• False claims obstructing climate action amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised

Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.

It found that climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies.

The researchers found that climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain.

Online bots and trolls hugely amplify false narratives, the researchers say, playing a key role in promoting climate lies. The experts also report that political leaders, civil servants and regulatory agencies are increasingly being targeted in order to delay climate action.

Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. On 12 June, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised. On 14 June, Brazil, host of the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) summit, will rally nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.

“It is a major problem,” said Dr. Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the Ipie review. “If we don’t have the right information available, how are we going to vote for the right causes and politicians, and how are politicians going to translate the clear evidence into the necessary action? Unfortunately, I think that the bad actors are still very, very active, and probably have the upper hand now.” Jensen added: “We have about five years to cut emissions in half and until 2050 to go carbon neutral. Without the right information, we’re not going to get there. So, the climate crisis being translated into a climate catastrophe is possible, unless we handle the climate information integrity problem.”

Morgera said in her report last week that countries must “defossilise” information systems, after decades of misinformation from the powerful fossil fuel industry. She said that states should “criminalise misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry” and “criminalise media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies”. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, called last year (in June 2024) for a ban on advertising by fossil fuel companies, calling the firms the “godfathers of climate chaos”.

The UN is leading an international effort called the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change. Brazil will call for countries to strengthen measures to fight climate lies at climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, with the United Kingdom, France, Chile, Morocco and others already signed up to the initiative. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Director General Audrey Azoulay said: “Climate-related disinformation is running rampant on social media.”

The Ipie report is a comprehensive assessment of who is producing climate misinformation, how they propagate it, what impact it has and how it can be combated. It concludes: “Misleading information has undermined public trust in climate science and other key social institutions. This crisis of information integrity is intensifying and exacerbating the climate crisis.”

The misinformation ranges from industry promoting fossil gas as a “low-carbon fuel” to bizarre conspiracy theories such as that wildfires in Southern California this year were planned by officials in order to destroy child-trafficking tunnels.

Among the findings are that the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a “dual deception” of the public, first denying the reality of climate change, obscuring its responsibility and obstructing climate action, and, second, deploying greenwashing to portray itself as an environmentally sustainable enterprise. The report says that other sectors have also promoted climate misinformation: United States (US) electricity companies, animal agriculture, airlines, tourism, and fast food.

(The Guardian)