Documentary: De Klimaatontkenners

Climate change, I know what it is. I hope you do too. For me it is one of the most critical subjects. I find it interesting and horrifying at the same time. Climate change has been proved as real, it is therefore a fact. However, there are still people denying its existence. Crazy, I know. Gideon Levy decided to make a documentary about the such people. Today I’ll shar the documentary: De Klimaatontkenners (the climate-deniers) with you.

Climate Summit

During the Climate Summit in Paris in 2015 some great agreements were made, this resulted in the Paris Agreement. The earth was not to warm up more than 2 degrees Celsius. 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement. The only negative thing was that there were no consequences for those who do not make the quota. The Paris Agreement is non-committal. And so, right now, it’s not going well. One of the reasons why so little progress is made in the battle against climate change is explained by the documentary.

Conservative Think-tanks

Conservative think-tanks (I think it’s an odd name, but well) are the organizations who deny climate change. Two of them which are often mentioned in the documentary are the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. But why would they do it? These think-tanks are funded by companies who sell non-renewable resources like oil and gas. These companies don’t want people to believe in climate change because then they don’t make money. The last 20 years Koch Industries (an oil company) has ‘donated’ almost 89 million dollars to these conservative think-thanks. ExxonMobils (an oil and gas company) idem dito, they donated about 33 million dollars. Besides those two there is another company which is just a middle-man, Trust Donors. Trust Donors donates money from anonymous donors. They have donated about 120 million dollars already. The only thing conservative think-tanks want is to create doubt, which prevents people from taking action.

Politicians and Scientists

A lot of politicians don’t get their information from scientists. They rely on lobbyists and think-thanks. This way the climate deniers have a lot of influence. News papers give these climate deniers way too much attention (while not mentioning that they’re funded by companies) too and this makes the public doubt climate change. Scientists obviously know the truth. Climate change has been proven to be a fact. That’s not something that’s done just on the base of one research paper. However, the scientist don’t debate the climate deniers since these deniers are better trainer to debate and overrule. Scientists are not trained for this.

My Opinion

The science is so clear. If we continue this way, the sea level has risen 1 meter by the end of the century to name one example. And if you think it’s fake: it’s happening already! People in Bangladesh are already losing their houses because of rising sea levels and storms. And these numbers are conservative. What’s waiting for us is probably even worse. I think you should watch this documentary De Klimaatontkenners if understand Dutch. It takes about 60 minutes and it really gives you an insight on the powers behind the slow changes. Knowledge is power.

Yours sincerely,
Romee