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Extreme politics and extreme weather go hand in hand, and both have to be confronted if we are to understand and overcome the polycrisis we are living through.
Yet few media organisations are examining why the climate emergency is creating a new era of demagogues. Even fewer are scrutinising how those authoritarian leaders are trying to misdirect public attention away from the root cause of our current global malaise.
The Guardian is different.
About nine out of every 10 people in the world want their governments to take stronger climate actions, yet we’ve witnessed a dramatic shift away from the progress we need to avert climate disaster.
Powerful governments, financial institutions and big oil companies are turning their back on climate promises and some are funding secretive lobby groups and far-right politicians that want to shift away from the progress we need to make real, positive change.
The pushback has been shocking. Debunking climate disinformation is a full-time task for Guardian environment teams across the world, particularly in the United States, now that the world’s biggest fossil fuel producer appears intent on undermining hard-won progress on reducing emissions.
The most obvious elements of disinformation are the wild conspiracy theories spread by social media influencers and bots. Instead of attributing disasters to fossil fuels and cuts to emergency services and the US National Weather Service, in July they spread unfounded rumours that the deadly floods in Texas were caused by sinister weather modification technology. In this anything-but-the-truth realm, California wildfires were supposedly planned by officials to destroy child-trafficking tunnels, while the devastation in North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene was apparently the result of a hushed-up dam failure and cloud seeding.
Then there are rightwing media organisations that jump to politically convenient – but wrong – interpretations of events, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain.
Most alarming are the brazen lies of the likes of Donald Trump, who has called climate science “a giant hoax”, “a scam” and “bullshit”. This is a double falsehood – firstly because climate research is robust and supported by 99.9% of specialists, and secondly because Trump and many of his influential supporters in business and politics are well aware of the global heating risks and are responding in a way that suggests they think their best hope for survival is to build up their wealth, consider invading cooler neighbouring countries, such as Canada and Greenland, and prepare their doomsday bunkers.
There also appears to be an insidious strategy to keep people in the dark about the environment for as long as possible.
The Guardian has tracked how the Trump administration is defunding world-leading climate research agencies, firing droves of scientists and threatening official portals that were formerly hubs of cutting-edge information about climate trends. Amid so much uncertainty, we published the US National Climate Report in full to ensure it can be found, for free, in the public domain.
Worse could still be to come. In the US, Trump has declared an “energy emergency” as an excuse to carve open more land and ocean for oil and gas exploration, which is expected to lead to a sharp increase in US greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel companies, such as Koch Industries, are funding an association of Republican attorneys which includes many Republican attorneys general who are trying to block states seeking compensation for weather disasters caused by climate change.
The Orwellian developments in the US have not yet been replicated on the other side of the Atlantic, but Guardian reporters are investigating how money from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests are funding thinktanks linked to far-right groups in Britain and Europe. This is a clear attempt to break down the longstanding consensus over climate science and net zero campaigns, despite the very strong public support for both.
Earlier this year, the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, and former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss attended the launch of Heartland UK/Europe which is headed by a climate denier and part of a US network funded by the petroleum company ExxonMobil and wealthy US Republican donors. The Guardian has revealed how Heartland has been wooing far-right European politicians since at least February 2023.
In these bleak times, it is also crucial to report on the strength of the resistance and the possibility for positive change: the leaders still seeking global solutions, the youth activists who have launched a new campaign to “villainise big oil” and lobby for compensation for climate damages (which is reminiscent of the Guardian’s earlier Polluters series to name and shame the companies most responsible for the climate emergency), the taskforce dreaming up radical climate solutions, and the campaigns that remind us that the overwhelming majority of people in the world want more ambitious climate action.
We are not alone. This is not a fringe issue. Nor is it a hoax or an impossibly expensive challenge, no matter what Silicon Valley social media, Russian bots and Saudi oil money try to tell us. But we need to stick together and keep focusing on real stories, real problems and real people.
Our reporters are dedicated to exposing the forces working to undermine environmental progress and protections. If you don’t already, please consider supporting our work with a regular monthly financial contribution. It takes less than a minute to set up and makes a huge difference.
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Join George Monbiot and special guests on 16 September for a special climate assembly to discuss the growing and dramatic political and corporate threats to the planet. Book tickets – in person or livestream
