From climate skeptic to climate cynic

ABSTRACT

Whilst we know quite a bit about organized forms of climate skepticism, very few studies focus on how disorganized climate skeptics seek an underdog position to speak truth to power. Hence, we investigate frank speech as updated ancient forms of truth-telling ‘parrhesia’, in two Swedish empirical sources that strongly question the climate change consensus. The first is a digital space for free speech, and the second a focus group of climate skeptics. Tracing ‘epistemic skepticism’ and ‘response skepticism’, we inquire into the attempts to counter scientific expertise and the different ways to refuse to act in accordance with officially sanctioned advice. We analyze the details of climate cynic truth-telling in relation to truth-telling as provocation, as ethical practice and as exhibition of a specific aim. We explore how the climate skeptic turns into a climate cynic, and discuss how alternative truth construction forms an anti-climate ethical selfhood. We end by problematizing how parrhesia is linked to ethical relativism, and argue that the recognition of climate cynicism facilitates our understanding of how conflicting political realities about climate change are produced.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate skepticism
• the cynics
• ethics
• subjectivity
• truth-telling

Introduction

In 2014, the former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore received the ‘Speaks Truth to Power Award’ at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (Heartland Institute 2014). Moore questioned the computer models used to predict the climate on Earth, and called for critical thinking to limit ‘the climate hysteria’, saying that ‘warm would be better than cold’ (Heartland Institute, 2014). Recently, Donald Trump has joined in by frankly calling knowledge about climate change a ‘total hoax’, ‘bullshit’, ‘mythical’, ‘stupid’, and ‘a total con job’ (YouTube 2016).

The flourishing of alternative truths has renewed interest in Greek skeptic philosophy, founded on the will to find criteria for truth (Popkin 2003). Paradoxically, in a time when the ‘expertise’ is questioned (Clark and Newman 2017), scientists are increasingly asked ‘to assume responsibility for enabling other humans to respond to the world’s challenges in adequate ways’ (Raffnsøe 2016, xii). In the case of climate change these positions are common, with studies of how climate skeptics display very little trust in government (Tranter and Booth 2015), and have become part of a broader delegitimization of scientific expertise (Sharman 2014) and a questioning of political authority in the Anthropocene (see further McLean 2016; Head 2014). The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) counters the expertise established by the IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (Plehwe 2014), an organization that assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and the vulnerability of socioeconomic and natural systems, as well as adaption and mitigation options.

At the same time as the expertise is misbelieved, its proponents suggest more education of the doubtful (see further Forsyth 2011). Skepticism has therefore trickled down to connote general tendencies of disbelief in society, discussed as political cynicism (e.g. see Carr et al. 2014), disenchantment among the citizenry (Newman 2013; Mazella 2007), and a widespread ‘antipolitical culture of skepticism and cynicism’ (Hawkins 2015, 145). Similarly to critiques of nihilism, skepticism has thus been paired with weak forms of postmodern cynicism, conceived as a general decadence of society (Stanley 2012, 163ff). Despite being held as a philosophical foundation of scientific communities, climate skepticism has hence come to play a key role in the public’s counterstrategies to expertise.

According to Capstick and Pidgeon (2014, 396), two major forms of skepticism have emerged in relation to climate change. There are those who question the expertise (‘epistemic skeptics’) and those who question climate actions (‘response skeptics’). We are interested in the expressions of both these types of skepticism, but not with a focus on cynical indifference and false accounts, as stated in previous research. On the contrary, we are curious about strong forms of cynicism, i.e. frank speech conceived as ‘truth-telling’, which fearlessly contests the climate science consensus. In times when alternative truths flourish, so does truth-telling. However, even if we know quite a bit about climate skeptics, and how counters to the climate consensus include general debates on the scientific definition of the problem (Hoffman 2011), very few studies focus on climate skeptics’ everyday practices of truth-telling. Consequently, we empirically study those skeptics who subscribe to being ‘underdogs’, while seeing themselves as people who are ‘speaking truth to power’ (compare Jacques 2006, 78), just as with Patrick Moore.

