{"id":12238,"date":"2019-05-15T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/article\/planet-climate-change-was-no-accident-corporations-20190515\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T00:55:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T08:55:16","slug":"climate-change-was-no-accident-corporations","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/opinion\/2019\/05\/15\/climate-change-was-no-accident-corporations","title":{"rendered":"Reminder: Climate Change Was No Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years ago, tobacco companies discovered the link between their products and lung cancer. Did they warn their customers? No\u2014they denied the link entirely, misleading the public for decades while killing their customers.<\/p>\n

Similarly, ExxonMobil scientists made startlingly accurate predictions<\/a> about climate change as early as 1982\u2014and then spent millions of dollars on a misinformation campaign<\/a> to sow public doubt about climate change.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t need to convince the public that the climate crisis wasn\u2019t happening. They just had to muddy the waters enough\u00a0<\/em>to prevent us from doing anything.<\/p>\n

They provoked uncertainty: Maybe the climate crisis isn\u2019t happening. And even if it is, maybe it\u2019s not caused by humans burning fossil fuels. (Of course, it is<\/em> happening and it is<\/em> caused by humans.)<\/p>\n

The result was inaction.<\/p>\n

If we aren\u2019t even sure that a human-caused climate crisis is afoot, why should we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels? It would be highly inconvenient and very expensive to go to all of that trouble unless we\u2019re absolutely certain that we need to.<\/p>\n

After all, the argument went, \u201conly\u201d 97 percent of scientists believe that humans are causing a climate crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m a scientist. Let me tell you, when 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, the evidence must be overwhelming.<\/p>\n

Scientists are trained to critique and argue with one another. We make our careers by pulling apart other scientists\u2019 theories and exposing the flaws in them and then supplanting them with better theories of our own.<\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t get 97 percent of scientists to agree that puppies are cute or chocolate is delicious.<\/p>\n

What about the other 3 percent? You can always find one or two nutty so-called scientists with inaccurate, fringy theories out there. There\u2019s probably a scientist somewhere attempting to publish a study asserting that Bigfoot exists\u2014or that climate change isn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n

Science is a community endeavor in which we try to collectively discover and advance the truth. The goal is that the community as a whole achieves a consensus or near-consensus that is as accurate as possible.<\/p>\n

If 97 out of 100 scientists agree that humans are causing catastrophic climate change, that\u2019s a consensus.<\/p>\n

The difference between lying about the deadliness of tobacco and lying about the deadliness of fossil fuels is who gets harmed by those lies.<\/p>\n

Tobacco is deadly\u2014I\u2019ve lost two grandparents to its ill effects\u2014but tobacco is most harmful to those who use it. The climate crisis is deadly to everyone, whether or not they are responsible for causing it. It will continue to hurt people for generations, even after humans stop polluting at such alarming levels as they do now.<\/p>\n

The Exxon Mobil executives who\u2019ve profited from fossil fuels did so while knowing that they were trading a few decades of profits for the entire future of the planet and all of the species on it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re beyond the point where we tell ourselves that changing our light bulbs can help. The fix for the climate crisis must come from the highest levels. It requires large-scale systemic changes and not a few insufficient individual actions.<\/p>\n

And it could start with consequences for the industry that caused the crisis on purpose.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published by OtherWords<\/a>. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far back as 1982, fossil fuel executives knew they were trading a few decades of profits for the entire future of the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":44724,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","categories":[6,281],"tags":[],"article-type":[246],"master-category":[464],"special-series":[],"type-of-work":[],"class_list":["post-12238","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-climate","article-type-opinion","master-category-environment"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nReminder: Climate Change Was No Accident - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover insightful articles on Reminder: Climate Change Was No Accident. 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