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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 16 / 23 Environmentalism is anti-Christian, an evil religion and is analogous to genocide: Because they are not prepared to look at the truth of Jesus Christ, people are being deceived by falsehoods. Yet even the science they claim to believe in is telling them that they are accepting lies. When concern for the environment got out of control decades ago now, it rapidly assumed the status of religion. But it is a false one, perhaps the false one. “By their fruits you will know them” and what do we see? (Foster, 2009, 188, emphasis in original). • Environmentalism is unethical in its concern for nature. There is a “deep anthropocentric” ethic in the data consistent with anti-environmentalism, where humans are the only subject of value [see 88]. Roy Spencer, another key figure in the CCCM, argues for a deep anthropocentrism. This ethic informs what policy norms are acceptable, and posits environmentalism as an illegitimate religion: In general, environmental policy decisions that favor nature over people are based upon worldviews or religious beliefs that are separate from the science…. Any rights that we confer upon nature through environmental policies should only be those that benefit humanity. Anything else verges on a state-supported Pagan religion (Spencer, 2008, p. 180). This ethic also contends that changes to the environment are not negative if they improve human lives. The logic is that

AGW has been inconsequential because “nature” has no value other than for humans, and for Spencer, an industrialized capitalist economy is far more important. 5.3 Distrust in the integrity of climate science Authors argue that climate science—facilitated by media and government—is not reliable because it is a political tool cre- ated by a real conspiracy of scientists, co-opted by a radical, zealous, environmentalism that aims to exert religious-social control as noted above while at the same time about 99% of these books are published without peer-review. There is a belief that climate science is deeply corrupt, and this corruption goes to the highest levels of the IPCC, the US government, and media. • Climate scientists lie to the public. Ralph Alexander wrote the 2009 book, Global Warming False Alarm: The Bad Science Behind the United Nation’s Asser- tion that Man-Made CO2 Causes Global Warming, and in his first chapter, entitled “Global Warming Deceit” writes: The alarmists have spun such a web of deception that any science contrary to the view of human-induced global warm- ing is either ignored, played down, or deliberately distorted (Alexander, 2009, p. 1-2). Orthodox climate science is propaganda by a real conspiracy. • The consensus on AGW is a political tool for social control and closure of debate. • Scientists manipulate data to scare the public for personal and professional profit. Fig 2 summarizes the key beliefs that underlie the rejection of climate science in the two major elements of anti-reflexivity

(anti-environmentalism and anti-impact science) as conceptualized by McCright and Dunlap [26]. 6.1 Conclusion and discussion We have used a two-stage analytical approach to examine over 100 climate denial books involving first a deductive then an inductive process. The goal was to understand the genetic narrative—the “DNA” of AGW denial at a level of detail heretofore unreported in the literature, providing new insights about denial, and the CCCM.