From fear of future to dismissive disdain, debate unleashes array of emotions
Little meeting of minds as social media fuels discourse that’s far from sociable
Sign says: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Dozens of children lie still on concrete.
Their silhouettes are traced in coloured chalk before they stand again to face the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.
The Sept. 27 die-in was, in Alex Flett’s words, a way to “demonstrate the kind of future they’re showing us right now.”
It looks like a stunt, but the grief and fear behind the message is real.
There are plenty of people who believe their future is in peril.
The emotions were palpable at an Oct. 15 Enviro-collective meeting.
The year-old group usually focuses on climate action and networking, but this specific meeting purposefully resembled a support group as people took turns sharing opinions and emotions.
One man spoke about his adult son, who has decided not to have children due to climate change.
A young woman uncontrollably sobbed, believing her future is so grim.
But some choose to harness anger into proactivity.
They have paid attention to the science, and it’s causing anxiety (eco-anxiety, to cite from the Oxford Dictionary’s word-ofthe-year shortlist), depression, sadness and frustration.
“When you actually read everything, and you try your best to understand it, you see that this is a true existential threat,” said Enviro-collective member Maureen Huot.
“Our leaders frame it as a political topic, as opposed to just a real factual discussion about the science and the reality that we’re facing. So you end up feeling kind of impotent.”
But there are plenty of people who discount these emotions, judging by social media comments.
“Shame on you kids,” Kelly Jorgenson wrote about a climate strike story posted to the Leader-post’s Facebook page.
May Nand called the climate strikers “useless people in society.”
Barry Young wrote: “Education tax being miss used. Its time to take a hard look at where these Dumb asset kids are getting their information from.”
There are comments like Jerry Cooper’s — “i wore cotton when I grew up. NOT PLASTIC FROM CHINA” — that seem to suggest the young people built a world reliant on plastic and cheap imported goods.
Empathy and respectful discourse are largely absent in these message threads.
For the students, including 18-year-old Flett, respect and understanding are priorities.
That was the spirit of a poem he read at the Nov. 29 climate strike.
“The truth is, my ears are open. I will listen to what others have to say, because if I lived their life, I would think the same way.
“Nobody alive chooses the decision that they think is incorrect, yet so many of us give the other side neglect.”
“Why are we not willing to engage other people with differing views?” Roger Petry asked, then answered: “I guess part of it is just the political climate we’re in, that’s tied to the technologies we’re using ... Social media puts people into their little tribes.”
Petry, a philosopher at the University of Regina, likened the discourse to a football game, the Saskatchewan Roughriders versus the Calgary Stampeders: You pick a side, and you stick to it.
In online communities, added Petry, “you have no accountability for what you’re saying because it’s mostly anonymous ... Of course, there’s no social respect going on.”
Larissa Shasko first noticed a divide during the 2011 federal election, when she was running for the third time as a Green party candidate.
“I remember just reaching this point of awareness where it was either us against them, like one side or the other,” said Shasko.
“What really became apparent in that election was that there was polarization between people who wanted to see something done about climate change and environmental issues, and people who were more concerned with the economy. And I think there still hasn’t been that bridging of the two.”
Today, Shasko is a student at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, researching climate change policy-making.
Divisions exist beyond average people: Shasko says her research is showing “a real failure” for conversation and collaboration among policy-makers.
“I think that as soon as there’s any area where somebody feels attacked, that closes down a lot of opportunities to work together,” she said.
Petry notes many people see themselves in terms of what they believe. “So if somebody challenges an idea we have, we take it as a personal attack,” he added.
“And because we’re increasingly isolated, so we see even debate or discussion as being an attack because somebody is challenging an idea.”
People in the oil and agriculture industries are feeling attacked, said Laura Stewart, who is writing a book on carbon and the Prairies. A geographer, climate activist, journalist and a Prairie person, Stewart grew up on a cattle farm near Arcola.
When people oppose action on climate change, said Stewart, “it’s easy to assume that this is just people not wanting to give up their cushy life, when the facts are quite different.”
The oil industry has transformed communities that were out of work for decades.
It has funded public parks and rinks, and provided families with off-farm income.
“People have seen this change over a generation,” said Stewart. “And now they’re seeing people saying, ‘Well, this is the last cycle; you’re not going to get another boom.’ And unless there’s a vision of what they can move on to, what they’re hearing is ‘we have to go back.’ ”
In discussion around a federal carbon tax, Flett sees Saskatchewan as having been left out, “which I believe ties in a lot to why so many of us are leaning so far in the opposite direction.”
Huot speculates that people in denial “are probably those who are most afraid of change, or overwhelmed by it.”
They lash out, accusing children of being puppets.
As Richard Lounsbury wrote, “What a shock, indoctrinated and politically influenced by their teacher.”
“It makes sense that you would think that,” 13-year-old Ada Dechene said of such comments.
“It’s really scary just to be like, ‘Wow, I don’t understand this so well, but these people do.’ And so you try to come up with reasons why they shouldn’t. So it’s like, ‘their parents are telling them this’ and then you can feel a little bit better about not knowing enough yourself.”
Petry said many people don’t have training in critical thinking and evaluating evidence. Plus, they’re busy, so they don’t rigorously, intellectually test information they hear; they use an emotional lens.
“It’s like, ‘Is what I’m hearing faithful to the story that I tell myself, that makes sense of my world around me?’”
Petry said that can lead to ignoring information, or seeking “an external authority who will just validate the opinions we already hold.”
That applies to climate change, Stewart suggested: “When you’re looking at a huge change to your way of life, you tend to listen more to the people who are making it sound better.”
Petry said that applies in politics, too.
“Rather than pursuing evidence-based policy, you now have a lot of governments who know a policy direction they want and then they try and find reports that support the policy, rather than … basing a policy based on whatever the evidence says.”
At the U of R last year, a study commissioned by the province was deemed an “outlier” and “inconsistent” when it stated a carbon tax would cause Saskatchewan to lose $1.8-billion-plus per year.
“If you create doubt in the mind of the public, that can delay action, and it has for 20 years,” said economist Brett Dolter, pointing to research by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes.
They analyzed Exxonmobil’s climate change communications from 1977 to 2014 and concluded the company “misled the public.”
Within Exxonmobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, 83-per-cent of peer-reviewed papers and 80-per-cent of internal documents acknowledged climate change is real and human-caused.
But, 81-per-cent of Exxonmobil’s public messaging (advertorials) expressed doubt climate change is real.
Turning back to social media, fake news — actual fictionalized news items, not simply a disagreeable news item — is another way to mislead the public.
An example is a meme of two Time magazine covers, one purportedly from 1977 predicting a coming Ice Age, and one from 2006 warning of global warming.
“It’s all like, ‘Well, scientists used to say that it was going to get colder, and now they’re saying it’s going to get hotter; they don’t really know what they ’re talking about, ’ ” explained Gordon Pennycook, an assistant professor in behavioural science at the U of R.
“Both of the images, the covers, are actually from recent years and they’re actually both about climate change,” but the words have been changed. “So it’s a really deceptive form of a meme.”
Pennycook, who studies fake news and misinformation at the Hill/levene School of Business, said evidence shows “people mostly believe stupid claims on social media or elsewhere because they just don’t spend that much time thinking about them.”
He added, “It’s mostly pictures of dogs and babies and whatever on Facebook. And then you come across news content and you have to be in a more kind of critical thinking mode — and that’s just not the way people engage with social media.”
In Friday’s Leader-post: Carbon Conundrum Part 6: Equity. While many people are charged up about climate action, whether for or against, others don’t have the means of getting involved. What a level playing field means, locally and globally.