Inactivity:what is the denialism of the new millennium

More subtle, less obvious and above all divisive.This is how big industries pollute the environmentalist front and our minds

The summer of 2023 was the hottest on record.How many times have you heard this phrase on the news and weather services?What emotions did this data trigger?What if they told you that this communication method is a new form of climate denialism?More subtle, less obvious and above all divisive:we are talking about climate inactivism.It is no coincidence that you do not know this phenomenon.The definition of climate inactivism is very recent because it was coined with the publication of a book: The New Climate War:The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (2021), written by one of the world's leading climate scientists, scientist Michael Mann.According to Mann, we have moved on to a new phase, climate deniers can no longer oppose the evidence of data and increasingly frequent extreme natural phenomena.So, according to Mann, "the forces that denied yesterday, today aim at procrastination".

Mass distraction

It is a softer denial that is based "on deception, mass distraction" and the shifting of responsibilities from companies to individual citizens.Very often this narrative can cause damage to people's mental health, generating a phenomenon that straddles emotion and pathology:echoparalysis, a more problematic state thanecoanxiety.Here, therefore, is a practical manual to ferret out the inactivists and not to fall prey to their rhetoric.We thank the professor of the Polytechnic of Milan Stefano Caserini, an expert in climate change mitigation, and the psychiatrist Matteo Innocenti of the Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of Florence for their contribution.

«Only you can save the planet»

An advertisement with a simple message:the responsibility lies with individuals.The commercial cited by Mann in his book analyzes the distorted rhetoric of alleged climate activism.“The crying Indian” shows a Native American through a polluted landscape full of waste, a voice-over explains «People pollute.People can stop polluting" and at the same time the camera closes in on the actor's face as he sheds a tear.Individual citizens would therefore be solely responsible for the pollution, not the 100 companies that have emitted 71% of greenhouse gases since 1988 (Carbon Disclosure report 2017).It is a clear example of a strategy used by polluting companies to shift responsibility from their plants to the actions of individuals who, no matter how hard they try, can never solve the problem alone.Instead, action is needed that includes the efforts of large companies and the population.

«Don't eat meat, don't take a plane, don't use a car»

A similar discussion can be made about some forms of climate activism which, unknowingly, carry forward inactivist communication strategies.Tracing the fight against climate change to a moral condemnation of the individual's lifestyle is in fact counterproductive:by telling people not to eat meat, not take planes and not use cars, we risk alienating people who will feel deprived of their lifestyle.The only effect is "to make others feel bad", writes Mann.“So people can feel discouraged and perhaps even frustrated at not being able to seriously address climate change with their daily lives,” says Caserini.But another aim of this strategy is to divide the ecological front, making claims of a presumed purity or superiority of one base over another.So if the fossil world is compact and united in its goals, the green one is instead busy waging war at home.

«It's too late»

Catastrophism is useless, on the one hand it scares and blocks any response, on the other it is scientifically out of date:we still have time.It is therefore essential to communicate all the information available in an appropriate manner:«We must not only talk about the critical issues, the damage, the impacts of climate change, but also try to make people understand what the opportunities are.Because, if people get too scared, in the end they don't want to know about the climate crisis anymore, we pull down the shutters", confesses Caserini who has been touring Italy for years with the conference-show "Some Like It Hot" which brings spectators closer to climate fight through stories, animations and music.«The communication style must be neither too alarmist nor too minimizing» – explains the psychiatrist Innocenti – «Catastrophism can generate two distinct responses:fatalism or echoparalysis.The latter is an "emotional state like eco-anxiety but is characterized by loss of hope, sense of helplessness and depression" as I write in my book (Ecoanxiety)".We can all feel these emotions, but some are more conscious or sensitive than others.And if these states are combined with other ailments, the consequences can be serious:«I follow specific cases of ecoanxiety, especially young women who start not wanting to have children or are afraid of having children because they are worried that they will grow up in a world that they see as dystopian».Indeed, explains Innocenti, the most serious forms of ecoparalysis will lead the person to avoid the topic of climate change or even deny it as a defense strategy.

Will carbon capture and storage save us (?)

We need to start from a given.According to theEmissions gap report 2020 of the United Nations, in 2019, 52.4 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 were emitted into the atmosphere globally, which rises to 59.1 if the change in land use is taken into account.And what do the inactivists propose to "reduce" this pollution?A single solution which is instead just a way to postpone emissions:carbon capture and storage (CCS).It is important to clarify that this strategy is included, together with others, in the Net Zero Industry Act of the European Union, a program within the Green deal which aims to make the industry sector zero impact.Not only that, the IPCC Sixth Report also includes CCS within the mitigation paths.There are two “buts” as outlined by the report:if CCS is considered a mature technology in the production of gas and oil, it is not so in the energy sector, in the production of cement and chemical products.Furthermore, economic, political, technological and environmental obstacles are added.All this with a storage capacity of 1000 Gigatons in total, higher than the requirement needed to keep the temperature below one and a half degrees by 2100.But some potential storage sites are difficult to reach, and the diffusion rate of CCS is still very slow.The action of the inactivists is to focus solely on this strategy to save the planet, but at the moment there are few active CCS plants.To give an example, as of September 2023 in Europe there are only 3 operational projects, 16 under construction and another 44 in development.Off the coast of Ravenna, in the Adriatic Sea, the carbon capture and storage hub will come into action in 2024 and will initially aim to capture 4 megatonnes (million tons) of CO2 per year and in a second phase more than 10 Megatons for a total storage site capacity of 500 Megatons (0.5 Gigatonnes total).

The importance of communication

Why then can the phrase “Summer 2023 was the hottest on record” be considered a form of inactivist communication?We must not stop at the simple fact that allows us to give the title to the report or article, but we must delve deeper into the news and reverse the perspective to awaken people's conscience.So the initial sentence will become:«The summer of 2023 will be the coolest recorded if we do not act with environmental policies in favor of our planet».We must believe in change and to do so it is not necessary to spread fear among people but hope.This is the role of communication.