Anyone who is upset about the fact that there are a lot of flights to the climate summit in Glasgow is falling for a splitting maneuver by the conservative media.
That had to come. The English tabloid The Daily Mail has reporters to the airports in Glasgow and Edinburgh switched offwho should watch which guests at the climate conference get off which fat airplane or private jet. Boris Johnson, for example, covered the 600 kilometers home to London on a plane! Or Jeff Bezos, who allegedly came straight from Bill Gates’ birthday party on a luxury yacht off the Turkish coast! And that despite the fact that it is a conference where people meet who may one day want to ban the common people from eating schnitzel. Hypocritical! Contradictory! Morally highly reprehensible, scandalized the very conservative newspaper. The machinery of indignation sprang up gratefully.
Because flat denial is no longer possible, the focus is on distraction
As a person who can understand that Joe Biden does not swim to Scotland, one may find the index finger mechanism behind such attacks silly at first glance – and otherwise best not worth mentioning. In fact, there is a strategy behind it that communication experts are increasingly identifying as a new tactic of science denial. Because the flat denial of climate change is no longer credible even in the most backward-looking circles, but the end of the fossil fuel age should still be delayed as long as possible, people have moved from denial to distraction.
In an effort to assign the greatest responsibility for overcoming the climate crisis to the individual behavior of people and their moral purity, systemic levels, i.e. industrial and political responsibility, are diverted and attempts are made to split the climate movement. The accusation of hypocrisy is a very effective means of discrediting important changes, writes the American climate scientist Michael E. Mann in his book “Propagandaschlacht ums Klima”. The action of the Daily Mail is a prime example of this tactic.
There will never be real progress in climate protection through morally correct behavior or insulting individuals, regardless of whether it is about the neighbor’s SUV, Greta’s not-so-climate-friendly sailing tour to the USA or Prince Williams’ private plane to Glasgow. In order to slow down global warming, global agreements and politics are needed, which then enforce them. So exactly what is being fought for in Glasgow.