We are to blame for the rise in climate denial

Even with record low amounts of Arctic ice cover, severe droughts across parts of several countries, and increasing costs to help recover from major storms, the dialog on climate change has started to shift with a larger percentage of the country willing to deny the presence of "global warming".  A study from the end of last year by Yale University and George Mason University noted that over the past five years, the percentage of people who believe "global warming" is happening has dropped from a high of 71% to stabilize at about 63%.  Over that same timeframe, the number of people who specifically do not believe in "global warming" has risen from 10% to 23%, and the trend is upward.  Although a deliberate public misinformation campaign, sponsored by deep pockets in the fossil energy industry provides a handsome target for the blame, a not insignificant portion of it must go to us in the environmental advocacy arena who pushed the concept of "global warming" as the consequence of our two hundred year love affair with fossil fuels.

Who knows why we immediately centered on the phrasing of "global warming" to describe how we have changed our living space.  Perhaps it was the zeal of a generation that had grown up with Rachel Carson, finally having a tangible issue to rally around.  After a decade of hearing the virtues of corporations and the ills of government, maybe the excitement of having a serious issue was too much. Whatever the reason, the media caught on, the phrase stuck, and our fixation on it has temporarily doomed us.

We have learned that the changes set in motion by our intentional changing of the chemistry of our atmosphere have greater complexity than we can attribute in a sound bite.  Instead of focusing on the immediate dangers of burning fossil fuels: increased particulate, heavy metals in the atmosphere, and the damage caused by mining of resources, we grabbed onto the easy phrase.  Instead of waiting for consensus and better models, we planted the seed, and promised that without a course correction, we would see continually rising temperatures.  As many news outlets have covered, the surface temperatures over the last fifteen years specifically have seen no net increase in temperature.  That has caused confusion in the message, and a large part of a generation raised on the concept of "global warming" must now be swayed by the argument that it is not about warming, but changing.

We can also take some responsibility because of the tone we have set.  Instead of a discussion of what "we" have done and what "we" can do, the environmental movement has done a fair amount of finger-pointing.  Truth is, I still have to heat my home with natural gas; I still have to drive a car.  The options are getting better and more cost effective, but I cannot afford to go "all green, off-grid".  Yet the argument sounds like anything less than perfection will do.  This feeds into the political animosity that unnecessarily clouds the issue.  Environmental protection, until the end of last century, had always been a bipartisan issue.  Making it a political one...the culpability for which lies on both sides...created unnecessary and potentially damaging delays in action.

The fact that Americans on an almost three-to-one basis agree that we have altered our planet gives us hope.  The continued increase in the adoption of renewable energy - based on economic and not just environmental terms - shows us that even in the face of increased skepticism, that we can still make sustained change.  Insurance companies looking to mitigate loses from extreme weather, and recognizing the role of carbon pollution, provides a foundation from which we can still inspire action.  We know more now than we did twenty-five years ago.  And we cannot fixate even on climate change as an issue, because our issues go much further.  We need to address shortages in metals, the feeding of nine billion people, and the emergence of water shortages as the issue of the 21st century.

None of these issues have easy answers, or simple explanations that we can summarize in a sound bite.  We need to fight the urge to battle in that way.  We need to remain dedicated to dealing with real problems, finding sound solutions, and being honest with ourselves and the public as a whole.  Most of all, we need to discuss these issues on a platform of equal access to quality of life.  The more we talk about the wicked problems in front of us from a human perspective, the more we will find ourselves united in the desire to make life better.