Global South?
Since its return to the White House last January, the Trump administration has pulled the US away from international climate policy, gutted USAID – the country’s aid agency which has been a key channel for global climate funding – and moved to slash the domestic budget for measures to reduce emissions.
Amid a generally gloomy picture, the IPIE report offers some suggestions for how to combat climate misinformation.
It calls for the introduction of laws requiring the production of accurate and consistent climate information, as well as standardised reporting by private firms and public institutions on their carbon footprints.
“Coalitions of the willing” should be formed to counter the alliances of powerful interests, while education should deepen the scientific and media literacy of citizens and policy-makers, it added.
