Marooned: Lives in denial
The strange kind of heroism of those who spend years denying climate change.
This is ‘book’ 22 in the series The Impossible Books of Keith Kahn-Harris. The cover was created by Gus Condeixa. For more on this series, read the introduction here.
What sort of book is it?
A group biography, periodically updated over the coming decades.
How likely is it that I will write the book?
Unlikely.
Am I happy for anyone else to write the book?
Yes — I think it would be a fascinating project.
Synopsis
As the signs of anthropogenic climate change become clearer and clearer, so scientists and activists becoming ever more urgent in their warnings: if we don’t act now we are facing disaster.
There are all sorts of reasons why action to limit carbon emissions and forestall the prospect of catastrophic climate change is piecemeal and largely ineffective. One of the most important though is denial. I am not talking here about denial in the sense of ‘being in denial’ — when one knows that something is happening but refuses to face up to it — but organised and systematic attempts to deny the scientific evidence. These forms of denial are perpetuated by a loose coalition of fossil fuel lobby groups, contrarian scientists, newspaper columnists and bloggers, libertarian economists and right-wing politicians.
Scientists, politicians, writers and activists have long recognised that any attempt to address climate change has to battle organised, and sometimes well-funded, forms of denial. There is often a touching faith in truth and scholarship — if we communicate what is going on clearly and effectively, denial will crumble. Perhaps this strategy has worked on some denialists, but it is entirely ineffective on the hardcore. In fact, the ability of denialists to continue denial even in the face of the most direct evidence to the contrary is often extraordinarily strong.
Marooned is a book about the tenacity of denial, about the amazing human capacity to use a variety of often incredibly complex strategies to cast doubt on what is real.
The form of the book is a group biography: a series of interconnected portraits of key figures in climate change denialism (perhaps based on lengthy conversations with the author). The tone of the book is penetrating, not shying away from revealing the pseudo-scientific techniques that denialists use, but — unlike most books on denialism — it will not be angry or abusive.
In fact, Marooned will have a wistful, almost elegiac air to it: it will show due appreciation for the skills denialists demonstrate, for the strength of mind it takes to persist in the teeth of growing evidence; it will be full of regret for the human abilities that have been lost and turn against themselves.
Marooned will be updated every five years for an indefinite period over the life of the author. It will track the denialists as they grow old, as the evidence for human climate change becomes ever greater. The book will not expect to find that the denialists change their minds or become chastened and penitent. Perhaps a few might, but the majority will not.
In fact, the book will be all the stronger for the growing divide between the persistence of the denial and the incontrovertibility of the evidence. There is a strange heroism, an ineffable beauty to be found in the lives of those who face a constant and exhausting challenge to maintain their view of the world as it crumbles around them.
By the last update of the book, as its aged subjects contemplate a ravaged and drowned world with the same formidable refusal to submit to the real, perhaps we will come to love them: what a piece of work is man, that he should maintain the dominance of the mind over the realities of the physical!
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this Impossible Book, why not browse through the rest of the series here?
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Many thanks!
Finally, here’s an alternative cover:
