Activists on Tuesday urged leaders at COP27 and big tech companies to take action against climate change misinformation that undermines efforts to limit the devastating effects of global warming.
In an open letter signed by 550 groups and individuals including former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, activists called on COP27 delegates in Egypt to adopt a common definition of disinformation and fake news about the climate, and to try to prevent them.
They also asked the bosses of seven digital giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, to put in place strict policies to prevent the dissemination on their platforms of false climate information, as they did for the COVID-19. 19.
“We cannot defeat climate change without tackling fake news and misinformation,” the signatories stressed.
“As emissions continue to rise, humanity faces a climate catastrophe, but vested economic and political interests continue to organize and fund climate misinformation to curb action,” they added. .
“Fast and robust action”
The signatories demanding “swift and robust global action by COP decision makers and technology platforms to mitigate these threats”.
The letter was also signed by diplomat Laurence Tubiana, one of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement, which forms the current basis for global goals to curb climate change.
It is accompanied by a survey published on Tuesday on the extent of beliefs in false information on the climate in six major countries – Australia, India, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, the United States deploring that a large part of their population believed the false claims.
According to this survey by two NGOs – Climate Action Against Disinformation, which analyzes trends in fake news on social media, and Conscious Advertising Network – at least 20% of respondents in each country believe that the current global warming is natural and is not man-made.
The human causes of global warming are unequivocally documented in the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“There is a significant gap between public perception and science on such fundamental issues as the existence of climate change or its primary cause, namely humans,” said the survey released on Tuesday.
This gap “weakens the public mission for climate action and compromises negotiations aimed at achieving the objectives of the Paris climate agreement”, underline its authors.
“Deny”, “delay”
Observers of climate disinformation say the fossil fuel industry has been deliberately sowing doubt about the role of carbon emissions in global warming for decades.
The survey reveals, for example, that 44% of respondents in Australia and 46% in the United States think that climate change is not mainly due to human activity.
In the United States, 23% of respondents think climate change is a hoax invented by elite organizations, she said.
Respondents who consume news five or more days a week are more likely to believe certain misinformation, “suggesting that media reports routinely include misinformation stories,” the survey said.
Facebook, Google and other tech giants have said they are working to make false climate claims less visible, including in paid ads.
But the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank found in a detailed study this year that messages aimed at “denying” or “delaying” action on climate change were prevalent on social media.