To be able to explore different forms of truth-telling, and uncover nuances in how counters to climate expertise unfold, we turn to Michel Foucault’s last lecture series, ‘The courage of truth’ (Foucault, 1984/2011). To analyze contemporary forms of truth-telling in climate skepticism, we do not position skepticism in relation to how criteria for ‘truth’ are obtained. In contrast, we position it in relation to ancient forms of truth-telling, and in particular, a cynicism that resembles practices performed by Diogenes, ‘the dog’ (Shea 2010). Importantly, while Foucault distinguishes between different forms of truth-telling or ‘parrhesia’ in ancient Greece, we suggest that contemporary forms of truth-telling are harder to categorize. This means that we primarily explore climate skeptics in relation to how Foucault traces truth-telling, parrhesia and frank speech, with a focus on the scandalous life lived by the ancient cynics (Foucault 1984/2011). However, we also use other illustrations of parrhesia that help us to explain truth-telling in our specific empirical cases. Consequently, we expand the use of Foucault in Critical Policy Studies, where his works have mainly informed an interest in governmentality and neoliberalism (Kutay 2014; Li 2016; Lövbrand and Stripple 2015; Bang 2011).

To explore how climate skeptics engage in truth-telling, we turn to two Swedish empirical materials; a digital space known as ‘Flashback forum – free speech for real’, and a focus group of self-proclaimed ‘climate skeptics’. While people at Flashback openly question climate change knowledge and express their views on, and practices against, low-carbon ways of living, the focus group are comprised of people who distinctively categorize themselves as ‘skeptics’. We are less interested in the reasons for why these skeptics hold their doubt intact, and more interested in how the climate skeptics counter the consensus and articulate an alternative truth. The skeptics in our study constitute themselves in relation to how it is to live in Sweden, a country where climate change actions are taken seriously. While these skeptics exemplify a different reasoning for their doubts (Hobson and Niemeyer 2012; Matthews 2015), we focus on those who position themselves as strongly against the climate science consensus (epistemic skepticism) and those who act against efforts to mitigate and adapt (response skepticism). The common denominator for our oppositional skeptics is their active position and strong questioning of climate expertise, which includes enforcement of practices that counter decarbonization.

We start by contextualizing climate skepticism, which is a rich and variegated field of research, though limited in its use of theoretical frameworks. We then introduce our research design, followed by a theory section on Foucault’s genealogy of parrhesia, primarily in relation to strong forms of cynicism. We proceed with the empirical illustration, with a focus on three themes: truth-telling as provocation (animality); truth-telling as ethical practice (crafting a self) and the aim of truth-telling (an other life). We then summarize the findings and discuss how frank speech about binge carbon practices turns the climate skeptic into a climate cynic. We suggest that the climate cynic is a figure who thrives on scandalous practices to constitute an anti-climate ethical selfhood. Before closing the article, we also point to the perhaps difficult analytical move – to consider ethics as unfixed – which we argue is paramount for a better understanding of social transformations (cf. Fischer 2016).

Climate skepticism contextualized

On 9 November 2009, a month before the UN’s high-profile climate change negotiations in Copenhagen (COP 15), an e-mail server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was hacked. The e-mails were posted to various websites, and the ensuing controversy (a.k.a. ‘Climategate’) drew skepticism to the forefront of public debate (Leiserowitz et al. 2012). Moreover, Smith and Howe (2015, 134) show how these ‘climate skeptics easily steered the media and the public toward biased, sensationalistic coverage of the hacking scandal (…)’. While Climategate turned climate skepticism into a media spectacle, a range of studies have attempted to understand climate skepticism as a psychological, political, and cultural phenomenon.

The historians Oreskes and Conway (2010) argue that industrialists and scientists have cut a deal to work against climate actions, and it is indeed well known how climate skepticism has been launched by conservative think tanks, lobby groups, trade associations, and scientists in the United States (e.g. see Gelbspan 2004; Leggett 2001; Rampton and Stauber 2002; Oreskes and Conway 2010; Dunlap and Jacques 2013; Dunlap and McCright 2010; Antonio and Brulle 2011). Climate skepticism was proposed during the Reagan administration (Dunlap and Jacques 2013, 700), while the Bush administration exercised a ‘subtle form of power’ via ‘non-decision making techniques’ to delay climate policies (McCright 2010, 103). Bradley (2011), a climatologist, describes in detail how conservative politicians and policymakers intimidated him personally and ridiculed his scientific results.

Washington and Cook (2011, 71–88) position climate skepticism in a historicity of ‘denial’. Creationists who do not believe in evolution, and those who express disbelief in genocide during the Holocaust, have similarly been classified as ‘deniers’. Conspiracy theories, fake consensus creation, and cherry-picking have been pointed out as common denialist arguments (Ibid, 43–70). Others look into the ‘psychological barriers’ of citizens in reactions to different future models of climate change consequences (Stoll-Kleemann, O’Riordan, and Jaeger 2001, 107, Gifford 2011, 290). In her study of the everyday, Norgaard identifies denialism as an awareness and acknowledgment of climate change as dangerous and human-induced, followed by indifference and a continuation to live in the same way as before the knowledge was attained (e.g. see Norgaard 2006, 2011). It has also been shown that when ‘uncertainty’ is discussed among climate scientists, they can attune to denialism (Lewandowsky et al. 2015). Similarly, Lahsen (2013) ethnographically reminds us how the social construction of climate facts contributes to tensions between scientists, which can lead to skepticism and environmental backlash.

Since there are often observable links between political agendas and skepticism, it has been proposed that studies should focus more on how skeptic ‘arguments for limiting who and what citizens are responsible to and for’ take political hold (Jacques 2006, 76). Jacques suggests that strong forms of climate skepticism do not engage in withholding judgment. Instead, climate skepticism is often rooted in already defined conservative values with economic ends in sight, which is why Powell (2015) refuses to call such people ‘skeptics’. Some researchers have tracked how climate skepticism is formed around particular sites on the internet. In a detailed study of blog posts by 150 climate skeptics, Matthews (2015) looks into the background, reasoning and motivation of those who go public. ‘Lukewarmers’ are those who believe in human-induced climate change but are skeptical about the rise in temperature it results in, and who also speak negatively about climate scientists. On the other hand, ‘moderate skeptics’ believe in natural processes of warming, and think that the experts exaggerate. By comparison, ‘strong skeptics’ accuse scientists of presenting fake results. In Sharman’s (2014, 159) centrality test of ‘alternative networks of scientific knowledge production’ in the blogosphere, we learn which blogs are central nodes; Climate Audit, JoNova, and WUWT. Rogers and Marres also map the climate skeptic landscape, though broadly speaking on the worldwide web (Rogers and Marres 2000). These studies show that bottom-up skepticism can form influential networks.

Other assessments of climate skepticism also exist. In Sweden, the Environmental Protection Agency has assessed the population to find ‘climate skeptics’. The aim of the poll was to identify various communicative groups to better empower citizens to act in a more climate-friendly manner (Naturvårdsverket 2008). A recent discourse analysis of Swedish climate skeptics also highlights how organized skepticism unfolds via influential CEOs, and a few less influential elderly male academics (Anshelm and Hultman 2015). Moreover, there are several quantitative studies of civic formations of active resistance toward adaptation measures (for example see McCright and Dunlap 2011; Poortinga et al. 2011; Engels et al. 2013; Whitmarsh 2011), with a few cross-national comparisons (e.g. see Tranter and Booth 2015). In the wake of the Anthropocene, these studies, as well as studies of media responses (Gavin and Marshall 2011; Antilla 2005) and public responses to climate change (Hobson and Niemeyer 2011; Stoll-Kleemann, O’Riordan, and Jaeger 2001), have become increasingly prioritized, and much of this is due to a quest to engage the public in responses to challenges that scientists define (Raffnsøe 2016).

