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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 18 / 23 protect power and privilege ensconced in global capitalism fueled by cheap hydrocarbons and is consistent with far right nationalism, the protection of “petro-masculinity,” and white power. Dagget writes: “For many, extracting and burning fuel was a practice of white masculinity, and of American sovereignty, such that the explosive power of combustion could be crudely equated with virility” [15]. Likewise, Anshelm and Hultman [89] report, “These climate sceptics tried to save an industrial society of which they were a part by defending its values against ecomodern hegemony” (p. 84). Allowing mean- ingful restrictions to fossil fuels endangers the power of petro-privilege. Hultman et. al. agree: “…far-right nationalism and AGW denialism [are] based upon the ideological similarities in viewing the world from an industrial masculinities viewpoint, not wanting to let go of the colonial extractive logic that has served these men well, but violated the planet” [90]. As Malm and the Zetkin Collective [14] show, following Griffin [91], far-right ideology, including fascism, has a historical relation with denial, lies, and misinformation since Mussolini. This helps us theoretically ground misinformation (not intended to deceive) and disinformation (intended to deceive)as forces that are capable of redistributing power and obscuring alternatives, “as when a traveler is falsely told a bridge collapsed” [92] notes Bok, and in this case our bridge is limiting fossil fuels to preserve a habitable planet.

Also, far-right ideology is palingenic, that is, obsessed with re-birth, and AGW denial can be a re-birth of that privilege that comes through the data with nostalgia for a time when white patriarchy was fueled with abundant fossil fuels. Under this lens, greatness and progress need to be defended and reclaimed from environmentalists and scientists. Anti-reflexivity provides a rationale to reclaim this “stolen pride” —something supporters of US President Donald Trump directly articulated to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, speaking from the poorest county in the US while the president’s 2025 budget removed social safety-net essentials to pay for tax credits for the wealthy [93]. As conservative identity is forged around system protection and justification [67], attacking and delegitimizing AGW is expressed alongside a deep fear of losing essential conditions of the current dominant system, the neoliberal capitalist economy and white male dominance. Thus, it makes sense that the far-right joined the fossil fuel industry in organizing the CCCM, which in turn has forged a strong bond with the US Republican Party. While the GOP has adopted an increas- ingly anti-environmental record since the Reagan era, its opposition to environmental and especially AGW policies have escalated. The Bush 43 Administration, which was the primary focus of McCright’s and Dunlap’s [26] original analysis of anti-reflexivity, was extremely hostile to AGW policies but employed strategies designed to draw limited attention from the

public. For example, it misrepresented and suppressed research highlighting the threats posed by AGW, it portrayed AGW policies as threatening our national well-being, promoted the work of a small number of contrarian climate scientists and pseudo-scientists, and supported attacks on the work of mainstream climate scientists in Congressional Hearings run by the GOP—sometimes resulting in vicious threats against the scientists [94]. Yet, the Trump Administration in less than two terms has exceeded all prior efforts to deny the reality and dangers of AGW by openly and aggressively attacking AGW policies, withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement, and sabotaging international cooperation to reduce carbon emissions, putting AGW deniers like Scott Pruitt in charge of agencies such as the Environmental Protection agency in the first term, promoting energy production with no regard to environmental con- sequences, and much more [95]. And crucially, Trump normalized labeling AGW a “hoax” and a “scam” among Republican politicians, reflecting the success of the CCCM’s efforts to instill hardcore denial into one of our nation’s two major political parties (or at least what remains of the GOP under Trump). In July of 2025 during his second term, the Trump adminis- tration hired two authors in our data, John Christy and Roy Spencer, to the Energy Department. Immediately the Energy Department published a report authored by them and three others [96] questioning the validity of the “endangerment”

ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, twice affirmed by the US Supreme Court. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is authorized to regulate air pollutants that endanger the public, thus an endangerment ruling under the guidance of a scientific committee, is needed for the US to regulate CO2: