It wasn’t the number of people that saw it, that actually went to the movie theater, but it was the media coverage pump that climate change got in response to Al Gore’s movie. …. And that forms the basis for these multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns that you see every night on your TV if you turn on any of the news channels. As a sociologist, we look at the political process as a conflict among different parties with different political and ideological agendas. It’s a calculated business decision to fund those kinds of advertising. So the more organizations you have, the more legitimate you look. … Other things drive it down, things like our economy collapses, … like the Great Recession that drove it way down; the number of war deaths, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan. The scientific evidence is pretty overwhelming, so if you want to delay action, you say, “OK, climate change is real, but…” Fill in the blank: It’s too expensive. And they have been enormously successful. The climate is actually affected by cosmic rays. America’s Radical, Underground Climate Change Countermovement by Robert Hunziker The year is 2050; rising seas have inundated Miami, America’s most recent ghost city, since Detroit. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. And we looked at a number of factors. Nobody knows. What you see in the number of sponsorships in the Heartland conference is the attempt to build a worldwide climate countermovement. Climate change was added on to an already-existing network of organizations as one of their major issues. You just change the frame to focus on something that all Americans would generally support — and of course they’ve tested these through focused groups — is energy development and more economic growth and more jobs. The tobacco industry was faced with a real problem in that the scientific evidence that smoking was related to cancer was very clear, and that if that was applied, that basically would devalue their product immensely. Just the general coordination and capacity is really quite extraordinary, and to be able to retain focus for this long of a period of time on clearly identified goals is very impressive. We don’t need to have these impositions on these already good people. The leading funders over that 2003-to-2010 time period have been, of course, the Koch Foundation — was a major player early on, not so much now — the Scaife Foundation and the Sierra Foundation. They have every right to say what they’re saying, but they don’t have the right to be designated as a tax-deductible charity engaged in nonpartisan educational activities. Oh, evil Koch brothers.” Now it’s Donors Trust, Donors Capital. …. We’re having all these wars; we have all of these people dying in these wars. Thus, as it happens, the functionality of the world of climate change denial, “the countermovement,” must operate deep underground and in the shadows. Who funds CEI [Competitive Enterprise Institute]? It’s been that development and ability to do that in a consistent way over and over and over and over again, and consistently sending out the same message that’s going to have an impact on public opinion, and that if public opinion decays as quickly as it does, you need to keep every night being reminded of how good the American Petroleum Institute and energy development is. You know, it depends. …. I think that a good case could be made quite the contrary. What we were able to explain is, what drives media coverage? How do we know it came from the Koch brothers? The president stands up and says, “Climate change is real, and we have to do something about it,” and several senators stand up and say, “We have to do something about it,” [that] has a big impact on public opinion. The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. It is quite interesting to contrast this with the environmental movement and the climate movement, [which] has multiple strategies, multiple networks, and not a coordinated image whatsoever. Iceland earthquakes, 18000 in a week! A 2013 study looking into the US climate change counter-movement found that over US$900 million is spent annually to sow doubt and confusion over climate change. And I think the growth of donors [coincides] with the publicity that Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace brought to the Koch brothers’ funding and ExxonMobil funding is that as those two organizations got more publicity, those organizations stop giving, and you see the rise [in] anonymous giving through Donors Capital and Donors Trust, which in a way insulates the giver from any kind of political fallout from their giving and removes actually an organizing target. And those remain relatively stable. News Corp’s executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, said ‘there are no climate change deniers around’ when questioned about the company’s stance at its AGM. It put it into the public agenda in a very big way. All of those arguments define the range of arguments that are used to delay action on climate change, and the end result is that 20 years after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we’re well on our way to exceeding 2 degrees; that is, [it’s] basically impossible to stay below 2 degrees. The climate change countermovement, as these actions are collectively referred to, comprises the ideology and efforts driving many groups that obstruct climate change policies by turning to public relations firms, trade groups, think tanks and political campaigns, said J. Timmons Roberts, professor of environmental studies, environment and society and sociology and founder of the Climate … A deep dive into the American protests demanding an end to COVID-19 lockdowns exposes the influence of anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and conservative religious and political groups. Now, what you can see in the movement itself is that it has two real roots. But we really don’t know, and the sociology is not very good at predicting those kinds of events. So these are very peripheral issues. I’ve been charting television coverage of climate change in the major news networks — NBC, ABC, CBS — since 1980, and what we’re seeing in 2011, which is the last four years, I have it back at the levels that it was in 2002. As violations mounted, regulators have been absent. By extension, we then define a climate change countermovement (CC-AM) organization (consistent with Brulle, 2014) as those that advocate against policies that seek action to mitigate climate change, espe- cially mandatory restrictions and penalties on greenhouse gas emissions.2 These I think what’s important to understand is to see this movement