But there won’t be a real reckoning — or real solutions to our biggest problems — unless we take on “Big Disinformation”
that a handful of industry-funded economists provided the backup for every politician over the past 30 years who’s argued that tackling climate is “too expensive.” It’s the exact argument we hear today, from even Democratic senators like Joe Machin and Kyrsten Sinema.
But as we saw with Big Tobacco, holding an industry financially liable for some portion of the harm they’ve wrought is not necessarily enough to keep them honest. “There has to be some way to force transparency, for lack of a better term,” says Franta, the Stanford researcher. “There’s a big problem now where we don’t know how much money the industry is spending or what actions it’s taking to block climate policy. We don’t know the full story.
“Media literacy or critical thinking would be great, teaching people how to spot disinformation, but there also just needs to be real federal oversight and regulation of social media platforms and search engines,” says Caitlin Gilbert, a neuroscientist, data scientist, and disinformation expert who started the Democracy Digital Coalition in April 2020 to tackle disinformation leading up to the election.
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