There are many ways in which people can deal with the cognitive dissonance that global warming often creates. Unfortunately, many people choose simply to deny it in order to keep their cherished beliefs unmarred by such silly things like facts. Here are some interesting things we learned about this subject that aren’t necessarily what you’d expect…

Left-Wing Denialism: It’s not Just Conservatives who Fiddle While the World Burns

On the poster, we stated that people who have conservative political beliefs are more likely to deny global warming. In general this is true. This is because conservatism is associated with trust in the current system of society and acceptance of the status quo-things which addressing global warming would likely challenge.

However, the extreme partisan nature of global warming denial in the U.S. is not necessarily seen in other Western democratic countries; in Europe the association between conservatism and denial is much weaker, with most conservative parties also accepting global warming as fact (Hamilton 111). According to Hamilton, only in Australia does conservatism have a correlation with global warming denial approaching the U.S.’s tightness (it also is one of the countries with a comparable denialist base).

Furthermore, it would be misleading to say only conservatives deny global warming. Since environmentalism became a major force in left-wing politics, many far-left groups have resented the attention they feel environmental issues have stolen from their goals of worldwide revolution. A few have gone on to full-out denial of global warming, believing it to be a hoax designed to distract the proletariat. While they do not have the same clout as the conservative parties in the U.S. and Australia do, they are nonetheless present.

An example of such a group is the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) a Trotskyist group whose activists believe global warming to be a hoax. Some of them went on to help create the denialist documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which claimed global warming was created by Margaret Thatcher’s lackeys to as a way to make coal obsolete and thereby get rid of striking coal workers (Hamilton 114, 116).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People use Carbon Dioxide Emissions as a Form of Rebellion!

Because consumerism is nowadays a way in which people help build their identities, people often respond to attempts to tell them that their conspicuous consumption is damaging to the environment as if said attempts are attacks on their personal being. In a way, people now perceive consumer choices –including the choice to pollute-as a fundamental part of who they are.

Have you ever heard car-lovers make fun of hybrid owners? Or seen a vegetarian be confronted by manly men wearing shirts exhorting how good animals taste?

 

This is how the choice to pollute becomes a means of forming an identity, of rebelling against perceived affronts to one’s pleasures.

For a concrete example, look no further than the BBC’s car show Top Gear, which is all about speed, crashes, and power. It is consistently one of their most popular programs. Its primary host is Jeremy Clarkson, whose love of big, muscly, gas-guzzling cars is only matched by his love of “promising to run down cyclists and declaring: ‘What’s wrong with global warming? We might lose Holland but there are other places to go on holiday,’’ (Hamilton 124). He even in one episode tested a Land Rover Discovery by purposely driving it over “heather and bogland which conservationists said could take years to recover” (Bennett).

While the show has put off many people for its blatant disregard of environmental issues, as well as its love of bigoted and racist humor, much of the show’s popularity is owed to its promotion of a devil-may-care, take no responsibility lifestyle. By turning people who use bicycles or care about the environment or want to regulate car usage into a discriminate other, Top Gear helps these car lovers foment an identity of rebellion against the popular motion to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This identity of rebellion, in their eyes, legitimizes their pollution, and allows them to continue their pleasure of driving gas-guzzling muscle cars.

 

Fortunately sometimes you run into people who find a way to merge their beliefs with global warming. For many Christian groups, the Lord’s will is absolute, and it does not include man-made climate change anywhere in its possibilities of things that could happen to mankind’s future. For others, it does, and that’s why we should take no action against it. Either way, these people are using religion as an excuse to deny the reality of global warming’s threat to our society. In one of our group member’s personal experiences, one such person even quoted God’s promise (stated to Noah in the Bible) that he would never destroy mankind by flood again, as reason why we should not fear sea level rise due to melting polar ice caps. Luckily she was able to convince said person that since global warming was man-made, God had nothing to do with it, and there was nothing but us to stop us from drowning ourselves. The thing is…

Reframing Environmental Stewardship as Protecting God’s Creation: Someone Else Already got that idea…

On the poster, it is stated that one way we could combat religious fundamentalist arguments that global warming is simply the will of God in the future would be to recognize that all of nature is God’s creation, and thus worth protecting. This concept of a religious environmentalism has already been put to use. The biggest such group is the Earth Ministry, which was founded in 1992 in churches of Washington state’s Puget Sound region. Their mission statement is “to inspire and mobilize the Christian community to play a leadership role in building a just and sustainable future ” (Earth Ministry).

While they are a Christian organization, they have a large number of interfaith partners through the Washington Interfaith Power & Light project, giving them a wide reach. This may make them not a very good example for more fundamentalist groups (which tend to be the ones more likely to deny global warming) but there is no reason why people more reluctant to cooperate with other faiths still cannot make the same realization that there need be no conflict between religion and environmentalism.

 

 

Text Sources:

1. Bennet, Oliver. “The People vs. Jeremy Clarkson.” The Independent. 13 Nov. 2005. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.  <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-people-vs-jeremy-clarkson-515063.html>
2. Hamilton, Clive. Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change. London: Earthscan, 2010. 113-116,123-126.

Image sources (in order of appearance):

1. Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). RCPB(ML), 2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.rcpbml.org.uk>
2. Wikimedia commons (in public domain)
3. Cabada-Leman, Gloria. “PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) T-Shirts On Sale Now!” The Carolina Sauce Company, Inc. The Carolina Sauce Company, 8 Dec. 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2014
4.  Kersten, Alex. “Former Top Gear Stig Ben Collins Reveals All in Hilarious Reddit Open Thread.” Car Throttle. Car Throttle, 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
5. Earth Ministry. Earth Ministry, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014. <http://www.earthministry.org/>
6. “Washington Interfaith Power & Light.” Earth Ministry. Earth Ministry, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. <http://www.earthministry.org/waipl>