Growing up I always heard that climate change was a liberal hoax. I believed this all through high school and was thoroughly confused as I entered college and had professors teach it. My brother and I were both students learning about climate change and so we asked a family member who believed that climate change was a hoax, why he thought the climate was not heating. 

He proceeded to give us this book

My Brother had the idea to do a little research on the author Christopher C. Horner. 

We learned that Christopher C. Horner is a lawyer who works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This is a think tank funded by exxon mobil. The group also receives enormous amounts of money from a group called Donors Trust that is in large part funded by the Koch Brothers (owners of multibillion dollar oil company -Koch Industries) 

Why should a lawyer receiving money from oil companies be viewed as credible? When we have that relevant information it seems easy to see the obvious conflict of interest that oil companies have in convincing the public that climate change is not happening. If the majority of individuals do not believe in climate change then they will be less likely to move towards renewable forms of energy and keep using oil and coal. 

I have heard some individuals argue that the Government pays professors to say that Climate Change is real in order to exert control over us. My adjunct college professors who taught about climate change do not make half as much money as individuals seeking to persuade the public that climate change is not real. Marc Morano who has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science promotes the idea that Climate Change is a sham. He publicly releases the addresses of scientists and encourages his followers to contact these scientists. One scientist Micheal E. Mann has said that, “Morano spreads malicious lies about scientists, paints them as enemies of the people.” Morano makes far more money than scientists who claim climate change is real. 

We continued to research and realized that according to Nasa, 97% of publishing climatologists agree that climate change is real and man-made. Climate change wasn’t even a political issue until oil companies started funding the campaigns of specific politicians. Even Mitt Romney agreed that climate change was real until he started receiving money from the Kochs during his 2012 run for President.  Rubio also shifted away from climate change being real after receiving money from the fossil fuel industry.

The wild part about all of this is that some of the most arduous deniers of climate change will not be around to experience its effects. David Koch poured hundreds of millions of dollars into convincing the public that climate change wasn’t real or man-made and he just died this last Fall. Future generations will be negatively impacted by short-sighted individuals who will not have to deal with climate change’s impacts. 

The mind has a remarkable ability to justify ideas that we benefit from while dismissing any contrary evidence. Our ancestors survived by pushing for ideas that they directly benefited from as well as being loyal to their specific tribe. Sadly these ideas are engrained in us today. This begs the question, if more people were aware of their biases and were exposed to accurate, objective information would we have similar beliefs? Would there be less polarization in the country if we were all playing with same set of facts? Unless you have ownership in an oil company, I don’t blame you for not believing in climate change. If I had not been exposed to this information, I probably wouldn’t believe it myself.