The Profit-Enhancing Corporate Denial Of Global Warming| Countercurrents

Among the massive “entertainment industry” and what German philosopher Adorno once called a “culture of mass-deception”, corporate mass media occasionally provides – largely for legitimacy reason – a slight glimmer into the comforting lies of corporate anti-environmentalism.

In general, the anti-environmentalism of corporations is rather successfully camouflaged by three ideological tools that have been invented for them by the ever-compliant business schools:

1. Business Ethics: the raison d’etre of business ethics (a tautology) is to legitimize companies and corporations ideologically. Business ethics flanks the promotors and quasi-religious apostles of Managerialism. To make a business appear ethical, the stooges and lackies of business ethics like to select “certain” suitable themes from moral philosophy and adjust them to complement (read: ideologically support) business, management, and corporations. As one of the most prominent business schools’ professor of business ethics calls it “using ethics to increase profits”.
2. Corporate Social Responsibility: CSR is a watered-down version of business ethics that helps corporations in pretending to have something we call “a social conscious” (they do not). It also assists them in play-acting as if they were responsible for what they do (they are not). Instead, corporations prefer to offload their environmental vandalism onto others like a community, the state, and society.
3. Greenwashing: Globalgreenwashing is a corporate marketing spin that – rather deceptively and cunningly – uses green and environmental themes to coax unsuspecting customers and the public into believing that a corporation and its products are environmentally friendly. Intentionally, companies adopt greenwashing communication strategies to distance themselves from their environmental vandalism.

These three strategies are to the contrary of an ever-increasing body of scientific evidence telling us that there are anthropogenic causes of global warming. And that there is also a capitalocene that illuminates the role of capitalism.

Worse, corporate anti-environmentalist lobbyists know that global warming is factual. Yet, there still are widespread corporate apathy, the denial by business, and, worse, the deliberate inaction of corporations to act on global warming.

In short, there is an extensive corporate foot-dragging towards engaging in corporate action and decisively rallying towards initiatives that might mitigate the impact of global warming.

All of this gets so much worse as right-wing and conservative-populist ideologies are becoming ever more omnipresent. The unholy “interest symbiosis” between the powerful troika of:

1. ideological conservatives who are still falling for the myth of the neoliberal mirage of the free market,
2. the globally active and extremely powerful pro-business media, and
3. manufacturing corporations.

has implanted a kind of crypto-scientific populism. This is made worse by the right-wing and corporate communication strategies to defame experts of climate change.

Right-wing populist – more so than corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying, constantly “espousing” global warming as being made up by “the elite”, by distant “ivory tower intellectuals”, and, of course, by “enemies of the people”.’ Climate change experts have also been condemned in the name of “the people”.

With the marked upsurge of right-wing populism, there has been an adjacent assault on climate science experts.

In conservative-populist circles and parts of the corporate press, environmentalists and experts are deemed as unsympathetic and ruthless techno-bureaucrats who are in bed with the – equally despised – “cosmopolitan elite”. Worse, climate change experts are accused of operating against the “common sense”.

Such hallucinations are often associated with those who are unaware of the difference between weather and climate. Weather is an atmosphere change that can happen from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour and day-to-day and is associated with temperature, rain, wind, hail, snow, humidity, flooding, thunderstorms, and heatwaves.

On the other hand, climate and climate change operate over a long period of time, such as, for example, thirty years or more. Climate science looks for long-term trends such as changes in temperature, humidity, precipitation, ocean-surface temperature, and other weather phenomena.

Beyond that, conservatives, reactionary populists, and the stooges of the neo-liberal with corporate agenda prefer to create rifts between what they deem to be “the common citizens” and technocratic “experts”.

In that, right-wing populists even feast on a very human tendency to resist authority. In the illusionary world of right-wing populists and adjacent anti-environmentalists, resistance is reframed and used for the ideological cause of the pro-business and anti-environmentalist agenda.

The strategy behind this is to create mistrust in science and particularly in the science of climate change. The extensiveness of anti-science populism and its widespread distribution through online echo-chambers has allowed the anti-environmentalist lobby to manipulate people into deterministic in-action. This is engineered through a corporate global warming denial machine.

A rather effective mechanism through which complacency and in-action can be manufactured. Megaphoned by the corporate press, the corporate denial of global warming works its way into individuals, society, parliaments, political parties, state institutions, and other organizations.

Just as in the case of asbestos, fast food, and smoking, the same playbook of corporate PR [read: propaganda] – often in cahoots with the corporate media – works on the issue of global warming as well. In addition, there is an elaborate global warming denial machine set into motion.

The task of this machinery is to foster the denial of global warming and to promote inaction while fogging people’s ability to find “credible information” on global warming.

Worse, there is an abundance of cases when “paid-for” science serves the special interests of corporations. This is known as the “science for profit model”.

These special interest groups – business schools, think tanks, corporate lobbying institutions, etc. – demonize the truth about global warming for the benefit of climate change denying corporations, conservatives, and right-wing populists.

