Scientists Dissect The Tactics Of Climate Delayers

With climate change increasingly difficult to deny, those who would do nothing about it have turned to delay.
European scientists last month catalogued what they call the “Four Discourses of Climate Delay”—arguments that facilitate continued inaction.
“As the public conversation on climate change evolves, so too does the sophistication and range of arguments used to downplay or discount the need for action,” say the team of ten scientists led by William F. Lamb of Berlin’s Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change.
From the journal Global Sustainability, here are the four discourses and some of the nuances they take:
1 Redirecting Responsibility
U.S. politicians blaming India and China, Irish farmers blaming motorists, organizations blaming individuals—these common techniques evade responsibility and delay action.
“Policy statements can become discourses of delay if they purposefully evade responsibility for mitigating climate change,” the scientists say.
The scientists label as “individualism” the claim that individuals should take responsibility through personal action. I asked if it weren’t also a discourse of delay when activists insist that individual climate action is pointless, that only systemic action can address the problem.
That too is a discourse of delay, replied Giulio Mattioli, a professor of transport at Dortmund University. The team considered including it under the label “structuralism,” but decided it’s not common enough to include.
“I would say that we definitely agree that both are needed – individual action and system change,” Mattioli said.
2 Pushing Non-Transformative Solutions
Organizations can delay substantive action by highlighting incremental progress, by promising technological solutions that don’t yet exist, or by claiming their polluting practices are part of the solution.
The scientists quote OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo, who asserted last year that “We believe this industry is part of the solution to the scourge of climate change," but offered no details on what an oil-industry solution might look like.
“Policy statements can become discourses of delay when they promote ineffective solutions and thereby draw attention away from more substantial and effective measures,” the scientists say.
3 Emphasizing Downsides
Politicians and organizations may delay climate action by emphasizing the cost of climate action, the potential impact on jobs or the economy, while de-emphasizing the costs of inaction. One result of this discourse may be “policy perfectionism,” in which no action can be taken unless it’s perfect and supported by everyone.
“Policy statements can become discourses of delay when they emphasize the downsides of climate action and imply that these carry an even greater burden for society than the consequences of inaction.”
4 Surrendering
Some climate-change deniers have shifted to climate doomism, the position that it’s too late to address climate change. Doomism shares with denialism a failure to take responsibility, and it can result in delay.
As examples, the scientists quote Roy Scranton in The New York Times: “To stop emitting waste carbon completely within the next five or 10 years, we would need to radically reorient almost all human economic and social production, a task that's scarcely imaginable, much less feasible.”
And Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker: “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can't prevent it.”
“Policy statements can become discourses of delay,” the scientists write, “if they raise doubt that mitigation is (still) possible, pointing to seemingly insurmountable political, social or biophysical challenges.”
The team of scientists hopes its list of discourses can supplement the climate denialist claims catalogued—and refuted—at skepticalscience.com.
“This typology assists in the identification of diverse discursive strategies and may suggest tailored responses to each,” they write.
“Discourses of delay often contain partial truths and may be put forward in good faith. Yet our focus here is to identify the features of these discourses, rather than to attribute underlying motives to those who use them. In the absence of high-quality public deliberation, and in the hands of interest groups fighting against regulation, our concern is that discourses of delay will disorientate and discourage ambitious climate action.”