Disinformation and demagogues mean the future of the climate is on the ballot in 2024

This year has been called the biggest election year in history. More than four billion people around the world – a majority of the global population – will go to the polls in national and regional elections from the US and Brazil to India and Korea.

One big factor in many of those elections will be resurgent populist politicians, mostly on the right, frequently with an authoritarian impulse. And one stance almost universal among populist leaders is a strong opposition to net zero policies.

This week, John Kerry, the outgoing US special presidential envoy for climate, visited London to talk to UK parliamentarians, in what was by many accounts a warm and productive conference. I caught up with him at the US embassy for a fascinating interview, in which his concerns over “demagoguery” and “disinformation” on the climate crisis were strongly to the fore.

More on what Kerry fears this all means for the environment, after this week’s key climate reads.

“People are not being told the truth about what the impacts are from making this transition [to net zero greenhouse gas emissions],” Kerry (pictured above) told me this week.

“They’re being scared, purposely frightened by the demagoguery, that is oblivious to the facts or distorting the facts. And in some cases outright lying is going on.”

Social media is increasingly full of disinformation on the climate crisis, peopled by bots and trolls making untrue claims that cast doubt on climate science. Climate denial, which for years had appeared to be confined to the fringes of political debate, has been voiced by mainstream leaders, including the likely US Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Other populist or rightwing leaders have stopped short of outright denial of climate science, but have raised concerns over the cost of net zero policies. But they often inflate those costs, fail to mention that they are rapidly reducing, and ignore the vast costs of climate inaction and extreme weather.

For Kerry, this is one of the most worrying trends in today’s politics. He warned of “the disinformation crowd that are willing to put the whole world at risk for whatever political motivations may be behind their choices”.

Kerry is no stranger himself, of course, to the impact of “fake news”. His unsuccessful campaign to unseat incumbent Republican president George W Bush in 2004 was plagued by untrue claims about his service in Vietnam.

For Kerry, the best answer to the “demagoguery” is to return incessantly to the cold hard facts of climate science. “Nothing that we are doing, nothing that President Biden has sought to do has any political motivation or ideological rationale,” he said. “It’s entirely a reaction to science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening [to the climate].”

Keeping science to the forefront of policymaking ought to be something all parties, across political divides, could agree on. Yet in 2024, with only a few years left to avoid the worst consequences of climate breakdown, it may be too much to ask.

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Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers

For five years from 2018-23, French journalist Chloé Cohen pioneered with her positive podcast and newsletter on sustainable fashion, Nouveau Modele.

“When I discovered the social and environmental impacts of the textile industry, I realised that there was very few media that talked about these issues correctly,” says Cohen. “I wanted to better inform citizens.”

The format saw Cohen interview dozens of influential campaigners and entrepreneurs on how to have a style industry “without exploiting, wasting or polluting”. You can catch up on all 305 episodes here.

Nominated by reader Chloe Faure

If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downtoearth@theguardian.com

Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines

Computer simulations of the earth’s past and – hypothetically – future climatic states. These models require sequential data on oceans, land vegetation, ice cover etc, which can then be used to calculate grid-based properties for atmosphere, temperature, wind and humidity, and their evolution over periods of time.

For more Guardian coverage of climate modelling, click here

One image that sums up the week in environmental news

Credit: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

This image of monsoon-struck Dhaka features in Thaslima Begum’s dispatch from the Bangladesh capital on how the country is “running out of options” to confront its extreme weather.

“Between 2000 and 2019, Bangladesh experienced 185 extreme weather events, including cyclones, heatwaves, flooding and droughts,” Begum writes, as she highlights the communities and heroes trying to find a solution to the country’s climate woes.

For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here