in context with the larger conservative political movement in the United States. What did you find? And they spend hardly anything on political or cultural processes. In opposition to that you have a countermovement. On one side, you have the climate movement that wants mandatory actions to deal with climate change, such as a cap and trade or a tax on carbon or something like that. This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious argument that has been put The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. The majority of these think tanks are tax-deductible institutions. Koch went from a high of 9 percent of the funding flow in 2008 to 1 percent in 2010. Climate Change Countermovement Organizations and Media Attention in the United States. part may be reproduced without the written permission. It identifies these utilities as part of a tight-knit historical cohort The money comes in, it goes out, and it’s not connected to any kind of corporation or individual that you can say, “Oh, look at this evil person.”. …. Analyzing nationally representative survey And that’s a well-developed, focus group-tested approach to convince people that we really don’t want to mess with the energy mix except to have more development of all of these energy resources. …. Simultaneously you end up with the Heartland Institute or [a] hard-line climate denier saying climate science is just not true, others saying, well, we’re not quite sure how much is climate change versus natural climate change. People were organizing around: “Oh, evil ExxonMobil. As one movement is actually out there trying to develop technological solutions on the ground, the other is engaged in political action to delay any kind of action. So they formulated the strategy of sowing doubt about the scientific validity of the connection between smoking and cancer. And they know exactly what they’re doing. So what they’re trying to do with those kinds of corporate relations commercials is to foster their corporate images as a good, trusted, socially responsible corporation that can be trusted to do the right thing, that we don’t need legislation. …. There is no statistical relationship between providing information about climate change and levels of public concern. It might affect that locality, but you’ve got a lot of weather all over the place in the United States, so weather has had no significant impact on climate change public opinion. Lobbying by the climate change countermovement dwarfs that by the climate movement. … Overall, what’s the story of the shift of trends … and who funds, right? … What we have now, since the media isn’t covering it and the elites aren’t talking about it, is we have levels of concern that approach a similar period around 2002-2003. … It’s not in the media. … What he says and what he does are contradictory. Starting after World War II, there has been a comprehensive effort to build established think tanks and intellectual outlets to advance progressive viewpoints. Their content analysis has shown that the messages issued by European organizations against climate change are very similar to those broadcast in the US. So it removes the personalization or the ability to identify a concrete entity as creating and maintaining the climate countermovement. I think what’s very important to recognize is that not all of the activities of the climate countermovement take part through these think tanks. So by the mid-80s, there was already a well-established network of think tanks and organizations. In conjunction with their allied trade associations, these coalitions have served as a central coordination mechanism in efforts opposed to mandatory limits on carbon … climate change movement (CCM) is comprised of actors with multiple interpretations of how best to address climate change, the defining characteristic is a focus on legislative actions that would result in significant reductions of carbon emissions (Brulle 2014). The expenditure of corporate funds for basically corporate image development and expansion is a well-developed field of public communications and corporate PR. We will take steps to block users who repeatedly violate our commenting rules, terms of use, or privacy policies. The authors considered eight European climate change counter-movement think tanks, in six countries, studying their messages in four different languages. …. or, by Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona. The Climate Smokescreen: The Public Relations Consultancies Working to Obstruct Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions in Europe—A Critical Approach. Do they bite the hand that feeds them? So that’s kind of like the starting viewpoint. They gave $1.25 million in 2007, $1.25 million in 2008, and then $2 million in 2010 to Donors. …. Climate Change Countermovement Coalitions 1989-2015, author Robert Brulle, looks at “key political coalitions that worked to oppose climate action. A question about the parameters/constants entering climate models, USGS Cautions: Prepare NOW for Non-Imminent Eruption of Mauna Loa, Science X Daily and the Weekly Email Newsletter are free features that allow you to receive your favorite sci-tech news updates in your email inbox. … This is sponsored by these 25 organizations. Starting after World War II, there has been a … I don’t think that we know, but that’s kind of another interesting question is to see, do they change their coverage of an issue if they have sponsorship by that company? But climate change wasn’t one of their focuses. Provided by PART III: Lobbying for Denial in climate change . It’s an institutionalized effort that we know about from documents that have leaked from planning sessions such as the American Petroleum Institute’s efforts in 1998. