Then there’s the climate crisis. The world is warming, global wind patterns and ocean currents are shifting, ocean levels are rising, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Mann and Hotez call out many sources of climate misinformation, including “petrostates” — nations whose revenues are largely derived from fossil fuels. (The petrostates are one of the five “powerful forces” referenced in the book’s subtitle, the others being plutocrats, propagandists, the press, and pros — referring to scholars who use their credentials to promote unsupported or contrarian views.) Of the petrostates, Russia tops the authors’ list. Citing Russia’s dependence on fossil fuels and its authoritarian leadership, including what they see as a desire to destabilize Western democracy, they write: “These factors combine in a perfect storm of consequences for the global spread of civilization-threatening antiscience.”
They describe how Russia-backed operators used social media to spread misinformation about Hillary Clinton’s climate policies in 2016, to Russia’s advantage. They also see Russia as being behind 2009’s so-called Climategate affair, in which climate data was stolen from a U.K. university.
And it’s not just Russia. The authors take issue with what they see as Saudi Arabia’s oversized influence on U.S. media, and also point to Texas (Hotez’s home state), where they argue that people linked to the fossil fuel industry have a long track record of political clout.
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