You had me at "climate." You lost me at "skeptic."
Let’s start calling climate skeptics what they really are.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
—Donald Trump, “a climate-skeptic [who] has promised to take the US out of the Paris Agreement once again.” (Le Monde)
The general term for one section of the general audience we need to convert is “climate skeptic.” So, in service of better understanding how to reach the people we’re trying to reach, let’s talk about all the ways in which said term straight-up sucks.
First: it’s frequently bestowed upon conspiracy theory-spouting climate deniers who get their milk directly from Big Oil’s teat. For instance:
"The notion that man-made gases cause global warming is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
—Senator James Inhofe, “the Senate’s most prominent climate-change skeptic." (NYT)
Pop quiz
Q: What percentage of the 535 members of the 118th U.S. Congress vociferously denies that human-caused climate change is real?
A: 23%. That’s 100 representatives and 23 senators.
Q: Do all 123 belong to one party in particular?
A: You don’t need to A this one. You already know the A.
From a messaging standpoint—and, within that, from an audience segmentation standpoint—it’s important that we don’t waste one second thinking we’re here to convert the deniers. That way lies failure. The deniers are wrapped in a comfy blanket of Big Oil propaganda and/or cash. They’re not going anywhere. Our jobs are to a) inspire and activate folks who are incidentally on our side and b) to inspire and recruit folks who are climate denier adjacent. Both of those groups are susceptible to lies spouted by the quote-unquote skeptics. But it’s the folks in group B who are having batshit conspiracy-laced denialism shot into their veins without having signed up for it—and those very batshit conspiracy-laced denials are way too often framed by the wider world as rational, scientific skepticism.
The writer Jess Piper has this kickass newsletter—The View from Rural Missouri by Jess Piper—and in a recent post about taking it to the streets, she says this:
Since the Trump election, people joining me in libraries and wineries and churches and basements across the heartland are looking for an action item and relief. Looking for a way to stand up and a way to not feel alone. Looking for someone to tell them that what they are seeing is actually happening. To be able to let the tears roll while finding their spines.
As with the assault on our republic, so with the assault on our climate: folks are dying for a way to stand up and not feel alone. To finish crying and discover some backbone. And a fundamental part of finding that collective spine is being part of a larger conversation that doesn’t defer to the enemy.
Meanwhile:
"The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It's all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”
—Michelle Bachmann, “one of the GOP’s loudest global warming skeptics.” (Minnesota Star Tribune)
That shit makes me so mad. Not the Bachmann quote itself—she’s been out of office for years now—but rather the description from a reputable paper: “one of the GOP’s loudest global warming skeptics.”
WTF, Star Tribune? I guess it’s okay to label the b who wouldn’t stop shouting about the HPV vaccine causing “mental retardation” as an adherent of inductive reasoning because you also called her loud?
In the James Inhofe quote from earlier, the Gray Lady called him “the Senate’s most prominent climate-change skeptic."
WTF, NYT? It’s not enough to call Inhofe a skeptic, you have to pair it with “most prominent,” like he’s the marble bust that hangs above the door—without mentioning that it’s a trap door that spits you out into a lake of burning oil? For the love of god, this is the dude who wouldn’t shut up about how the EPA is the Gestapo.
And in the quote at the top of this post, La Monde called Donald Trump “a climate-skeptic.”
WTF, La Monde? You’re a French paper—dripping with sneering disdain for all things américaine is, like, your job. Fucking unbelievable.
But this doesn’t start and stop with politicians and the publications that pay them undue respect. The real point is that calling anybody a climate skeptic is a gross misattribution because it misrepresents the nature of true skepticism, which involves questioning claims based on evidence and being open to revising your stance when confronted with new facts—or, as is often the case with climate revelations, new measurements.
I’m from the Pacific Northwest, a defining feature of which is Mt. Rainier, a massive and massively beautiful mountain—the tallest in the lower 48. And you know what? It’s more than 10 feet shorter than it used to be. That’s right. Mt. Rainier is actively, measurably shrinking. If you want to deny that, you’re not a skeptic—you’re the former bully in Grosse Pointe Blank who gets drunk at the reunion and tells John Cusack, “Let’s see how smart you are with my foot up your ass!”
To which Cusack replies: “Do you really believe that there is some sort of stored-up conflict that exists between us? There is no us. ‘We’ don’t exist.”
True skeptics don’t argue with measurements, they account for them. So who are the climate deniers having their fake arguments with? Not us. There is no us. They’re arguing with thermometers. With almanacs. With sinking islands. With shrinking mountains.
While our job is not to win over the deniers, it’s very much our job to win over the folks who are subject to the deniers’ various firehoses of lies. So what I propose is that we start by calling out everybody—be they news sources or misinformation firehoses or regular folks—for referring to climate deniers as anything but deniers. Tell ‘em:
You had me at “climate.” You lost me at “skeptic.”
Top secret climate song of the week
Refs
Donald Trump's election is a 'dark day for the climate'
Climate Deniers of the 118th Congress
The View from Rural Missouri by Jess Piper