Author: Amy Westervelt, Country

This story originally appeared in National magazine and is now republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global news collaboration aimed at enhancing coverage of climate stories.

In the past few months, climate disinformation has entered the news more than usual. The House Oversight Committee held a climate disinformation hearing in October, and a few days later, leaked documents from Facebook revealed its role in spreading climate denial. The supervisory committee’s investigation continues, and the work to fully understand the role of social media in disinformation, climate, and other aspects is also continuing.

But in terms of the effectiveness of disinformation and its dangers as we know it, solving this problem rarely enters a conversation focused on climate solutions. This raises the question: How will you implement new green technologies or policies without removing the obstacles that have hindered both for decades?

At COP26 in Glasgow last month, a group of organizers, brands and advertisers issued an open letter calling for false information to be included in the negotiation agenda. Signatories include climate leaders such as May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, and Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation; non-governmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and WWF; and brands such as Ben & Jerry's and Virgin Media O2 . They put forward straightforward requirements: agreed definitions of climate disinformation, actions to address climate disinformation/misinformation will be included in the results of the COP26 negotiations, and for technology companies to adopt policies to combat the spread of climate disinformation in terms of content and content. advertise.

Unfortunately, climate disinformation did not enter the COP26 negotiations. If the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes the contribution of social scientists on the role of the media and information before the meeting instead of next year, as they planned, the situation may be different. However, before the start of the event, Google did announce a new policy aimed at solving this problem. The tech giant, in cooperation with the Conscious Advertising Network, stated that it will now “ban advertising and monetization of content that contradicts the accepted scientific consensus on the existence and causes of climate change.” The policy affects not only Google advertisers, but also YouTube creation. Or, given that YouTube has been pushing climate disinformation to millions of viewers over the years, this is important.

However, a policy for a technology platform is not a systematic solution. When asked about the potential results of the House of Representatives’ climate disinformation investigation, congressional representatives seemed at a loss as to what they might suggest to deal with the threat. There is a lot of discussion about fines on oil companies, the Department of Justice investigation, and more material for the two dozen or so climate lawsuits currently in state courts, but there is no discussion about changing the system that supports false information in the first place-none of this will stop it. One strategy works, or prevents the next industry from lying to the American people. On the contrary, the focus is still to make Big Oil the next big tobacco. But after a brief period of embarrassment and several fines, tobacco continued to make profits, and perhaps more importantly, continued to deceive the public on other products. Oil companies, many of which are co-defendants of tobacco companies, have seen this and learned their lesson because of their role in the development of cigarette filters. They almost immediately turned away from filing lawsuits against science. A former Shell employee told the writer Nathaniel Ritchie in his story "Lost the Earth" that oil companies "do not want to be deceived by our lies like tobacco companies." Therefore, all assumed responsibility for false information will only be Let the company spread it better.

In order to solve the problem of false information, we must understand that it is also an industry. For more than a century, public relations companies hired to help companies and industries avoid regulation and circumvent democracy have built and fine-tuned disinformation machines. The House Oversight Committee said it will expand the scope of the investigation of climate disinformation from the fossil fuel industry to its promoters-mainly public relations companies. The activist movement Clean Creatives has been putting pressure on the public relations industry to assume the role of producing and disseminating false information, and to completely abandon fossil fuel customers. In response to recent criticism of its cooperation with ExxonMobil (which has helped oil companies and their trading groups to create and spread false information and green bleaching for decades), Edelman Public Relations announced that it will conduct a 60-day review of its customer roster .

Some scholars and advocates have begun to call for more than just public humiliation. Ben Franta, a researcher at Stanford University, said: "I think their past behavior provides a reason for them to achieve a higher standard than the usual holding company." "They need to undergo a certain level of special scrutiny. It’s not just transparency, it’s not just disclosure. It’s almost like an information receiving agency."

We don’t necessarily have a solution to climate disinformation. But it is clear that it will not be abolished by the company policy here and the congressional investigation there. Such a large and complex problem requires a concerted effort to solve—we can’t even start until a sufficient number of people realize that doing so is critical to the success of any climate solution.

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Featured image: On October 10, a kite surfer glides across Lake Michigan near Muskegon. According to federal data, the surface water temperature of each of the Great Lakes is the hottest on record at this time of the year. (Photo of Kelly House Bridge)

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