Could Climate Denial Be As Unconscionable as Holocaust Denial?

Why we won’t blame ourselves the way we blame Nazis in the 20th Century

Too many factors?

After a mere seventy-plus year, it is easy to find fault with those who downplay, or outright deny, that there was ever a Nazi holocaust that killed millions of innocent victims.

Today, however, we still are entrenched in denial. This time, it is about how we affect the climate and related bio-extinction events.

Our human climate denial seems less sinister and there are many reasons for this. Not the least of which is that today we live with universal, and a unanimous judgmental decision that genocide by thugs is evil. It is a far more complex set of decisions that lead to climate death.

Every year millions of people die from the effects of air pollution. The numbers are hard to pin down for several reasons. Some estimates are 4.5 million people per year. Some are up to 7 million. There is some discrepancy because some measures are for indoor air, some are for contaminants all around, and some measures are trying to distinguish between respiratory ailments of various kinds. Some research tries to rely on industry records, and some on medical reports.

There are as many factors as there are people.

At my own home, fires are nearby. Breathing is becoming hard, especially for wildlife who can’t hide indoors. Yet, even today, some people downplay the human-made threat of climate disasters like this.

People do not know their own power

In school, we all were taught how Nazi forces sought world domination. However, with the climate crisis, it’s not just one “master race” but an unholy host of other players — most of which just wish to drive, heat homes, and eat meals.

These days, the “master race” is anyone of the human race that has to burn large amounts of CO2 in order to get through another day.

We can conserve, we can waste less, create less trash, and can even attend to the biosphere’s needs (which are our own needs) but more often than not, we feel helpless. We do not realize our power.

It is very easy to miss an air pollution-related death when all death is multi-factorial. When we add in deaths from other overlapping events, it is easy to understand why although we have data and statistics, we almost always have some amount of plausible denial.

More death from heatwaves is projected to increase dramatically, and the many factors in play for famine, flood, or fires, are all rapidly changing.

Each of these has an effect on the other. Wildfire smoke, to take just one factor, is going to cause more respiratory ailments, more pollution, and more erosion — hence, more flooding, and more widespread devastation.

We are impacting the oceans and lakes quite obviously, and one has only to measure ocean rise and glacial melt to see this.

The causes of the Sixth Extinction are easier to identify than our mere pollution. We are by all measures, spreading out, culling wildlife, and appropriating land.

One may wonder, then, why is climate denial, whether it be ideological, or just apathetic, so well tolerated?

Climate denial, like the climate, has shifted

Almost no one denies the climate is rapidly changing anymore. Although some people will still maintain that it is not human-caused. But far more common than this denial is the denial that we have any personal responsibility.

It’s true there was a misinformation campaign, resulting in political divisions that to this day lobby for keeping emissions, not against it. but it’s also true that there have not been many boycotts of petroleum products or by-products.

It is easy to point to China, for example. Yet, if there is anything in your house from China, it is easy to find the obvious flaws in this argument. Never mind, that per capita, we still waste more in the rich, western nations than anywhere else.

Much of our denial is due to defending our way of life, much of it is due to distraction, and much of it is due to a failure to empower ourselves with activism, and demands for better leadership.

While oil corporations racked in record profits this year, few people found many targets to point at other than their most hated politicians.

Like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot, we are slow to recognize the real danger we are in until it is upon us. This, too, is a very real kind of denial.

We don’t blame ourselves for being Nazis

Have you ever met a person who admitted to being a Nazi? We fail to recognize that Hitler was not the only Nazi. Or we look only at those in command. We cannot see that we ourselves — if faced with threats to our jobs, families, lives, or status — would also be like the typical Germans who allowed the Holocaust to occur.

No one sees themselves as this kind of human being. History, they say can be better understood looking backward. We can not only see the whole picture in hindsight, but we also rearrange our perception to make everything fit in scenarios where there are clearly “bad guys,” and “good guys.”

Unfortunately, it can only be lived moving forward. We cannot clearly see what negative choices we are making until it is too late.

This is a human condition. It’s simply true that we all may be against an evil force, but nonetheless, we enable it to happen when trying to cooperate as a social species that “goes along to get along.”

We are finally just beginning to see that the climate crisis is the most enormous moral cause of our lifetime, and perhaps in all of history.

We don’t have to wallow in guilt, shame, or our shared “Nazi-hood” to address it, however. In fact, if we are wise, we look at our shared humanity.

It is only our realization of a shared planet and connected biosphere that will see our shared humanity is essential to survival.