RAMPANT misinformation is worsening climate crisis and pushing the world closer to catastrophe, a new report by the International Panel on Information Environment (IPIE) has revealed.
The report, which systematically reviewed 300 studies, found that coordinated disinformation, largely driven by fossil fuel companies, right-wing politicians, and certain governments, is obstructing and delaying meaningful climate action.
While outright climate denial has declined, it has evolved into more sophisticated campaigns aimed at discrediting climate solutions. A striking example is the false claim that renewable energy was responsible for a recent massive blackout in Spain.
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Online bots and trolls continue to amplify such narratives at scale, while political leaders, civil servants, and regulators are increasingly targeted in an effort to stall progress on climate policies, the researchers said.
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. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised. On Saturday, Brazil, host of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, will rally nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.
“It is a major problem,” said 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 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.”
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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 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 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 that: “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.”
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via nyahaya@icirnigeria.org and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.
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