Decades of Science Denial Related to Climate Change Has Led to Denial of the Coronavirus Pandemic

After the fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars undermining climate science, it’s easy to see how epidemiology came next.

I've been debating with the anti-vaxxers and C-19 conspiracy theorists on twitter. Many of these people say they are on the left, like the Off-Guardian, but they come across more like libertarians to me. I find these people disturbing and they make me feel like a centrist, which I'm not, but one guy said I was a neoliberal and told me to look at my posts and I would see.

These so called lefties are followers of the crazed libertarian, James Corbett, and the Off-Guardian even follows people from the right-wing Heartland Institute, because they also deny the impact of climate change. 

One woman on twitter said she would never have vaccines because she was American and could keep the Devil away. I asked her if she has angels protecting her, and she said yes, you've got it, and liked my comment. Oh , I said, you don't need any vaccines, then.

I found some good critique of Bill Gates on the Internet, but it was not conspiracy theory stuff, it was political. Bill Gates, the article said, promotes neoliberal solutions for third world countries, and big businesses were making too much money out of it. Bill Gates also doesn't believe that drug prices should be reduced. 

I found another article which spoke about Bill Gates' mad idea of combating climate change by using geoengineering to block out the sun. The article said this was incredibly risky.

I'm more at home with this type of criticism. 

American science denialism, deployed for years against climate change and, most recently, the coronavirus, can be traced back to the early 1950s during the fight over smog in Los Angeles.  

When a Cal-Tech biochemist fingered nitrogen oxide emissions and uncombusted hydrocarbons from automobiles and refineries as the cause of the thick smog that often blanketed the city, the American Petroleum Institute counter-attacked by highlighting the alleged uncertainty of his science. The tactic was a test run for the fossil fuel industry's assault 40 years later on climate science. 

Decades of climate denial now appear to have paved the way for denial of Covid-19 by many on the right, according to experts on climate politics. After the fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking climate scientists and accentuating the supposed uncertainty of climate science, it isn't hard to understand how that happened. 

Decades of Science Denial Related to Climate Change Has Led to Denial of the Coronavirus Pandemic