Books
Almiron, N., & Xifra, J. (2020) Climate Change Denial and Public Relations. Strategic communication and interest groups in climate inaction. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. Climate Change Denial and Public Relations: Strategic Communication and Interest Groups in Climate Inaction is a critical approach to climate change denial from a strategic communication perspective. The book aims to provide an in-depth analysis of how strategic communication by interest groups is contributing to climate change inaction. It does this from a multidisciplinary perspective that expands the usual approach of climate change denialism and introduces a critical reflection on the roots of the problem, including the ethics of the denialist ideology and the rhetoric and role of climate change advocacy. Topics addressed include the power of persuasive narratives and discourses constructed to support climate inaction by lobbies and think tanks, the dominant human supremacist view and the patriarchal roots of denialists and advocates of climate change alike, the knowledge coalitions of the climate think tank networks, the denial strategies related to climate change of the nuclear, oil, and agrifood lobbies, the role of public relations firms, the anthropocentric roots of public relations, taboo topics such as human overpopulation and meat-eating, and the technological myth.
Beder, S (2006). Suiting Themselves: How Corporations Drive the Global Agenda. London, United Kingdom: Earthscan. In this brilliantly researched expo 'communications Rottweiler' Sharon Beder blasts open the backrooms and boardrooms to reveal how the international corporate elite dictate global politics for their own benefit. Beder shows how they created business associations and think tanks in the 1970s to drive public policy, forced the worldwide privatization and deregulation of public services in the 1980s and 1990s (enabling a massive transfer of ownership and control over essential services) and, still not satisfied, have worked relentlessly since the late 1990s to rewrite the very rules of the global economy to funnel wealth and power into their pockets. Want a globalized and homogenized world of conflict, poverty and massive environmental degradation run by a corporate oligarchy that wipes its feet on democracy? Or a democratic world, where poverty is history, companies work for people and clean water is a right, not a privilege you pay for? Beder’s message is clear – it’s your world, and it’s time to fight for it.
Black, R. (2018). Denied: The rise and fall of climate contrarianism. The Real Press. Climate change won’t be that serious…’ – ‘the lights will go out if we use renewable energy…’ – ‘climate science is bent…’. For a decade, contrarians controlled large swathes of the UK’s political and media discourse on energy and climate change.
But their time is coming to an end. As the record for the warmest year gets broken time after time, the cost of clean energy tumbles and public support for tackling climate change stays high, the lights are indeed going out for Britain’s contrarian elite, in both politics and the media. In Denied, the first book to take a serious look at the history of the UK’s climate contrarians, former BBC science and environment correspondent Richard Black outlines how they and their canonical arguments came to such prominence – and how they lost.
Gelbspan, Ross. (2004) How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Are Fuelling the Climate Crisis—And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. New York: Basic Books. The fossil fuel industry directed the Bush administration's energy and climate policies-payback for helping Bush get elected. But they were not the only ones to blame: the media and environmental activists were unwittingly worsening the crisis.
Hamilton, C. (2007). Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change. Melbourne, Australia: Black Inc. Agenda. This book reveals a shadow world of lobbyists and sceptics, spin and hidden agendas in Australia’s climate change political sphere. The author investigates a deceitful government and a compliant media and lays out the facts about Kyoto, carbon emissions and what governments and individuals might do, and have done.
Hoggan, J., & Littlemore, R. (2009). Climate cover-up: The crusade to deny global warming. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books. Climate Cover-up seeks to answer this question, describing the pollsters and public faces who have crafted careful language to refute the findings of environmental scientists. Exploring the PR techniques, phony "think tanks," and funding used to pervert scientific fact, this book serves as a wake-up call to those who still wish to deny the inconvenient truth.
Michaels, D. (2008). Doubt is their product. How industry assault on science threatens your health. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. This book reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion-dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. PR tactics used here were later replicated by climate change denialists.
Oreskes, N. and Conway, E.M. (2010). Merchants of doubt. How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. London: Bloomsbury. This book tells the controversial story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is "not settled" have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it.
Pooley, E. (2010). The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth. New York, NY: Hachette Books. To write this book, Pooley, the former managing editor of Fortune and chief political correspondent for Time, spent three years embedded with an extraordinary cast of characters: from the flamboyant head of one of the nation's largest coal-burning energy companies to the driven environmental leader who made common cause with him, from leading scientists warning of impending catastrophe to professional sceptics disputing almost every aspect of climate science, from radical activists chaining themselves to bulldozers to powerful lobbyists, media gurus, and advisors in Obama's West Wing—and, to top it off, unprecedented access to former Vice President Al Gore and his team of climate activists.
Powell, J. L. (2011). The inquisition of climate science. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. The Inquisition of Climate Science claims to be the first book to comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, their extensive industry funding, and their failure to provide any alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming.
Rich, N. (2019). Losing Earth: The decade we could have stopped climate change. London: Picador. By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change - what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed. Here's a book about it.
Shoup, L. H. (2019). Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2019. New York, USA: Monthly Review Press. The Council on Foreign Relations is the most influential foreign-policy think tank in the United States, claiming among its members a high percentage of government officials, media figures, and establishment elite. For decades it kept a low profile even while it shaped policy, advised presidents, and helped shore up U.S. hegemony following the Second World War. In 1977, Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter published the first in-depth study of the CFR, Imperial Brain Trust, an explosive work that traced the activities and influence of the CFR from its origins in the 1920s through the Cold War. Now, Laurence H. Shoup returns with this long-awaited sequel, which brings the story up to date. Wall Street’s Think Tank follows the CFR from the 1970s through the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present. It explains how members responded to rapid changes in the world scene: globalization, the rise of China, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of a “War on Terror,” among other major developments. Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling class, but is not without challengers. Wall Street’s Think Tank is an essential guide to understanding the Council on Foreign Relations and the shadow it casts over recent history and current events.
Washington, H., & Cook, J. (2011). Climate change denial: Heads in the sand. London, UK: Routledge. Climate Change Denial explains the social science behind denial. It contains a detailed examination of the principal climate change denial arguments, from attacks on the integrity of scientists, to impossible expectations of proof and certainty to the cherry picking of data. Climate change can be solved – but only when we cease to deny that it exists.