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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 7 / 23 uncovering a more elemental, genetic narrative on which it is founded” (p. 212)—precisely the goal of reading and coding the 108 climate denial books under examination. These books provide more in-depth presentations of denial than typical CTT reports or news releases. They also convey substantial legitimacy, and often receive considerable visibility—giving their authors credibility with the media, the public, and some policy-makers [27]. They therefore offer the opportunity to gain critical insights into the CCCM’s relentless efforts to question the seriousness of AGW and thus the need to reduce carbon emissions. B. Anti-reflexivity Individual denial is informed by elite cues [53]. These cues are produced by “the US conservative movement (backed by much of corporate America) [which] seeks to delegitimate and defund impact science, continually pushing for cuts in the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies and challenging their regulatory authority” [36, p. 2]. Surveys indicate that political orientation has long been the best predictor of views of AGW, with Republicans and conservatives most likely to hold doubtful views including outright denial that it is occurring [4,54–56]. Conservative white males are especially likely to hold doubtful views, consistent with the predominantly conservative, white male constituency of the CCCM [57]. AGW threatens the far-right because it implies the need for deep socio-economic change and a redistribution of social

power. Thus, the “anti-reflexivity” thesis was proposed by McCright and Dunlap [35] to explain AGW denial [see also [36,58,59]. Anti-reflexivity is the combined rejection of Reflexive Ecological Modernity and “impact science.” Reflexive ecological modernity calls for ecological rationality in governance and economics [60]. Reflexive modernity comes from Ulrich Beck’s [61,62] Risk Society thesis that calls for progressive cross-national citizen efforts, like the global environ- mental movement, to temper powerful forces that create planetary crises. “If such [efforts] are accompanied by reflection, openness to alternative understandings, and critical questioning, then we can speak of reflexive modernization” [63].” But if they provoke “… angry rejection of alternatives and retreat into the familiar by people who now understand the nature of the threat to them, we can speak of reflexive traditionalization” (Ibid. [emphasis added]). Thus, reflexive modernization considers alternatives to traditionally hegemonic ideas, but this threatens those empowered by that traditionalism, who then resort to anti-reflexive actions and discourses [35]. Earlier Schnaiberg [64] distinguished between “production science” that facilitates technological advances fueling indus- trial capitalism, and “impact science” that investigates the resulting negative effects of production and growth on humans and the environment. Along with reflexive modernity, impact science shows that the hazards and risks of industrial society

“shake the foundation of industrial society, including its core institutions (e.g., the nation-state, science, systems of welfare and insurance)” [65]. Accordingly, McCright, Dentzman [66] show that conservatives distrust impact science but trust pro- duction science, likely because conservatives are prone to system protection and system justification [67,68]. One important point in the literature is that neither science nor international civil society are automatically or always reflexive. Drawing on Bowden, Nyberg, and Wright [69], Boström and colleagues note that some actors have the capacity of reflexivity and use it, “as a means to defend one’s privileged position” [65], purposefully creating and distributing igno- rance. Thus, …as well as being a tool for change, reflexivity is also a target of anti-reflexivity forces that aim to prevent change. It is therefore also crucial to address the powerful forces that deliberately and strategically counteract reflexivity, which many times are the same forces that create environmental destruction [70]. In sum, anti-reflexivity opposes ecological reforms, progressive social movements, and science that provide critiques of capitalism. Anti-reflexivity is likely an ontological and epistemological funnel shaping being and knowing contingent on