In university classes we address with students how to dialogue with deniers. We look for and develop arguments, but also ways to empathize with people who deny climate change, who especially deny human interference in the climate. It is very difficult to remain calm in the face of people who are deliberately refractory to scientific knowledge. But it is even more difficult to maintain that calm when we see the consequences of not listening to science and see . It becomes very difficult to coexist with aggressive and outspoken people who not only ignore science, but also judge and disqualify it. It is painful to see and even experience the hatred of these people while we see that climate change has made hurricanes much more virulent and destructive, as has been the case of Helene and Milton on the east coast of the United States, and . When we see the deaths, suffering and damage that could have been avoided or reduced if we had all become aware of the climate we have today, here and now. In these circumstances it becomes agonizing to manage the hatred of which many of us who explain what is happening and why it is happening are the objects.
In these two weeks after the damage that especially devastated the region of Valencia, I have received, like other researchers and communicators, all kinds of insults and disqualifications on social networks. Even furious threats of lynching, with people claiming to literally want to see me hanged. Scary. Hurts. Disconcerting. These people organized in various Telegram groups such as The Fifth Column TVand on various social networks, maintain not only that those of us who talk about climate change are lying, but that we live from that lie and even that we are involved in . Something that they include within what they call the NWO, the new world order, something to which scientists apparently contribute by working under the orders of certain tyrants or even leading disinformation campaigns to seize power.
Hate becomes toxic when one is torn by pain. When you have been talking about harsh scenarios for years and current events remind you of it every morning. When one confirms day after day that the time never comes to address the climate emergency, that the current model of civilization collides head-on with a climate that itself has enraged, but that does not want or does not know how to take it seriously. When one searches and searches for reasons for optimism in . In those circumstances, hate is pity. And those who incite hatred know it and grow. Some communicators and scientists have had to close their accounts on social networks due to violent and constant harassment, especially in the case of women. Faced with this hate and its impacts, my spirits decline and the hate I receive leads me to question what I do and how I do it over and over again. Because I don’t understand hate. But I know it doesn’t help you get out of difficult situations. I don’t close my accounts or block haters. I need to know of its existence. I need to understand them better.
I don’t know if it’s the safest thing to do for my physical and mental health. But I feel that I do what needs to be done, inform, inform and inform. While I inform myself, I inform myself and I inform myself. About science, current events and, also, about those who hate and why they hate. I wish I was wrong about climate change. I’d be happy if I was. But I’m not what matters. What matters is to achieve as soon as possible a society prepared for the climate we already have here. A society that puts human rights and people’s health before economic activity and suicidal selfishness. That’s worth fighting for. Regardless of the possibilities of achieving it. Adjusting the tone and content to reach everyone. Even the haters. Because, as Martin Luther King said more than 60 years ago, “hate cannot drive out hate; “Only love can do that.”
Fortunately, in these weeks of hatred we have also received many words of support and human comfort. Words that we need more than ever in times, the current ones, where hate hurts, blocks and despairs. Thank you, really, thank you. But the most urgent and dangerous challenges and risks do not come from that hatred but from an uncontrolled climate that we are not fully accepting. At the 29th climate summit, currently taking place in Azerbaijan, the greatest threat looming over everyone is addressed with irresponsible lukewarmness. A few months after COP 29, in January 2025, he will take the reins of the country that has emitted the most greenhouse gases. And he will do so by denying that this is a problem. It will disassociate itself from all the climate agreements reached at that summit and will do so by inciting hatred from the presidency of one of the most influential countries in the international sphere. And he will do it through one of the most aggressive social networks, X, formerly Twitter, which he pilots like no one else.
Humanity does not deserve this added pain generated in all corners of the planet. But it is humanity that, through faltering democracies and large doses of misinformation, has been supporting lukewarm governments, and normalizing “alternative truths” and messages of hate. That is why I firmly believe that the more than 100,000 scientists around the world who warn about climate risk and propose ways to adapt and mitigate it are doing what we have to do. It is time to understand and understand each other, to understand and understand each other. It is time to collaborate and rebuild, to anticipate and prevent. Science is not and will not be the solution to climate change. It only provides diagnoses, tools and possible solutions. The solution to the climate crisis is human. It’s politics. And in that solution there is no place for hate.
Fernando Valladares He has a PhD in biology and a researcher at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), where he directs the Ecology and Global Change group at the National Museum of Natural Sciences.