They seek to influence (read: manipulate), the public and – most importantly – the policy makers in democratically elected parliamentarians.

To some extent, this works through the selective use and appropriation of “some” scientific facts and concepts for the benefits of corporate anti-environmentalist lobby.

Those who seek to manipulate the scientific facts about global warming do this for their ideological agenda. Albeit it comes at a significant costs to real science while fostering an ever-diminishing public trust into science.

In one important case, ExxonMobil denied global warming while concurrently raising the level of its off-shore oil platforms because of global warming. Moreover, Exxon was also funding astroturf organizations.

These semi-corporate and rather stealthy astroturfing outfits engage in information laundering through faked peer-reviewed scientific findings, the conjuring up of unfounded skepticism in science, and the nurturing of reservations and resentment towards even the most indisputable scientific evidence.

Much of this works with the sensationalism of “the loudest voice in the room”. And this is further amplified by the algorithms of echo-chambers. Beyond online echo-chambers, even mainstream news can – and has been – used by corporate anti-environmentalist lobby to mislead the public.

A prototype of this still is Murdoch’s conservative and highly manipulative Fox News Channel. Fox News’ deeply ideological agenda is to misrepresent and disfigure the truth often simply through gasligthing that confuses people with what is real and what is not; and through polarizing target audiences (read: divide and rule); and through ideologically biased reporting that is deceitfully camouflaged as “fair and balanced”.

On global warming, Murdoch’s Fox empire tends to present global warming as a worldwide conspiracy orchestrated by evil foreign powers that seek to take over America. Corporate- and ideologically driven mass deception as well as disinformation and misinformation has also been in the lobbying playbook of the Heartland Institute.

This is a conservative pro-business think tank that is financed by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. It is a known fact that tobacco killed millions of people for corporate profits making $9,000 per dead smoker.

This kind of corporate lobbying focuses on discrediting the science of global warming and the anthropogenic causes of it. It funds climate skeptics and promote global warming disbeliefs, resentment and cynicism.

Global warming denial is corrosive and ubiquitous not so much because of scientific information deficit but because of the way scientific information is manipulated and mis-represented by the corporate press and, worse, in online echo chambers.

Virtually all of this contributes in creating the illusion of safety in the face of global warming. Through an array of ideological and highly manipulative strategies, a false and a dangerous sense of safety has been disseminated.

Corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying has created a risk-denying and risk-averse culture that even belittles the human, environmental, and financial cost of a corporate “risk complacency” towards global warming.

Beyond that, the corporate anti-environmentalist lobby likes to portray the reality of global warming as abstract, theoretical, hypothetical, distant, incomprehensive, irrational and – therefore – unwarranted.

Meanwhile, the political naivety of all too many scientists made these scientists – falsely – believe that by simply providing greater access to ever more accurate scientific information, society would – almost automatically and by default – engage into behavioral change. However, almost the exact opposite has happened.

The greater the magnitude of scientific information and the way it has been re-framed and manipulated by the corporate press, pro-business lobbying and conservative politicians, the greater the likelihood that people are driven towards a kind of pre-determined world-view.

This kind of determinism has been spiced up by something we know as confirmation bias.

Worse, the rather distressing information about global warming can also push people towards information avoidance. This occurs when information about global warming is presented as “gloom and doom”. It challenges the comfort levels of individuals and even causes distress.

This, in turn, leads people to tune out, to shut off, and to ignore scientific information about global warming altogether.

Meanwhile, environmental movements and eco-friendly rules that change the traditional and often rather unsustainable ways of society are framed as being done for so-called “privileged communities”.

Pro-business resentments against moving towards sustainability are mixed with nostalgia insinuating that “the good old days” – were never that good. What the anti-environmentalist lobby offers is the hallucination of an unspoiled past in which one can find security. This cements an unsustainable “status quo”.

To infuse people with ignorance and apathy, corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying is forced to fight against the multi-dimensional account of scientific expertise and the predictive power of scientific models on climate change. And from this arises the next problem for corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying.

With the escalating frequency of catastrophic weather events such as flooding, hurricanes, prolonged droughts, and so on that can be seen of TV and that are the result of corporate environmental vandalism (the capitalocene), corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying and even more so right-wing populists depict trends towards authoritarianism and illiberal governments.

In other words, decades of neo-liberalism seem to be followed by a new strain of authoritarianism: anti-environmentalist authoritarianism.

Perhaps all of this indicates the development inside late capitalism that might be called “free market authoritarianism”. It has anti-environmentalism as one of its main ingredients. This is pushed by more than just a “dirty” symbiosis between anti-environmentalist populist politicians and big corporations.

Disguised through representing “the people”, populist-authoritarian leaders are catering to corporate interests while consolidating their power. This is done through engaging in anti-democratic practices such as misusing “free speech”, courts, and law enforcement agencies to undermining democratic institutions.

Inside the realm of environmental regulation, corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying serves corporate interest, the pro-business deregulation, and Uber-privatization.

Ultimately, corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying paves the way for a corporate takeover of regulatory agencies. This is known as state capture.

Meanwhile and aided by corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying, there is a global development towards the centralization of power with a strong charismatic leader at the helm.

The goal is to hand-over democratic institutions to the untamed corporate power of small minority. The target of corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying is to accelerate the global shift into the direction of authoritarianism.

In the wake of this, authoritarian leaders consolidate their power through declaring a state of emergency, using discriminating surveillance systems, and embed, weaken, or simply eliminate political and social opposition.

There have been ample examples of this in Europe, Latin America, and Asia with right-wing leaders such as Bolsonaro in Brazil, Scott Morrison in Australia, Trump in the United States, and seemingly endless years of Tory rule in the UK. The list and this development are continuing. In addition to all of this comes the global decline in democracy.

In much of this, neoliberal policies are linked to anti-environmentalism as embedded in leaders such as, for example, Trump (America), Putin (Russia), Erdogan (Turkey), Duterte (Philippines) and Orban (Hungary). The names in this list, too, are changing but the methods and their ideological goals remain the same. 

Anti-environmental policies have been endorsed openly in many countries. This is often followed by new anti-environmental regulation to appease corporate backers. It usually works under the motto, “we have the best politicians money can buy”.

In many cases, the attack of right-wing populists also means that institutions are being systematically dismantled. Donald Trump, for one, openly denies global warming.

During his term, he demolished a substantial number of environmental regulations such as, for example, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Power Plan, and the Clean Water Act. He also withdrew from the Paris Accord.

And at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, he placed the semi-pathological global warming denier Scott Pruitt.

Apart from deregulation, anti-environmentalist Trump also served his corporate patrons from coal and oil industries in other ways.

Horrifically, he was lifting a moratorium on federal property on new coal leases, cutting funding on research on the effects of mountaintop coal removal and allowing offshore drilling in US coastal waters.

The known complicity between the reactionary strong men and corporations has led to a rather systematic corrosion of democratic institutions and environmental regulations.

For example, Bolsonaro in Brazil gave Big Agro-Business access to Amazon forests. In distant Australia, a semi-religious madman and prime minister called Morrison fostered open pit mines for the coal industry.

Trump also handed out generous corporate tax cuts to businesses while weakening environmental regulations.

He gave access to national parks and public lands for mining and drilling purposes under the Republican Party motto, drill, baby drill!

Supported by corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying, much of this is linked to a collaborative strategy of fostering ultranationalism, isolationism, and anti-environmentalism.

Much of this seeks to normalize corporate greed while also rejecting a sustainable global future.

Worse, such right-wing populist leaders – in cahoots with corporate anti-environmentalist lobbyists – seek to have unchecked political power. Yet, they mistrust the power of scientists, scientific knowledge, and the scientific data that scientists have produced on global warming.

Meanwhile in Germany, a rather common strategy has been displayed by the neofascist AfD party that talks of “alternative climate expertise”. This deceptive strategy does not deny global warming outright but – rather deceitfully – rejects mainstream climate science.

As so often, this means relying on conspiracy fantasies to oppose scientific information – even when science has been widely accepted by the scientific community as it is the case with global warming.

Yet, these anti-environmentalist strategies have been effective in creating doubts about – the largely imagined – “power” of scientists working on global warming.

Meanwhile, corporate anti-environmentalism and the denial of global warming has come at massive costs – particularly for the people in the Global South like fishermen, farmers, and indigenous people.

While the Global North has “mostly” caused global warming, the people in the Global South will have to suffer as they are hit by the environmental impact and the highly destructive effects of global warming.

In the face of flourishing misinformation and disinformation about global warming broadcasted by corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying and adjacent media, there is a seemingly never-ending growth of authoritarianism and right-wing populist resentment towards objective science.

All too often, this is spiced up with a hefty dose of anti-intellectualism and anti-science. Out of all of this comes is a very serious obligation to reiterate science.

Despite all this, the famous “what is to be done?” question still makes a showing. Today’s global warming crisis demands to be framed in terms of people’s deepest values, beliefs, fears, and experiences.

This is akin to the emotional language used by right-wing populists and corporate anti-environmentalist lobby.

Yet, this is the advantage of right-wing populism and corporate anti-environmentalist lobbying: it talks a non-scientific language. Such a language might appear to scientists as if it is actually the language of science.

But it is not the language of most people. Scientists tend to think that the use of passionate language when talking about global warming can give the appearance of being unscientific and even stupid.

This may well be. And it often is exactly that. Yet, a more non-scientific but passionate language reaches millions. It persuades millions.

Beyond this, the following also needs to be done: getting the truth about global warming to people needs to maintain core values of modernity, communal self-sufficiency, human progress, environmental sustainability, full employment, and anti-authoritarian democracy. In other words, an eco-democratic future.

Born on the foothills of Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer (PhD) is the author of over 1,000 publications, and books about Managerialism and The Language of Managerialism.