Guest blog: Cutting Through the Fog: The Propaganda That Keeps Big Oil in Business
Guest Blog from Franz Baumann published as an article on Taylor and Francis Online here. Franz Baumann is the Vice-President of the Academic Council of the United Nations System. You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.—Leon Trotsky Truth be told, people are not very interested in climate change. The sense of unease that things are going in the wrong direction does not broadly translate into willingness to invest time and energy to understand the causes of the climate crisis. Of course, Big Oil, airlines, banks, industry, and assorted rightwing lobby groups invest much money in politics, public relations, social media, and universities, to keep things that way. The upshot is that, like nuclear weapons proliferation, which is another existential danger, climate change does not by and large instigate momentous political activism, heated conversations, or major lifestyle changes. Given that we might be entering uncharted territory Footnote 1 —ever more intole...