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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 19 / 23 High impact weather extremes, usually related to temperature, precipitation and/or high wind, can disrupt infrastructure and therefore endanger human health and wellbeing. The issue is not whether extremes occur. Rather, it is whether there are long-term (decadal scale) changes in the frequency or character of extremes (“detection”), as well as the extent to which such changes and the attendant changes in hazards are caused by anthropogenic emissions of green- house gases… However, it is naïve to assume that any recent extreme event is caused by human influences on the climate (p. 46). The EPA used this report to justify revoking the endangerment ruling and removing the authority for it to regulate and mit- igate climate change. The policy process is ongoing as of this writing but the power of climate denial and the CCCM are obviously important. All of this speaks to an agenda to defend the structures of Western, white power from a global problem many believe cannot be solved if that very system remains in place [97,98]. Indeed, these far-right moves have led the Polity project, which rates countries for democratic or authoritarian characteristics, to rate the US a non-democracy during both Trump terms [99]. Going beyond politics, some analysts argue that AGW denial helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of “alter- native facts” and “post-truth,” phenomena that undermine scientific and other expertise and faith in institutions such as

“mainstream media,” universities, and government agencies [100,101]. This opens the door to disinformation and con- spiracies [102] such as “Covid is a hoax” or that vaccinations are dangerous widely spread by right-wing (and sometimes left-wing) media, websites and spokespersons, including the second term Trump Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The result of these epistemological attacks is that many people suspect basic facts, making it difficult for democracy to function while endangering people with falsehoods. Recognizing the danger of disinformation, individual researchers, universities and some NGOs have developed pro- grams to study and develop techniques to counter disinformation, but their efforts have received a hostile reception among those who spread it —including efforts to intimidate disinformation research which the far-right labels as censor- ship, such as the US House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in the 118th Congress. These kinds of hard-core actions by key forces of anti-reflexivity have taken efforts to undermine AGW science and pol- icies to a new level, defending disinformation of all types including those about election integrity. These escalating attacks on facts, science, and reality writ large represent “anti-reflexivity on steroids.” Thus, the efforts beginning in the 1980s of a small group of dissenting scientists, pseudo-scientists and far right journalists (including those who produced the books

in our analyses), often funded by the fossil fuel industry and conservative think-tanks and promoted by ideological media, have certainly borne fruit—to the detriment of the environment and humankind. Supporting information S1 Appendix. ABS.D&J.Appendix.Final. (DOCX) Author contributions Conceptualization: Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap. Data curation: Peter J. Jacques. Formal analysis: Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap. Investigation: Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap.