Brazil and Latin America have a unique window of opportunity in the fight against climate change denial, but one that could soon close if communication about the reality of climate change and the severity of its impacts is not better directed and framed for the public, especially the portion of the population that identifies as “conservative” or “right-wing”. This is the warning made by Matias Spektor, a professor at the School of International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo (FGV-SP) and one of the authors of a study that profiled climate denial in the region, published in the journal Nature Communications.
Spektor’s survey interviewed over 5,300 people in representative samples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico – countries that together account for more than 80% of Latin America’s carbon emissions. In general, Latin Americans agree that we are experiencing a climate crisis (more than 90% in all countries) as a result of human activity (93% on average). In the region, denialism arises mainly in terms of the perception of the severity of the impacts of climate change, with only 65% of respondents believing that it could have negative consequences.
According to Spektor, the fact that the survey was carried out between October and November 2021, therefore before the sequence of climate disasters that hit the country in recent years, including a historic drought in the Amazon and the series of extreme storms that devastated Rio Grande do Sul, is not enough to explain this dissociation.
“In general, in Latin America, an individual’s personal experience with extreme weather events has no effect on their perception of the severe consequences of climate change,” he says. “This is somewhat surprising. How can someone experience an extreme event like this, with very negative consequences, not only for themselves but also for those close to them, and this not affect their beliefs about climate change?
“I don’t think that if we conducted the survey today we would get any different results, because at the time, three years ago, Brazil was already suffering from extreme weather events. Unseasonal rains, droughts and fires are not a recent phenomenon. The peak of fires in the Amazon, with all those harmful effects on air quality throughout the country, dates back to August 2019.”
For the researcher, what this data actually reveals is that Brazilian citizens, and ultimately Latin American citizens, have a major attribution problem. “If you look at the news coverage of these events, generally speaking the initial blame is given to either housing policy, or urban policy, or a problem at the city hall. The first person to blame is always the local politician, who is responsible for local policies, housing, or drainage,” he points out. “But this is not incompatible with people understanding that it is a problem of climate change. And this forces us to reflect more broadly on the dramatic moment the planet is experiencing and the responsibility that the public sector, the private sector and organized civil society have in this.”
Individual factors of skepticism
The research did not stop there. The study also sought to identify the psychological, political, ideological and sociodemographic factors behind belief – or disbelief – in climate change in Latin America. And it was precisely at this point that the researchers found a large discrepancy in climate denialism in the Global North, which opens up a unique path to preventing it from spreading here as it does there, in addition to garnering popular support for actions to combat, mitigate and adapt to climate change in the region.
This is because while in the USA, Western Europe and other developed countries, climate denialism is strongly linked to political positioning and sociodemographic factors such as gender, age, ethnicity and educational and income level, in Brazil and Latin America this association occurs mainly around a more individualistic personality.
“Our most surprising result is the fact that, unlike other parts of the world, in Brazil and Latin America the climate skeptic is not the oldest, least educated, poorest and least urban, while the most committed, the most believing in climate change and its harmful consequences is the youngest, most educated, richest and most urban. Here, it has nothing to do with being left wing or right wing – which is a strong predictor in the US and Europe”, says Spektor. “The typical climate change denier in Brazil is likely to have voted in the last municipal elections in São Paulo for Pablo Marçal. Pablo Marçal is a coach, who represents this culture of individualism, which we measure as an atavistic distrust of the role of the State and its capacity to provide collective solutions. And this is independent of income, social position and educational level.”
And although this position may be related to a more “conservative” worldview, it is not necessarily ideological, he emphasises. “Here in Brazil, we have right-wing skepticism and left-wing skepticism, right-wing belief and left-wing belief. What makes the difference is how much people believe in the State, and here in Brazil, we even have left-wing individualists.”
“This is a challenge for Latin America, because it is a region where the State struggles greatly to provide public goods, and therefore is destined to have very high levels of individualism. And individualist does not mean being a person who does not care about others, or is cruel, that is not it. It is individualist because it is a person who does not believe in collective solutions to collective problems, but only believes in individual solutions to collective problems.”
