As scientists confirmed that March was the United States’ most abnormally hot month in recorded history, dozens of climate deniers gathered to promote misinformation and tout their newfound influence on federal policy.
At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying think tank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist. “I feel wonderful,” James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, said in an interview. “The truth is winning out.”
The clearest sign of the crowd’s rising power was the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom President Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general. “It is a day to celebrate vindication,” Zeldin said on Wednesday morning.
As people entered the event, held in the basement of a hotel near the White House, they were greeted by wares promoting climate denial. “Good news,” read a banner outside the main ballroom, erected by the CO2 Coalition, a climate-denying nonprofit that co-sponsored the conference. “There is no climate crisis.”
A table overflowed with displays reading “CO2 is a lifesaver,” pamphlets titled “Fossil fuels are the greenest energy source” and “Challenging ‘net zero’ with science,” and children’s books falsely claiming the acceleration of sea level rise is insignificant. Baskets held buttons proclaiming “Unashamed about my carbon footprint,” as well as stress balls resembling tiny Earths that read: “Don’t stress. There is no climate crisis.”
Sometimes I think I’ve accepted the finality of the future we have in store, and then sometimes I get really irate and want to go scream at the deniers I know. It’s a weird balance. How do you mourn the future? Real question, my therapist is struggling with it too.
I pretty much have to leave any conversation when people younger than 50 are talking about retirement. I was at a small QA with a recently semi successful congressional primary candidate on how she was able to get as many votes away from the DNC candidate. There was a guy there that couldn’t have been more than 20-22 who asked her about what she thought a good investment strategy was for young people that want to save for retirement.
It broke my heart, both because that young man and everyone else like him is absolutely fucking cooked AND that far too many people do not or cannot realize, that in the future that is coming for us, survival will be the biggest barrier to retirement.
I’m going to hazard a guess that on a Venn diagram featuring climate change deniers and flat earthers there would be a lot of overlap.
Ddont look up was a documentary from the future holy shit
This is why I hate “trust the authority” at any time…
Like, I understand human variation and all, and some people just can’t figure it all out on their own.
But telling people to just blindly trust the authority is dangerous, because sometimes the authority is a fucking idiot.
There’s no good shortcut for critical thinking.
Trusting the authority blindly sounds an awful lot like religion.
I agree, but for example if I argued with my doctor every time, they’d be right probably 99% of the time. That’s bad odds for me to argue on. At some point you have to find an authority you can trust and then… trust them.
the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom President Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general.
I could see how Trump’s EPA administrator and Trump’s AG would both need the same qualification: the ability to deny the most factually convincing reality out of existence. The man could do a few more jobs, like explaining that America is not suffering from inflation, that gas prices have not gone up, or that jobs are plentiful in America!
With a few more years under his belt, he could probably also convincingly explain whatever the administration is doing in Iran. So far, every rationalization of that mess has sounded like my 4-year-old nephew trying to explain special relativity.
