CLIMATE DENIERS used to reject climate change as a hoax or scam, or claim that humans were not responsible for it. But many are now shifting to a different approach, one which attempts to cast doubt on climate solutions and even claim global warming will be beneficial at best, harmless at worst.
The past five years have seen a “startling” rise in this “new denial.” This shift in narrative could also be helping YouTube video creators circumvent the social media company’s ban on monetizing climate denial.
“New denial” content — attacks on solutions, the science and the climate movement — now makes up 70% of all climate denial claims posted on YouTube.
Assertions that “global warming is not happening,” one of the main “old denial” claims the analysis focused on, declined from 48% of all denial claims in 2018 to 14% in 2023. Claims that climate solutions won’t work, however, soared from 9% to 30% over the same period.
The climate movement has won the argument that climate change is real, and that it is hurting our planet’s ecosystems. As the impacts of the climate crisis — from scorching heat waves to fierce storms — affect a broader swath of the global population, narratives that deny the existence of climate change are becoming less effective.
But now that the majority of people recognize old climate denial as counterfactual and discredited, climate deniers have cynically concluded that the only way to derail climate action is to tell people the solutions don’t work.
It’s particularly worrying because of the young demographic attracted to YouTube. A survey from Pew Research Center found YouTube to be the most widely used social media platform it analyzed among 13- to 17-year olds, used by roughly nine in 10 of them.
The shift in tactics to undermine climate action could also help creators get around YouTube’s policy banning them from making money on climate denial content, the report suggests. In 2021, the company prohibited advertising against content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.
YouTube said its enforcement teams work quickly to review videos that may potentially violate policies, then act on them. It found some of the videos included did violate existing climate change policies and has since removed ads from them. However, it also said the majority of the videos in the analysis did not breach their policies.
It is extremely unlikely that this is the result of organic social media activity. It suggests that bad actors have made a concerted effort to weaponize social media in a way that is especially targeted toward young people, as evidenced by the tremendous impact of the youth climate movement.
We’re asking other platforms that claim to be green in one breath not to profit from, to revenue share, and therefore, reward or to amplify clear climate denial content that contradicts scientific consensus. You can’t claim to be green but then be the world’s biggest megaphone for climate change-related disinformation. By Manny Palomar, PhD (EV Mail July 29-August 4, 2024 issue)
