In the summer of 2023, the U.S. Senate Committee on The Budget held a hearing on "Dollars and Degrees" to explore whether funding for research and media from the fossil fuel industry and conservative groups sow doubt about climate change and dampen perceptions of climate change risk.
The work likened the efforts by the fossil fuel industry to reduce public concern about climate change to those practices by the tobacco industry to reduce concern about cancer risk.
Participant had previously produced An Inconvenient Truth, featuring former Vice President Al Gore, which fostered heightened views of climate change risk favorable to the climate industry.
Heightened alarmism about climate change risk is useful for the climate change industry: it helps develop investment opportunities, promotes climate litigation, and shapes the court of public opinion.
Perceptions of climate risk drove remarkable growth in the catastrophe bond market; encouraged venture capital investment into so-called climate tech; supported development of trading schemes in carbon credits, derivatives, and offsets; and created demand for expansion of the climate intelligence consultancies to support analytical interests of various types of financial activities.
Artful maneuvering like Whitehouse's and Oreskes' keeps viewers' attention focused on the fossil fuel industry so that they would not see the bigger truth: Industry's influence on public understanding of climate change is not in production of reduced views of risk; it is in the production of inflated views of climate change risk.
This has itself become a grotesque racket where climate change is introduced to children by "Science Moms" that have distilled their message into cartoon nuclear bombs; the climate alarm narrative leaves children sad and anxious; lawyers and advocates use that faltering well-being to advance a political agenda; and leading psychological organizations encourage parents to engage their climate anxious children in litigation.
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