Get ready for an onslaught of climate disinformation as the 2020 Presidential campaign heats up between Trump and the eventual Democratic nominee.
The same bad media actors that helped Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin steal our democracy in 2016 have done little to stem social media disinformation again in 2020 despite their protestations to the contrary.
As a result, we can expect that there will be a small group of powerful and influential people on our planet who will make sure their power will not be threatened. To accomplish this, the kakistocracy of kleptocrats must ensure that the rest of us die. This will be the final endpoint that awaits us in a rapidly heating world if their strangle hold on power is not loosened. The enablers of Armageddon will accomplish this by weaponizing all the technologies available in the digital world, specifically in social media, subverting our democracy by amplifying messages on media platforms that simpletons desperately want to hear.
Citing survey data, the author, Dana Nuccitelli, wrote that “Republicans who watch Fox News are more than twice as likely to deny human-caused climate change than Republican non-viewers, and 62 percent of Republicans watch Fox News.” Nuccitelli added that the data “suggests that the presence of Fox News and other conservative media outlets may be the primary explanation for why climate denial is more prevalent in the United States than in other developed countries.”
And it’s further proof that Rupert Murdoch, whose family runs Fox News, is one of the most dangerous people on the planet.
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It sounds ludicrous. But when your Uncle Bert and Aunt Gertrude watch hours upon hours of this stuff, the effect is to produce a combination of anger, cynicism and inertia that makes it nearly impossible to break through with serious ideas about how to save the planet. And let’s not forget that Fox functions as state television for a president who declared on Twitter in 2012 that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
Despite overwhelming scientific consensus that time is running out to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise. As one of the two worst polluters (China is the other), the United States has to lead if anything is going to be accomplished. Unfortunately, Trump’s response has been to pull out of the Paris climate-change accords and to torment California for taking action at the state level.
The role of Fox News in preventing serious action on climate change shouldn’t be underestimated. From propping up the Trump presidency to mocking science as a bastion of liberal elitism, Fox is hastening the day when parts of the planet will become uninhabitable.
The Pew survey shows that a majority of Americans wants to do something serious about climate change. It also shows that the same Foxified minority keeping Trump in office is blocking the wishes of the majority. It’s further proof that our media system, like our electoral system, is undermining our democracy.
