Saturday, November 21, 2015

Culture of denial, climate of doubt


If you look through pop culture and history, it turns out we have a real soft spot for those in denial—seeing things that aren’t there, not seeing things that are screamingly obvious, blaming the wrong culprits for problems, and simply not accepting apparent truths.

All of those are earmarks of denial, as defined a century ago by Sigmund Freud and his daughter, Anna. Here are six of my all-time faves whose traits could well be inspiration for today’s climate deniers.

Lt. Hiroo Onoda: Over?? Did you say over??

This Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer not only inspires climate denial, but he may have had a hand in John Belushi’s pep talk in the film Animal House. World War II wasn’t over until he decided it was over, and that was in 1974.

Dropped into the Philippine jungle in 1944 with orders to never surrender, Onoda made good for thirty years. One of his small cadre gave up in 1950, two more died along the way, one of them in a 1972 gun battle with the Philippine Army.

They lived off the land, swiping food from farmers, killing 30 civilians along the way. Onoda ignored the efforts of search parties and leaflet drops, dismissing them all as enemy tricks, until his elderly World War II commander was brought into the jungle to order him home.

I’ve always been intrigued by his story. It could translate quite well to climate denial, when the last denier gives up the ghost in 2107, at Orlando, the southernmost point in Florida.

The Mayor from Jaws: Beware the agenda-driven scientists conspiring to wreck your economy.

Larry Vaughn was an Amity Island lifer who just wanted the best for his seaside resort. 

As mayor, he did not respond well to reports that a man-eating shark lurked offshore, waiting to devour the tourist season.

When the first semi-torso was discovered, the Mayor pressured the medical examiner into blaming boat propellers. After more attacks plunged the Island into terror, emptying its beaches and threatening the economy, he doubled down. Fishermen then caught a tiger shark, and the Mayor declared the crisis over.

Enter Matt Hooper, the killjoy oceanographer, who insists that the guilty shark is a great white, and still at large. Bloody scientists.

Special Irony Bonus Points: 1) Mayor Vaughn also appears in the sequel, Jaws II, which is set four years after the first film. He was presumably re-elected during the interval, which means shark denial was not a political liability.

2) Character actor Murray Hamilton is also best known for one other supporting role, as Mr. Robinson in The Graduate. He mentors young Ben, Dustin Hoffman’s character, while Mrs. Robinson mentors him in other things. Which would make Murray Hamilton a double denial icon, for both sharks and cheating spouses.

O.J. Simpson’s legal team: Zen Masters of manufacturing doubt.

Twenty years ago, America stopped for a year to watch the Trial of the Century. Football legend O.J. Simpson faced a mountain of evidence that he had nearly beheaded his wife, Nicole Brown, and a gentleman she may or may not have been seeing, Ron Goldman.

O.J.’s world-class criminal defense team got him acquitted. The defendant theatrically demonstrated that the gloves he allegedly wore during the murders didn’t fit him. Also, an LAPD detective central to the investigation, Mark Fuhrman, is heard making strongly racist statements on multiple tape recordings.

Reasonable doubt thusly created, O.J. was free to “find the real killer,” which, if this were a climate trial, would be sunspots. (Update: O.J. is doing a 9 to 33-year stretch for a subsequent robbery; Mark Fuhrman is a crime analyst for Fox News.)

Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara: Spectacularly missing the obvious.

There’s one constant throughout the decades of Batman movies, serials, TV shows, comics and cartoons: Gotham City, to the last man, woman and child, is populated by nincompoops who can’t figure out who Batman and Robin really are.

This is strongest in the campy 60’s TV series, now enjoying a modest revival. Police Commissioner Gordon, a stern-faced empty suit, and his oafish stereotype of a sidekick, Chief O’Hara, see Batman and Robin every day. 

They see millionaire Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward Dick Grayson all the time, too. The latter two pairs have exactly the same voices and physiques and are never seen in the same place, but the lawmen can never see the connection—not even after the Commissioner’s very own daughter turns up in a Batgirl outfit.

And they never will. No amount of fundamental evidence can change that. Unmasking the two caped crime fighters would leave the city and its presumably very large police force at the mercy of a parade of criminals in gaudy costumes, and we can’t have that. 

It’s almost as difficult as unmasking rising seas and temperatures, melting icecaps, increasingly erratic weather, and acidifying oceans as being signs of you-know-what.

Oh, and the Superman thing is worse. Dude doesn’t even wear a mask when he changes costumes, and he’s surrounded in his day job by journalists who are oblivious to the biggest story in their lifetimes.

Constructing an alternate reality: Elwood P. Dowd and Harvey.

Climate denial thrives in part because it lives in its own parallel universe: Don’t like what scientists are saying about sea level rise? Create your own shadow IPCC. Don’t like what you see from renewable energy? 

Turn the government’s half-billion dollar blunder on Solyndra into a blunt instrument—all enabled by a gullible network of talk shows, blogs, and Fox News.
It seems so odd, but alternate realities are an old story in Hollywood.

A wildly successful Broadway play in the late 1940’s, “Harvey” became a hit movie in 1950. Dowd, played by Jimmy Stewart, is a gentle inebriate who spends his time in the company of a mischievous six-foot tall, bi-ped rabbit that no one else can see. 

Elwood acknowledges his alternate world in the end, memorably saying “I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor. And I’m happy to state that I finally won out over it.”

Never mind the impossibly long odds against being right: Lloyd Christmas.

In 1994’s “Dumb and Dumber” a love-struck Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) drags a friend on a cross-country comedy of errors. When the object of his affection tells him that their odds of becoming a couple are a million to one, Lloyd breaks into a grin and says, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”

A day doesn’t go by when I don’t hope the climate deniers are right, and virtually every major scientific body in the world is wrong about climate change. I’d be a bit embarrassed for not recognizing that all the physicists, Arctic natives, migrating species, coastal zone managers, defense analysts, farmers, journalists, and hippies are in a vast conspiracy.

But right now, climate deniers’ chances aren’t nearly as good as Lloyd’s were.

The Daily Climate is an independent, foundation-funded news service covering energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski [at] EHN.org