Breaking Free from Climate Crisis Fear

It is necessary to remain alert to the climate crisis, but we must also beware of those who stoke fear in order to turn it into political gain or a money-making tool. What is needed is a rational attitude toward climate change based on a scientific approach.

Extreme claims and political agitation regarding climate change cause social confusion. It is socially harmful to treat imaginary stories from movies as if they were reality, to make extreme claims about the climate crisis, or to use it as a target of political agitation. Fear-based marketing causes nothing but confusion and sacrifices people much like a cult religion does.

Because fear of climate change is so widespread in our society, cases of politically exploiting it appear in many places. There was a banner hanging on the street that read, “Will judging the activist camp solve the climate crisis?” There was likely a political intention behind linking themselves to an extreme climate crisis scenario in order to justify their own existence.

Shaping public opinion through fear creates social anxiety and leads to inefficiency. For example, fear marketing once drew attention to fluoride-free toothpaste by claiming that fluoride in toothpaste was toxic. Fluoride, the only ingredient approved by the U.S. FDA as effective against cavities, was shunned because of fear marketing. There was also a time when agitation over mad cow disease misled public opinion with false information and made society anxious. When fear-driven public opinion is formed through false information and agitation in this way, society falls into a swamp of confusion, and the damage ultimately falls on the people.

When fear is stirred up and turned into a social issue, a scientific approach to climate change disappears, unrealistic solutions run rampant, and irrational policies are created. A representative example is the Moon Jae-in administration’s deliberate weakening of nuclear energy. Because political motives were taken too far, the competitiveness of the nuclear power industry was severely damaged. Meanwhile, as solar power facilities spread indiscriminately across the country, the environment was damaged and the cost of energy generation rose enormously. As losses in the energy generation sector have grown to an almost unimaginable scale, the burden on the public has become immense.

Gaining popularity by stoking fear and then exploiting it for profit is a wrong kind of business. Likewise, relying on fear to win votes and pursue power is bad politics. If we allow ourselves to be led around by those who incite fear about the climate crisis, that fear will only grow, and an effective response to climate change will become impossible.

Climate change must be approached scientifically. Only then can rational solutions become possible and our environment improve. The path to finding the right solutions to climate change will open only when the political agitators who exaggerate the climate crisis and provoke fear disappear.

Sung-no Choi, President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 기후위기 공포에서 벗어나려면

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2024-03-21

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=26530