Four shades of greenhouse gaslighting
Identifying ways climate action opponents attack our psyches
From Casablanca to Notorious, the great actress Ingrid Bergman left her mark on cinematic history. But few, if any, would have guessed that her work would also contribute to the 21st century political phenomenon known as “gaslighting.” In 1941, she co-starred with Charles Boyer in the film Gaslight, which focused on how a husband (Boyer) tried to drive his wife (Bergman) insane, in part, by constantly flickering the gaslights in their house and then denying it was happening.
The term started entering the linguistic bloodstream in the 1950s. At that time, television sitcom writers coined the gaslight treatment or gaslight bit to describe a scene wherein a character was fooled. But the expression took a dark turn in the following decade, when it was used to describe brazenly lying with designs to get others to either accept a fundamental untruth — or else drive them crazy. As one psychologist put it in 1969: “It is…popularly believed to be possible to ‘gaslight’ a perfectly healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as symptomatic of serious mental illness.”
Nowadays, “gaslighting” is a common term used to describe verbal duplicity by politicians. Opponents of climate action often employ the tactic. Gaslighting is particularly effective on this topic because as one article on the World Economic Forum website put it, we are “wired to fear only short-term threats.” Our unwillingness to look to the far horizon, the story explained, is a key reason “why we ignored climate change.” In other words, if the danger is not immediate, many are more than willing to be sucked into gaslighting rhetoric.
We recently saw this path of least resistance in Australia, where the recent election was expected to be a referendum on global warming. Instead, voters “shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef and the extreme drought punishing farmers,” according to the New York Times. Rather, they “re-elected the conservative coalition that had long resisted plans to sharply cut down on carbon emissions and coal.”
Perhaps, many of us are unconsciously allowing ourselves to be gaslighted on this existential issue. But that’s not acceptable.
“Gaslighting only works when a victim isn’t aware of what’s going on,” psychologist Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker explained. “Once you become alert to the pattern, it will not affect you as much.”
For those who want to fight back against assaults on our collective understanding of global warming, the first step is to identify the different varieties of climate gaslighting. To that end, here are four shades of global warming gaslighting you should look out for:
1. Straight up denial
This is the most obvious and well-recognized form of climate gaslighting. Take, for example, the rhetoric of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Earlier this summer, when Rep. Scalise went on CBS This Morning, anchor Tony Dokoupil questioned him about how the Gulf of Mexico engulfs a football field’s worth of land in his home state of Louisiana every hour. When the interviewer connected this topic to the scientifically documented climate crisis, Scalise pushed back with long-debunked arguments.
“First of all, we do know that the Earth’s temperature changes–it goes up and down,” he said. He then doubled down, claiming that, rather than climate-induced rising sea water, this land loss was mostly due to “coastal erosion.”
Rep. Scalise is not the only member of Congress to maintain the denier’s position. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is most notable for taking climate gaslighting to the extreme. Beyond once brandishing a snowball on the House floor to argue that a spell of cold temperatures in D.C. proved climate change didn’t exist, Inhofe, who wrote a book called The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, has relied on classic gaslighting language to explain that it’s us, not him, who are foolish, because we believe in global warming.
“You know, our kids are being brainwashed?” Inhofe said in an interview in 2016. “The stuff that they teach our kids nowadays, you have to un-brainwash them when they get out [of school].”
2. Questioning humanity’s role
For those who recognize that denying climate change is a credibility bridge too far, another gaslighting option is to suggest that global warming exists but claim that it isn’t humanity’s fault.
Sen. Marco Rubio, whose home state of Florida is heavily impacted by the climate crisis, went that direction in a CNN interview last year. Rubio said: “I can’t tell you what percentage [of humanity’s behavior] is contributing and many scientists would debate the percentage is contributable to man versus normal fluctuations.”
This approach relies on a popular gaslighting maneuver: throwing in positive reinforcement to confuse you. Agreeing that the climate is warming appears to offer a concession. But pivoting to the question of humanity’s precise contribution to the problem is disorienting. “This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter–and again, to question your reality,” Dr. Stephanie Sarkis, author of Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People–and Break Free, wrote about this tactic.
The reality check here is that scientists do agree on humanity’s role in global warming.
“Nothing is 100 percent certain in science, but the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which summarize the state of science, express a 95 percent confidence that humans have caused more than half and most likely all…recent global temperature rise,” said Vox.com’s climate maven David Roberts. “That is about as close to certain as scientists ever get about anything.”
3. Inevitability of climate change
Rather than discuss root causes, there’s always this posture, which science journalist Erin Biba suggested in June is currently in vogue. “Climate inevitability is the new climate denial,” she wrote on Twitter. “Don’t fall for it.”
This throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air position is best reflected in a September 2018 headline from the publication The Week: “Trump administration argues that Earth will inevitably be ruined by climate change, so we might as well keep using fossil fuels.”
At the time, an environmental impact statement from the government conceded there’s global warming but argued that since we’re on pace to see temperatures rise seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, we might as well just keep burning oil until we reach the end of times. The Week distilled the report’s message this way: “So if that’s our fate … what’s the point in trying to fight it? It would be much more fun to go out with a fossil-fueled bang …”
Certainly, most reputable scientists worry we are on this course. But very few believe that we should just keep running on coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas because we have no chance of averting the worst effects of climate change.
From Scientific American’s “10 macro solutions to the climate crisis” to Curbed’s “101 tips for how to join the battle at home,” numerous ideas and resources contradict the inevitability contention.
4. Personally condemn climate action advocates
If attacking the science or just giving up doesn’t work, dismissing environmentalists—and those who listen to them—as fools is an alternative. This is a popular gaslighting maneuver. “You will always be dismissed, judged, or told that you are crazy or a liar,” one Psychology Today article explained about this method.
The goal here is to make anyone who believes in consensus science feel stupid. This effort occurred when 16-year old Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg visited England in April to speak out on global warming. At the time, “Eco-denialists” described Thunberg as “that weird Swedish kid” and referred to those who believed her position as “imbecilic” supporters, The Guardian reported. This effort to discredit Thunberg as a “millenarian weirdo,” among other things, only appears to be increasing.
Similar efforts took place in the United States after the Green New Deal was announced. Whether you support that endeavor or not, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t fixated on getting rid of “farting cows” as her opponents continually claimed. But the purpose of focusing on this statement was to gaslight her potential supporters into believing they’d be insane to back her.
So what can we do?
One of the most important things to recognize about gaslighters is that they aim to wear you down. “This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting–it is done gradually, over time,” wrote the Gaslighting author Sarkis. “A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often…Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting.”
As such, environmentalists must be vigilant, remain strong and always be armed with the facts. Without that approach, the gaslighters may very well win.
