Message From the Editor

At DeSmog, climate denial is our bread and butter. We regularly bring to light the fossil fuel companies, PR firms, and people fueling denial.
But this week, Matthew Green, our global investigations editor, took a different approach to denial. He looked at it as a sign that the climate crisis is a form of collective trauma.
He draws on climate leaders like Christiana Figueres, who helped negotiate the Paris Agreement, members of Extinction Rebellion, and young Indigenous activists, like Xiye Bastida, who share the belief that, as he puts it, “the industrialized world’s failure to mount a meaningful response to climate change is itself a symptom of collective trauma, rooted in patterns of exploitation handed down over generations.”
Matthew argues that if we’re going to reckon with our climate trauma, we need to draw on skills and practices from collective trauma healing. They can help guide us through high-stakes, emotionally charged situations — like UN climate negotiations — and allow us to then “build communities, teams, and social movements capable of driving the rapid transformation demanded by the climate crisis,” he writes.
He’s not the only one who believes rapid transformation is possible. “I very deeply sense that we are not standing at the precipice of the doom of the human species,” Figueres told the audience at a collective trauma summit. “But rather that we are standing in front of a portal that we are beginning to walk through, and that is going to take us to understand, and experience, a much higher version of ourselves.”

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Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

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Image credit: Lola Perrin

What the Climate Movement Can Learn From Collective Trauma Healing

— By Matthew Green (9 min. read) —

Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who played a key role in brokering the Paris Agreement, was renowned for using every conceivable ruse to charm, chivvy, and cajole world leaders to act.

But this week she will address a theme, rarely mentioned in U.N. negotiations, that she sees as the hidden culprit behind 30 years of missed chances to confront the climate crisis: the legacy of collective trauma.

With Manchin’s Permitting Reform on Ice, Mountain Valley Pipeline Again Faces Uncertain Future

— By Nick Cunningham (6 min. read) —

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) pulled the plug on his permitting reform bill on Tuesday, ending what would have been a major overhaul of bedrock environmental laws that date back to the 1970s. The demise of Manchin’s bill also means that a long-distance fracked gas pipeline named in the proposed reform is once again facing long odds of moving forward.

DC Protests Highlight US Climate Opposition to Manchin Deal, World Bank Head

— By Zach D. Roberts (6 min. read) —

Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C., dozens of activists rallied in two separate but related protests against what they see as climate science denial — first, controversial comments from the World Bank’s leader, and second, Senate plans to force through a gas pipeline and ease other energy project permitting.

The protests were planned by two coalitions of environmental and progressive groups, including Third Act, American Blue Ridge Alliance, Our Revolution, Friends of the Earth US, Glasgow Actions Team, The Climate Reality Project, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Our Future WV, For All, and WV Coalition to End the Filibuster.

Italy’s Lurch to the Right Raises Risk of Fossil Gas Lock-In

— By Stella Levantesi (7 min. read) —

Italy’s gas lobby should be entering early retirement. Instead, it’s rarely been riding so high.

The energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the prospect that far-right politician Giorgia Meloni will win snap elections on Sunday, have all but eclipsed growing calls from a younger generation for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels.

In fact, Italy seems to be moving in the opposite direction. An emergency decision to approve two new gas import terminals, and the virtual absence of discussion of climate policy on the campaign trail, have raised the risk that energy companies will leave Italy hooked on planet-warming fossil gas for decades to come, campaigners say.

Heathrow-Sponsored ‘Lounge’ at Labour Conference Draws Criticism

— By Adam Barnett (3 min. read) —

Heathrow was a major presence at the Labour Party’s annual conference, held this week in Liverpool, where the theme was “A Fairer, Greener Britain”. The airport paid an unknown sum to host a “Heathrow Lounge” at the event.

Heathrow has been called the second most-polluting airport in the world. The airport is pushing ahead with plans for a third runway, even though experts warn that the expansion may lead to the release of several million additional tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Steve Koonin

Steven (Steve) E. Koonin is a university professor and founding director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. From 2009 to 2011, Koonin was Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy under President Barack Obama. Before working in government, Koonin spent five years as Chief Scientist for oil giant BP where he helped to establish its Energy Biosciences Institute. From 1975 to 2006, he was a professor of theoretical physics at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and served as provost from 1995 to 2004. Koonin was featured in a 2021 PragerU video titled “Is There Really a Climate Emergency?” where he claimed it is “hubris” and “either untrue or so far off the mark as to be useless” that “the planet is warming catastrophically because of certain human behaviors,” that we can project climate change from models, or that we can prevent the climate from changing.
Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.