To understand climate change better, we need more Greta Thunbergs, not more scientific data
- The Swedish teenager whose school strikes inspired the world made us stop and think. Climate change is undeniable and must stop being seen as contentious but, for that to happen, we need more Greta Thunbergs and their stories
The wave of denialism can be traced to almost the same moment. Vested interests, greed, wilful ignorance and bloody-mindedness have reflexively concocted a wall of schoolyard “is not!” arguments based on less evidence than a Trump Twitter rant.
The denialist debate has, with the skill of an alchemist, recalibrated environmental concern into a Trojan Horse of red-eyed radicals who will leap out and take your job, rights, freedom and even your life. They have made it personal.
In the 1970s, Greenpeace flipped the environmental movement on its head. Hitherto a peripheral issue pursued by a rag-tag army of hippies, environmentalism became serious, driven largely by Greenpeace’s deployment of scientific fact in its campaigns. But this tactical shift also trapped environmentalism in a science cage.
Denialism is built on the vast pile of fungible facts that big money, private research and sponsored reports generate through the filter of darker arts lurking in the public relations office. Like a black hole, “science” can suck in any data set or equation and make it dance and sing. Or disappear.
Climate change needs to cease being a contentious moment in the history of science to become a social, cultural, economic factor; a current and personal reality. It needs to be human in scale, not only to counter the propaganda of denialists but to develop a more visceral understanding of its implications and possible solutions.
Thunberg has done that for climate change. Whether her star has waned, we need people like her to apply the often confusing and alienating data in a way that generates meaning for the narrative-driven mammals we are.
A year since her appearance, we are a just little closer to a mature and nuanced comprehension of human-made climate change. Denialism is fading as the many personal stories of climate change, like Thunberg’s, sweep the landscape like tsunamis. That is perhaps her biggest achievement.
James Rose is a media adviser, strategic analyst and writer