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2021 WGBH Educational Foundation. He’s also designated a terrorist by the U.S. We know that Koch brothers organized an annual meeting where they strategize about political and foundation funding and different activities, and we know that [executive director of Donors Trust] Whitney Ball gets to go to that every year. This is where these ideas are developed and guys like Frank Luntz work with his little dials and work the best arguments. Entries that are unsigned or are "signed" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. So these people do a lot of media outreach. Now, it could be an intervention by social movement; it could be actual physical events. So you see a lot of organizations from different countries: Italy, New Zealand, Australia. It’s not a group of particular people, but it’s a number of people that have weak, informal links with each other that have a general coordinated strategy, or at least generally coordinated goals and values and things that they work on together, and so in that sense there is a conservative movement. It clearly shows that a number of conservative think tanks, trade associations, and advocacy organizations are the key organizational components of a well-organized climate change counter-movement.” There is a significant amount of funding used to perpetuate myths about climate change. FRONTLINE and ProPublica examine how far-right groups were emboldened and encouraged by former President Trump and how individuals were radicalized and brought into the political landscape. To make meaningful progress towards global emissions abatement, smart political strategies are needed. In this study, I demonstrate that the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis also provides theoretical purchase for explaining patterns of climate change skepticism among regular citizens. The voluntary action will solve it. Last year, PBS talked to Brulle about his investigation into the climate change countermovement. Yeah, it’s a free country. But again, the result is still the same: We don’t do anything. They use the same organizations, the same tactics, and try to sow doubt about climate change as a real, serious environmental issue. There is no counterpart on the left that’s equivalent. What’s unusual I think about Donors Trust and Donors Capital is the scale of the dollars and that it has grown as others have declined. Is it fossil fuel? The chapter also documents the international diffusion of climate change denial, indicating that the countermovement is evolving into a global force designed to combat the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and international climate advocacy network. The discourse we have found is a carbon copy of that used by American denialists. Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona. All we can say at this point with any kind of empirical credibility is that we know that this foundation gave this much money to this organization. So what makes it still an institutional movement? Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. So you want to have a whole lot of sponsors even if they only give a little bit. Significance? It’s been 20 years since we signed the treaty saying that we were going to try to prevent — that we’re going to go over 2 degrees. So it’s the intellectual development and then mass marketing of these kinds of ideas that’s a real political genius of the conservative movement. By submitting comments here, you are consenting to these rules: Readers' comments that include profanity, obscenity, personal attacks, harassment, or are defamatory, sexist, racist, violate a third party's right to privacy, or are otherwise inappropriate, will be removed. … Despite rigorous scientific evidence of the nature of climate change, the world has yet to act in a significant way, and in particular the United States has been a real laggard in this area. … It used to be Exxon funded all these organizations. I don’t think it’s the only cause why we failed to act, but I think it’s a significant cause in delaying action to address climate change. Historically those haven’t worked; they get kind of a media blip and then it goes away. Thank you for taking your time to send in your valued opinion to Science X editors. "As in the United States, in Europe contrarian think tanks have a neoliberal ideological stance," she adds. I’ve searched high and low for papers on this. As such, America’s radical climate change countermovement terrorist organization is free to spend as much as they want without any public disclosure, no possibility of tracing back to individual donors. The elite cue is, “Climate change is real; we need to get onboard with this,” and people’s opinions follow. So the money comes in to Donors as a contribution and goes out the door as a grant to a particular organization that the donor directed it to be. Well, fights among elites usually bring a lot of media coverage. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. What you’re trying to do is you never mention the words “climate change.” You never mention denying the science or anything like that. We have no clue. It’s that you end up having a news story, let’s say about natural gas, and you have, “Well, natural gas is not as bad as coal.” Oh, no, it’s as bad as coal. You can be assured our editors closely monitor every feedback sent and will take appropriate actions. One is in the conservative movement itself, in that you see a lot of conservative foundations that had been funding the growth of the conservative movement all along now appear as funding the climate countermovement. The Sierra Club lost its tax-exempt status in 1970 because it was seen as being too overtly political. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form. It’s ideologically motivated giving by these family foundations, and it’s their particular predilection to give to conservative causes, just as George Soros gives to liberal causes. Climate Change Denial and Public Relations, Ed. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. … The sociology term is, our political science stream is punctuated equilibria [until] we have some event that shifts the whole nature of the debate. … My analysis of the funding flows shows that over the period from 2003 to 2010, there was about half a billion dollars went to the organizations that we defined as climate countermovement organizations. So people that trust and listen to Rush Limbaugh hear [him] say that global climate change is a hoax. So you have this really well-developed, well-funded countermovement messaging strategy, and the counterpart of the movement strategy is Al Gore ran a few commercials I remember back in 2008, but you don’t see commercials talking about climate change at all. Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no What we mean by a countermovement is a movement against change. It’s not in the presidential campaign. But that takes place actually more directly. A team of four researchers at the Brown University Climate and Development Lab has released a 73-page report investigating ten large investor-owned utility companies. It makes for, I think, good political theater. So it’s the same type of giving, but what you see is that the preponderance of the climate change countermovement funding comes from exactly those kind of people, … and that the petroleum industry, I guess I would say the carbon industry foundations are really not where the real money is. So the proper research procedure here is to start looking at these two different components of the political process to see where their funding comes from, to see what viewpoints they espouse, and to see how they try to influence the political agenda. When we’ve got 500 organizations all contributing to our effort, it’s a large-scale effort by all of these people. Is that part of this operation and this countermovement by them describing all of the different things that they are up to? So you end up with this great difference between the two movements. So what a lot of these think tanks do is these are the places where they develop new ideas, new approaches and test them out. And as a social movement scholar, you can’t help but be impressed. They repeat the same thing, even in some cases where climate change does not exist," says Núria Almiron. So a lot of it is just the mystery of who is funding it. They had their own experts testifying about the doubts and the incompleteness of the scientific data regarding smoking and lung cancer, and they developed organizations that would promulgate these ideas through the media. So when you do the analysis of the funding, all you can say is, “So many dollars went to this organization.” You can’t say how many dollars went from this foundation to this organization specifically for climate change, because most of the grants that come to the climate countermovement organizations have no conditions. These collected FRONTLINE documentaries chronicle the past decade of immigration policy in America and its varied impacts, offering context for the present moment. … You looked at a larger scope than just the people who are expressing skepticism about the science. But what I want to say is that we see a shift in funding from ExxonMobil. “Well, I trust Rush; I believe him.” And so their opinion follows it, and you call them up and you say, “What do you think about climate change?,” and they say, “I think it’s a hoax.” Or they believe Al Gore and know it’s real. What’s less clear, is exactly who plays a role in opposing legislation that will address the climate crisis. You are fully responsible for your comments. By 2009, it was not funding any climate countermovement organizations. … [Has] it really shifted more to an ideological thing? …. The Climate Social Science Network, based at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, will bring together leading scholars to catalyze collaborative research on the interests that are stalling climate action. Instead, if you just have one big funder, you know, it’s the Donors Trust Foundation funding X. There is no doubt that this is [an] extremely well-organized, focused, well-funded and ideologically consistent social movement. They are not what most people worry about on a constant basis, OK? And that’s what brings us CNN. Starting in 1988, we can see the first appearances of these organizations in climate change hearings, and then it expanded rapidly in the 1990s and through the 2000s. We know that Al Gore’s movie drove that pump, and so we know that that movie had a really significant impact on climate change concern in the United States. Certainly quarter to quarter that we were testing, there is no carryover; it’s gone in a quarter for sure. Tell us how you decided to enter into this research and what you did. It’s really not all that serious. So while information increases, public opinion goes up and down. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. But the people in the middle that are going to change their opinions are basically just, “Huh?” They are not paying attention to it because it’s not a major issue, and so when you call them up, you just get a random distribution, so you end up with no change. So as a social movement scholar, you look at the contrast between the two, and you really have to be impressed by the scope, scale and capacity of the conservative movement in the United States. What was especially impactful is when Republicans would stand up and say, “We have to do [something] with climate change,” because you get a [Sen.] John McCain [R-Ariz.] standing up and say[ing], “Climate change is real, and we need to deal with it,” suddenly the Republicans are like, “Oh, he is our party leader; I guess this is true,” and it overcomes. … What surprised me about the analysis was really the comprehensive nature of the climate countermovement. Instead we have sort of secret plutocratic funding of the climate countermovement, and [we need] at least a little bit of transparency, at least to get us to understand what’s really going on here with these countermovement organizations. I know that that’s a big blow to a lot of people in the climate change communication field, but that’s what we found: no relationship. Walmart has done a great deal to green its image and also to say that it’s a good employer of people. It’s certainly no surprise that it’s all the Koch family running the board, and their executive director is a longtime employee of the Koch family, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is fairly dominant, the Koch Foundation. This is a peripheral issue. The other thing that the literature on public opinion chose is that when you call up people and ask them for their opinion on a peripheral issue, they will search their memory to try to come up with an answer, and they will probably go to the most recent thing they saw on TV, or the most recent thing they read in the newspaper or something in the media and say, “Oh, yeah, this,” and they’ll come up with an opinion about it. So it’s kind of a combination of both industry and conservative philanthropies that are funding this process, and what they did was they borrowed a great deal of the strategy and tactics that came out of the tobacco industry’s efforts to prevent action on the health impacts of smoking. When it comes to looking at the funding, what you find is that the organizations that make up the climate change countermovement are really for the most part already-existing conservative think tanks and organizations such as that. Read Article . The study, carried out within the framework of the THINKClima project, funded by the Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), was published on 9 September in the international journal Climatic Change, and in addition to Almiron it also involved Maxwell Boykoff, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA); Marta Narberhaus, a researcher at the International University of Catalonia; and Francisco Heras, an independent researcher. Movement is to delay action until some sort of factor changes it are talking about it - Barcelona purpose! Really just not thinking about it donor-directed is not retained by Phys.org in any form a sociologist, we at... 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