All of those are earmarks of denial, as
defined a century ago by Sigmund Freud and his daughter, Anna. Here are six of
my all-time faves whose traits could well be inspiration for today’s climate
deniers.
Lt. Hiroo Onoda: Over?? Did you say over??
This Imperial Japanese Army intelligence
officer not only inspires climate denial, but he may have had a hand in John
Belushi’s pep talk in the film Animal House. World War II wasn’t over until he
decided it was over, and that was in 1974.
Dropped into the Philippine jungle in
1944 with orders to never surrender, Onoda made good for thirty years. One of
his small cadre gave up in 1950, two more died along the way, one of them in a
1972 gun battle with the Philippine Army.
They lived off the land, swiping food
from farmers, killing 30 civilians along the way. Onoda ignored the efforts of
search parties and leaflet drops, dismissing them all as enemy tricks, until
his elderly World War II commander was brought into the jungle to order him
home.
I’ve always been intrigued by his story.
It could translate quite well to climate denial, when the last denier gives up
the ghost in 2107, at Orlando, the southernmost point in Florida.
Larry Vaughn was an Amity Island lifer
who just wanted the best for his seaside resort.
As mayor, he did not respond well to
reports that a man-eating shark lurked offshore, waiting to devour the tourist
season.
When the first semi-torso was
discovered, the Mayor pressured the medical examiner into blaming boat
propellers. After more attacks plunged the Island into terror, emptying its
beaches and threatening the economy, he doubled down. Fishermen then caught a
tiger shark, and the Mayor declared the crisis over.
Enter Matt Hooper, the killjoy
oceanographer, who insists that the guilty shark is a great white, and still at
large. Bloody scientists.
Special
Irony Bonus Points: 1) Mayor Vaughn also appears in the sequel, Jaws II,
which is set four years after the first film. He was presumably re-elected
during the interval, which means shark denial was not a political liability.
2) Character actor Murray Hamilton is
also best known for one other supporting role, as Mr. Robinson in The Graduate.
He mentors young Ben, Dustin Hoffman’s character, while Mrs. Robinson mentors
him in other things. Which would make Murray Hamilton a double denial icon, for
both sharks and cheating spouses.
O.J. Simpson’s legal team: Zen Masters of manufacturing doubt.
Twenty years ago, America stopped for a
year to watch the Trial of the Century. Football legend O.J. Simpson faced a
mountain of evidence that he had nearly beheaded his wife, Nicole Brown, and a
gentleman she may or may not have been seeing, Ron Goldman.
O.J.’s world-class criminal defense team
got him acquitted. The defendant theatrically demonstrated that the gloves he
allegedly wore during the murders didn’t fit him. Also, an LAPD detective
central to the investigation, Mark Fuhrman, is heard making strongly racist
statements on multiple tape recordings.
Reasonable doubt thusly created, O.J.
was free to “find the real killer,” which, if this were a climate trial, would
be sunspots. (Update: O.J. is doing a 9 to 33-year stretch for a subsequent
robbery; Mark Fuhrman is a crime analyst for Fox News.)
Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara: Spectacularly missing the
obvious.
There’s one constant throughout the
decades of Batman movies, serials, TV shows, comics and cartoons: Gotham City,
to the last man, woman and child, is populated by nincompoops who can’t figure
out who Batman and Robin really are.
This is strongest in the campy 60’s TV
series, now enjoying a modest revival. Police Commissioner Gordon, a
stern-faced empty suit, and his oafish stereotype of a sidekick, Chief O’Hara,
see Batman and Robin every day.
They see millionaire Bruce Wayne and his
youthful ward Dick Grayson all the time, too. The latter two pairs have exactly
the same voices and physiques and are never seen in the same place, but the
lawmen can never see the connection—not even after the Commissioner’s very own
daughter turns up in a Batgirl outfit.
And they never will. No amount of
fundamental evidence can change that. Unmasking the two caped crime fighters
would leave the city and its presumably very large police force at the mercy of
a parade of criminals in gaudy costumes, and we can’t have that.
It’s almost as
difficult as unmasking rising seas and temperatures, melting icecaps,
increasingly erratic weather, and acidifying oceans as being signs of
you-know-what.
Oh, and the Superman thing is worse.
Dude doesn’t even wear a mask when he changes costumes, and he’s surrounded in
his day job by journalists who are oblivious to the biggest story in their
lifetimes.
Constructing an alternate reality: Elwood P. Dowd and Harvey.
Climate denial thrives in part because
it lives in its own parallel universe: Don’t like what scientists are saying
about sea level rise? Create your own shadow IPCC. Don’t like what you see from
renewable energy?
Turn the government’s half-billion dollar blunder on Solyndra
into a blunt instrument—all enabled by a gullible network of talk shows, blogs,
and Fox News.
It seems so odd, but alternate realities
are an old story in Hollywood.
A wildly successful Broadway play in the
late 1940’s, “Harvey” became a hit movie in 1950. Dowd, played by Jimmy
Stewart, is a gentle inebriate who spends his time in the company of a
mischievous six-foot tall, bi-ped rabbit that no one else can see.
Elwood
acknowledges his alternate world in the end, memorably saying “I’ve wrestled
with reality for 35 years, doctor. And I’m happy to state that I finally won
out over it.”
Never mind the impossibly long odds against being right: Lloyd
Christmas.
In 1994’s “Dumb and Dumber” a love-struck
Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) drags a friend on a cross-country comedy of
errors. When the object of his affection tells him that their odds of becoming
a couple are a million to one, Lloyd breaks into a grin and says, “So you’re
telling me there’s a chance.”
A day doesn’t go by when I don’t hope
the climate deniers are right, and virtually every major scientific body in the
world is wrong about climate change. I’d be a bit embarrassed for not
recognizing that all the physicists, Arctic natives, migrating species, coastal
zone managers, defense analysts, farmers, journalists, and hippies are in a
vast conspiracy.
But right now, climate deniers’ chances
aren’t nearly as good as Lloyd’s were.
The
Daily Climate is an independent, foundation-funded news service covering
energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Brian Bienkowski at
bbienkowski [at] EHN.org