The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

"I chose this book for a couple of reasons. As you said, the politics of climate change is a difficult and dark subject and none of the books I have chosen so far is exactly an upbeat read. So, it is helpful in all this to find a way to keep a sense of humour. It’s not always easy but Tom Toles does that. And, of course, satire can be one of the most effective means of communication. So, I thought it would be good to add something that – even though it’s a very serious book in some ways – is also not as hard and difficult as the other books. It also connects back to Amitav Ghosh’s point: that this whole situation is pretty much insane. One of the brilliant things about Tom Toles’ cartoons is that he shines a light on that and he makes people realise how really crazy some of the things that climate change deniers say are and how crazy some of the things they do are. I could go on for hours lecturing about some of these things but with Tom Toles’ cartoons you get it in an instant. Because the politics of denial is so closely linked with the world of post-truth, post-facts, and alternative facts. Climate change deniers didn’t invent the phenomenon of alternative facts — that goes back to the 1930s and the origins of public relations and mass marketing media and, the tobacco industry had a lot to do with that. And there’s a fine line between advertising, disinformation, and alternative facts. That’s part of the point of the paper that Geoffrey Supran and I just published on ExxonMobil. A lot of ExxonMobil’s disinformation was published in the form of advertorials – advertisements presented in the form of an editorial – made to look as if they were discussing factual matters. This is partly why those advertorials were so damaging. The seemed to be making factual claims, but actually they were promoting disinformation. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The problem of disinformation and the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction is a central in our society today. Many people want to say how horrible Donald Trump is — and, of course, I do think he’s horrible — but Republicans have been saying that climate change is a hoax for fifteen years or so. And even the ones who didn’t say it was a hoax had been disparaging, downplaying, and discounting the scientific evidence and saying ‘it’s not really that bad and we can adapt, and don’t worry the technology will rescue us.’ There’s been organised denial in the Republican party for a long time and that’s a pretty scary state of political affairs. I think this is what Michael Mann is referring to when he talks about it driving him crazy. It’s really hard as a scientist, when you’ve dedicated your entire life to try to understand the natural world and to articulate factual information as best as you humanly can, working incredibly hard at that and participating in mechanisms designed to help people identify factual information like the National Research Council or Royal Society panels or the IPCC. You work at these activities because you believe that if you get the factual information clear, explain it well, and make it available, then people will respond in a rational way. For scientists to discover that that’s not true has been quite a shocking state of affairs. And especially because people of our generation — Mike and I are of a pretty similar age — grew up in a time where governments did accept scientific information and did use it to do things and make policy. We now see a reversal where science is deeply disparaged. It’s at the point now where people aren’t shocked anymore, but we should be shocked. It’s a shocking state of affairs. It does make you despair a bit because if people won’t even accept the factual information, how are we supposed to have a reasoned conversation about different potential remedies? I was raised to think that you could disagree with somebody but still respect them, and you could have a reasoned conversation about the best approach to, say, ending the Vietnam War or the best approach to ending racial discrimination. When I was growing up, nobody I knew would say that racial discrimination wasn’t a real thing. We all agreed that it was real and bad; the question was a strategy and tactic question about how best to address it. Now you have people who won’t admit that climate change is even a real thing, much less that it’s bad. What does that do to democracy? How can you have an informed debate when people are in denial about the facts of what’s happening in the world around us? I think that’s what Mike and Tom Toles are referring to when they talk about damaging our democracy and driving us crazy. I think it’s already changed for the better in most places in the world but not the United States. I see the US as an anomaly. I travel all around the world and see a green technology revolution taking place. It’s quite amazing what’s happening in many places with the incredible uptake of renewable energy technology and a really rapid decline in the price to install solar and wind electricity just in the last five years. I think there’s tremendous grounds to be optimistic, particularly when you look carefully at what’s been happening and you can see the drivers of these changes and there’s been some very good work done partly by colleagues at MIT. It’s been a question of what’s driven the fall in the price of, say, solar photovoltaic technology in the last few years? And the answer is that it’s a combination of technological innovation and policy. The right policies send clear signals to the marketplace that then encourage the private sector to commit and really work on these things. When you get the right policies in place, the private sector can step in and make a difference. That’s not happening in the United States right now. The policy signals are in the wrong direction, with Donald Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement and saying he wants to expand coal development and increase offshore drilling for oil and gas. But elsewhere in the world, in many places, the signals are much better. The United States is the single biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions from a historic standpoint and one of the top emitters from a per capita standpoint but, nevertheless, about eighty percent of emissions now don’t come from the United States. So, if all the rest of the world gets on board and addresses this issue, the world as a whole could largely solve this problem. I think if the world moves forwards, I’d like to believe – I have to believe – that what’s going on in the United States right now is a temporary aberration. A lot of people are saying that maybe it’s a last desperate gasp of a number of retrograde tendencies in American culture. I hope that’s true. I don’t think any of us really know, but if the world moves forward then one of two things will happen: either the United States will get on board, or it will be left behind. If it is left behind, then that will be sad because America has made great contributions to the world, but if that’s what happens then that’s what happens. At one point I started planning a book project about solutions — what it would look like to fix this problem — and I imagined the story would take place in Korea because South Korea is a very innovative country. But my husband said to me, Naomi, if the solution takes place in Korea then Americans will not view that as a happy ending. I realized he was right. I think it’s easier right now to imagine a happy ending that is not centralised in the United States, but I also think that a lot can change in a few years. I don’t think the situation is hopeless — I don’t take Roy Scranton’s view — but I do think it’s very serious and more deeply serious than most people have acknowledged."