Corporate climate deniers are corrupt, not confused about reality

Evidence

Each component of the neoliberal response is firmly grounded in neoliberal economic doctrine, and as such, has its own special function to perform. As we have already learned from historians of the tobacco strategy such as Richard Proctor and historians of climate denialism such as Naomi Oreskes, the purpose of science denialism has been to quash all immediate impulses to respond to the perceived biosphere crisis, and to buy time for commercial interests to construct some other eventual market solutions to global warming. Denying the very existence of global warming is cheap and easy to propagate, can be fostered quickly, and tends to draw attention away from issues of appropriate responses to crisis. The neoliberal think tanks behind the denial of climate change don’t seriously believe they are going to win the war of ideas within academic science in the long run, just as the tobacco strategy never envisioned disproving the smoking-cancer link. Yet, nevertheless, even the existing denial of the science displays its neoliberal bona fides. The first response to a political challenge should always be epistemological, in the sense that the marketplace of ideas has to be seeded with doubt and confusion. This is the core of the agnotological project. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Suddenly “climate lockdowns” started trending—an entirely made-up threat, with strong links to the Heartland Institute, the foremost climate-change-denial think tank, which made the absurd claim that once the globalists were done locking you in your house to fight Covid, they were going to lock you in your house to lower greenhouse gas emissions. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 486 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Of course, it was intended to. That is, his book makes clear the willing participation of the firm’s managers in the corruption, and their calculated efforts to corrupt lower-level staff. As an example, higher commissions were paid for moving poor-quality bonds off on unwary customers. One is reminded of the people who worked for the now-defunct Lincoln Savings and Loan Company, which sold a good many nongovernment-insured investments to elderly customers, allowing them to believe they were insured. Many lost their life savings. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4024 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The fossil fuel industry replicated the tobacco denial playbook — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 246; Wholesome skepticism differs fundamentally from conspiracism; Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927 (+8 more)

Related

• Corporations manufacture doubt as a deliberate product to block climate action (similarity 0.81)
• Fossil fuel companies knowingly obscure climate science rather than believe their denial (similarity 0.80)
• Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists (similarity 0.80)
• Conspiracist climate denial rejects expertise itself, unlike corporate misinformation (similarity 0.79)
• Climate-denial think tanks manufactured the invented ‘climate lockdowns’ threat (similarity 0.78)
• The fossil fuel industry replicated the tobacco denial playbook (similarity 0.78)
• Climate-change denial organizations were directly funded by tobacco and fossil-fuel interests (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists #exemplifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927
• Climate-denial think tanks manufactured the invented ‘climate lockdowns’ threat #exemplifies (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 486
• Corporate corruption of employees is often deliberately engineered by management #exemplifies (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4024
• Tobacco’s manufactured doubt predated and enabled climate denial playbooks #expands (0.75) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 788
• Deniers invoke debunked zombie beliefs or disparage science as corrupt #complicates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2978
• Corporate actors deflect moral blame by comparing themselves to worse harms #exemplifies (0.75)