Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change

The age of climate denialism is far from over. The Future of Denial asks us to consider why we squander the short time we have left.

Will capitalists voluntarily walk away from hundreds of trillions of dollars in fossil fuels without force? And, if not, who will force them? The age of denial is over, or so we are told, yet emissions continue to rise while gimmicks, graft, and greenwash distract from new climate violence against the vulnerable.

This timely, interdisciplinary contribution to the environmental humanities draws on the latest climatology, hints in the energy transition, critical theory, Earth's paleoclimate history, and trends in border violence.

Militias near Portland hunt imaginary left-wing arsonists during a wildfire because they cannot imagine the world is warming. Europe erects nets in the Aegean Sea to capture migrants pushed out by drought and war. An airline claims to be carbon neutral using cheap offsets. Drone strikes hit people living along the aridity line. Yes, Exxon knew as early as the 1970s, but the basics of global warming were already understood before the American Civil War. Our capitalist economy is an ecocidal machine lashing out against the marginalized and shifting blame.