Climate Change Denial and Anti-Intellectualism

Paul Krugman’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times gets at a point that I’ve been making off and on for several years: the anti-intellectualism that pervades a huge swath of our voter population here in the United States.  Large numbers of people believe that the reason that our scientists almost unanimously agree on the realities of human-caused climate change is that all these researchers wish to enable a vast power-grab by which big government can enslave us; apparently, it seems reasonable that all these highly educated people who have spent their entire lives studying the Earth’s climate are at the core of an anti-capitalist conspiracy.

In some cases, the root of asinine beliefs like this is religious extremism; in others it’s just a basic lack of schooling.  In both cases, the fossil fuel industry vigorously fans the flames of this ignorance, disseminating enormous amounts of disinformation, resulting in a miasma that aggressively retards environmental progress in the U.S.

What to do about this?  I’m not sure.  As for me, I just keep writing about it, and making an occasional public presentation on the subject whenever I’m asked.  I wish I could be doing more; as always, I’m open to recommendations.