In Nature, Alexander C. Lees, Simon Attwood, Jos Barlow and Ben Phalan discuss the latest instances of science denialism, this time in the area of the loss of entire species, in “Biodiversity scientists must fght the creeping rise of extinction denial“:
Denial of scientific evidence and rejection of scientific methods are not new phenomena, but represent an increasingly serious problem, especially when driven by politically well-connected and well-funded antagonists seeking to sabotage evidence-based policy for political and/or financial gain. Terms such as ‘science denial’ and ‘science denialism’ are employed as monikers for such anti-scientific enterprises, seeking to discredit, for example, the health impacts of smoking, climate science, the teaching of evolution in schools and vaccination campaigns. There is an emerging body of literature characterizing the nature of these activities, and the personal, organizational and economic interlinkages between them.
The rise of organized denial of the biodiversity crisis was foreseen by conservation biologists and the growing wave of denial finally broke following the release of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) summary for policymakers which generated substantial media coverage. In its wake, a swathe of opinion pieces criticized the report and attacked both the reputations of the report’s authors and the process of estimating the total number of species threatened with extinction.
Their three categories of denial:
Literal denial: ‘Species extinctions were predominantly a historical problem’.
Extinction deniers often downplay the extinction crisis by framing it as a historical problem and a trivial contemporary challenge (Supplementary Table 1). By focusing attention on the loss of megafauna in prehistory owing to overhunting and rapid loss of island biodiversity in historic times, it is suggested we have passed through these extinction filters and reached the ‘other side’ of the crisis. …
Interpretive denial: ‘Economic growth alone will fix the extinction crisis’.
Extinction denialists often invoke an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) response of biodiversity to development (Supplementary Table 1 [omitted]), arguing that pressures on the environment eventually decrease with rising income levels. …
Here’s a link to a definition of Kuznets Curve, which hypothesizes “graphs the hypothesis that as an economy develops, market forces first increase and then decrease economic inequality.
And their third category:
Implicatory denial: ‘Technological fixes and targeted conservation interventions will overcome extinction’.
Extinction denialists are often selective, choosing to highlight only a subset of factors causing contemporary extinctions, such as overharvesting and predation by non-native species, while choosing not to mention habitat loss that affects the majority of species on the Red List.
This is strongly reminiscent of my time reading libertarian rags: the spreading of doubt about science and the concomitant belief that development is always good. At least for someone’s pocket book.