New pro-climate communication
Fortunately, this is also precisely where Spektor sees an opportunity to fight against climate denialism in Brazil and Latin America. “It is possible to imagine pro-climate messages that can win right-wing supporters, precisely at a time when Brazil is effectively shifting to the right,” he says. “Latin America needs to have right-wing pro-climate platforms that can mobilize right-wing voters. There is no reason for us to associate pro-climate messages only with the left. And that is important. We need to have messages that can appeal to this individualistic citizen, who today is the Brazilian climate skeptic, who needs to be won over, needs to be brought to this side of the gate.
“The first thing is to diversify sources. We need voices that appeal to this individualistic audience. It’s the pastor of the evangelical church and other religious leaders. It’s the president of Ford in Brazil, of Volkswagen in Brazil, speaking loud and clear because they are investing billions to make the energy transition in their cars. It is bankers talking about it, but also cultural leaders, YouTubers, coaches, the whole internet world – the people who represent the world of entrepreneurship, of ‘every man for himself’, of ‘the State is useless and can’t solve anything’.”
In addition, the form and framing of these messages is key. “Obviously, these voices will not speak like Marina Silva (Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Brazil). Which is okay, because the skeptical citizen does not believe in Marina Silva,” Spektor adds. “The proposal will not be ‘we need to prove the regulatory framework for land protection’, or ‘we need to implement rural credit so that Caixa Econômica Federal – ultimately public money – can subsidize the maintenance of standing forests’. They are messages about how the climate issue can be a form of entrepreneurship. How it can bring personal satisfaction, how it can bring material gains, especially in a country like Brazil, where there are many economic opportunities that involve protecting the environment”.
“The problem with the word ‘conservative’ is that it refers to a person from the old ‘land, family and property’ mindset,” he recalls. “But nowadays that is not the profile of the Brazilian individualist. This profile today is Pablo Marçal, a young guy who made himself, who has a presence, who is connected to social media, who gets his information not by reading the editorials of Estadão in print at home, but through TikTok, through WhatsApp. A guy who will not have just one job, but a pluralist who will have numerous jobs throughout his life, who has very different job prospects from a generation ago. Making this guy ask himself ‘what can I do against climate change?’ would be a revolution in the country.”
Given this, another possible way to achieve this, the researcher suggests, is to appeal to the vanity of this audience. “Here in São Paulo, there is a phenomenon of fancy buildings that put a sign on the front that says ‘we use recycled water’,” he says. “This started when there were several consecutive droughts in São Paulo that affected the water supply. So it became part of the social status of your building to signal that it is in some way contributing to fighting the problem. And this does not involve the State. It involves the private sector, the developer that built the building, the condominium association of the building. It is showing that you are at the forefront of the debate on adapting to a world that is living with a climate crisis.”
For Spektor, attracting the private sector increasingly to pro-climate discourse and action in this way and with initiatives of this type is a necessary strategy, even in the face of the risk of misuse of this space, such as so-called greenwashing. “Greenwashing initiatives are already here, regardless of what we do or say,” he argues. “Greenwashing is a horrible reality that must be fought intensely, because what a company – especially a large company, a well-known brand – says carries a lot of weight. But we cannot stop trying to use this type of source and this type of message because we risk falling into greenwashing.”
Risk of not taking advantage of the opportunity
This window of opportunity, however, will not remain open forever, warns Spektor: “When I participate in events about climate change, this argument of mine is not one that people who go to these types of conferences like to hear,” he says. “I have encountered a lot of resistance in the environmental movement to making this paradigm shift, which reflects how deep the hole we are in from the point of view of having communication policies that have different targets, that speak differently to different people. If we continue to only say that we need more regulation, more government, more this, more that control, we will alienate these people from the debate and lose their support.”
According to the researcher, failure to diversify and shape this pro-climate discourse according to the public could not only waste this opportunity but also hand this contingent over to radical denialism.
“This particular scenario in Brazil and Latin America of climate denialism that is not yet very influenced by political and ideological issues can change,” he emphasises. “Almost half of the Brazilian population does not believe that the consequences of climate change are severe. People understand that it exists, that it is caused by human beings, but they do not believe that it will affect them. It seems crazy. But we cannot give up on half of the population. If the cost of winning over this half of the population is to launch a campaign for banks, large companies, YouTube coaches , TikTok influencers to develop a personalized, individualistic, narcissistic pro-climate argument, whatever you want to call it, to convince them, I say ‘let’s go ahead’. Let’s reduce this number of skeptics, because, otherwise, these people will not support the climate change mitigation and response policies that we urgently need”.
