Foundations of climate change denial: Anti-environmentalism and anti-science

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 14 / 23 • Mitigation policy will arrest Western progress or modern development. • Mitigation policy will be too costly and harm economic growth, particularly in the US, again in nationalist tones: Any other legislated measures will constitute an assault on the liberty and economic well-being of the American people and a disruptive exercise in futility. When the science of global warming and AGW can no longer be ignored, sup- pressed or censored, the promoters of the man-made global warming hoax will no longer be able to impose an authori- tarian agenda through fear and hysteria (Johnson, 2008, p. 66). • Mitigation policy will increase environmental problems. • Mitigation policy will create war. The above results confirm the heavy prevalence of the four key denial claims documented thus far in the literature. The claims are summarized in Fig 1. Note that some of these fears, like a fear that mitigation will arrest Western civilization progress, mimics fascist ideology and far-right nationalist views found in the Belle Époque (late 1900s) by the ultranation- alist futurist movement in pre-WWI Europe [84,85]. 5.1. Results of stage two coding: the DNA of climate denial Reading the corpus of books reveals a larger coherent discourse, signaled first by denial claims. The emergent coding reveals two fundamental logics: anti-environmentalism and a genuine distrust of climate science. These meta-themes

operate like genetics, or the fundamental rationales, for climate denial. They provide, “a certain thematic [which] is capa- ble of linking, and animating a group of discourses, like an organism with its own needs, its own internal force” [33]. 5.2 Anti-environmentalism Climate denial rhetoric expresses a deep anti-environmentalism, consistent with increasing polarization over AGW [4,86]. There is open animosity toward environmentalists, often affiliated with former Vice President Al Gore whose “Inconvenient Truth” film, book and Nobel Prize generated a lot of opposition from the CCCM. There is a general sense that environ- mentalists are socialists in disguise, working to achieve global power at the expense of individual freedom, capitalism, US power, and Western progress. For example, Vaclav Klaus, former President of the Czech Republic, in a 2007 book published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute warns that reducing greenhouse gases will be disastrous for humankind/civilization/Western progress and will send civilization back to the Stone Age. The force that threatens to do this is environmentalism. • Environmentalism is the new socialist enemy to freedom. • Environmentalism is anti-capitalist. Horner (2007) in his chapter entitled, “Green Is the New Red, The Anti-American, Anti-Capitalist, And Anti-Human Agenda of Today’s Environmentalists” writes: Spawned from the 1970s split of anti-modernists from the decades-old conservationist movement, “environmentalism” has

matured into a nightmare for anyone who believes in private property, open markets, and limited government. Environ- mental pressure groups have no use for limiting governmental powers or expanding individual liberties. Instead, environ- mental claims are without fail invoked to advance the statist agenda (p. 3). • The lies of environmentalism will lead to human and environmental tragedy and environmentalists have a secret, corrupt agenda. • Environmentalists are simply using AGW to accumulate power.