The focus on doom and gloom, fear and hysteria, is not a long-term successful strategy for persuasion. The Guardian is a propaganda outfit that uses fear as its major propaganda method.

The Guardian spearheaded the move by journalists to relabel climate as “climate crisis” (I have a post on that) and worked with the Columbia School of Journalism to promote that into newsrooms around the world. Today, the “Climate crisis” is basically a single world “ClimateCrisis” as the words are now inseparable. .

The Guardian might be noticing that his propaganda approach has draw backs – and spreading a message of hope instead of despair would be a far more successful strategy:

In order to do what the climate crisis demands of us, we have to find stories of a livable future, stories of popular power, stories that motivate people to do what it takes to make the world we need. Perhaps we also need to become better critics and listeners, more careful about what we take in and who’s telling it, and what we believe and repeat, because stories can give power – or they can take it away.

Source: ‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian

But then in the next paragraph, The Guardian reverts to standard form and begins recycling discredit memes from Ehrlich or the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth – which have been solidly proven wrong. But stuck in that mindset, they go with this:

To change our relationship to the physical world – to end an era of profligate consumption by the few that has consequences for the many – means changing how we think about pretty much everything: wealth, power, joy, time, space, nature, value, what constitutes a good life, what matters, how change itself happens. As the climate journalist Mary Heglar writes, we are not short on innovation. “We’ve got loads of ideas for solar panels and microgrids. While we have all of these pieces, we don’t have a picture of how they come together to build a new world. For too long, the climate fight has been limited to scientists and policy experts. While we need their skills, we also need so much more. When I survey the field, it’s clear that what we desperately need is more artists.”

They need to read the books Empty Planet, and Super Abundance to learn why their defeatist ideas are out of date and out of touch.

The goal is no longer to address carbon emissions but invent an entirely new world based on creative impulses of artists. This is no longer about solar and wind – but about government structures, how to control populations, how to redistribute the earnings of one group to another and so on.

Ultimately, I couldn’t stomach reading the entire article. It’s an essay dripping in propaganda terminology and methods. In fact, the author’s LinkedIn page indicates her business is propaganda a.k.a. public relations, marketing. Oh – this is who wrote the column and This is their climate expert?

She has worked in London, Sydney Australia and now works in NYC; is likely a global traveler. Many climate enthusiasts travel the world excessively while telling everyone else not to travel.

I did not think my opinion of The Guardian can fall any further: it’s now below ground level.

This is not how to market climate change. As I have written before, stick with known facts and logic – avoid endless and unprovable speculation. As I have documented on my other blog, expert projections and forecasts of the future almost always turn out spectacularly wrong. Focus on solutions and strategies for success. The constant fear mongering turns off many.