However, this quest to educate the populace has led to two forms of climate change skepticism, ‘epistemic skepticism, relating to doubts about the status of climate change as a scientific and physical phenomenon; and response skepticism, relating to doubts about the efficacy of action taken to address climate change’ (Capstick and Pidgeon 2014, 389). Whereas epistemic skepticism primarily targets how knowledge is represented and produced, with a focus on research practices and the construction of objective realities, response skepticism targets the calls to respond, either individually or at a societal level. In this article, we focus on these two skeptic types, but with a more detailed interest in the cultivation of an ‘underdog’ position that actively resists the consensus and correlating call for actions (compare Jacques 2006, 78). Despite the rich research on climate change skepticism, how it is organized and the types of attitude that are prevalent, we know very little about it as an everyday practice of active truth-telling; a form of ‘speaking truth to power’ that is ‘courageous and open to risk’ (Gros 2014, 557).

Empirical setting

Empirically, we turn to two different types of material – one digital space and one focus group – both exemplifying frank truth-telling in climate skepticism. These materials polyphonically complement each other, the first being both anonymous and distant (digital space) and the second being transparent and close (focus group). Our focus is thus on how skepticism is forcefully exhibited, and not on the potential political positions or demographics of the people involved.

The digital space, ‘Flashback Forum – free speech for real’, has 1,099,844 participants (Flashback 2017h). The site is designed to spur gossip and any political views, and one can find discussions about drugs, wife beating, and sex. Since 2013, we have systematically followed what is called ‘the climate hoax’, with some interesting statements first posted in 2006. Based on Jacques' (2006, 78) emphasis on how skeptics craft an underdog position as they actively resist consensus, we have systematically excluded several threads and statements about the climate hoax. The thread on ‘Earth Hour’ (a worldwide lights-off initiative taken by the World Wildlife Fund) contains 847 statements between 2009 and 2017, and is a case in point for our analysis of a frank opposition to decarbonization, even if that opposition declines over time (Flashback 2017d). In addition, the thread ‘Are you environmentally conscious?’ exemplifies 108 statements, of which some engage in frank opposition to everyday decarbonization (Flashback 2017b). In contrast, the thread on global warming (Flashback 2017g) mostly contains scientific positioning, and was therefore excluded. For the same reason, we did not analyze statements on the thread about ‘geoengineering’ (Flashback 2017f) and ‘the dying planet’ (Flashback 2017c). The thread ‘Swedish teenage girls are truly environmental crooks’ includes critique of high-carbon practices (Flashback 2017i), rather than support for such practices, which is why it was excluded. In comparison to skepticism found on sites such as Global Climate Scam, NIPCC, or Stockholmsinitiativet (Klimatupplysningen 2013), the chosen focus on Flashback includes less organized skepticism, as it instead functions as a participatory space that creates a collective experience of climate skepticism (cf. Rogers and Marres 2000).

The second set of material to be analyzed is a focus group meeting consisting of four self-proclaimed Swedish skeptics. The focus group meeting was organized and directed by one of the authors, and took place at the home of one of the skeptics. The research undertaken offered the skeptics a chance to call into question, complain, and debate their concerns on a specific topic (Hutchby 1992). It is a research design that creates a very argumentative empirical setting, since the focus group facilitates a position in conflict with something else, i.e. the consensus on climate change. Hence, there is also a need for the participants to create that with which they are in conflict, whereby their complaints become constitutive of the troubles they wish to address (cf. Drew and Holt 1988). The focus group meeting was recorded and partly transcribed with a focus on epistemic and responsive skepticism.

Truth-telling

In this section, we turn to Foucault’s (1984/2011) genealogy of truth-telling at the end of the fifth century Before Christ (BC), to get closer to how we can study contemporary forms of truth-telling in climate skepticism. Importantly, Foucault mentions the ‘trans-history’ of cynicism that runs through Western philosophical thought (p. 174), and can be seen in modern art, revolutionary movements, and spiritual Christianity (p. 189). Practices of truth-telling came to shift with modernity, as the ‘parrhesiastic’ modality was reconfigured by a revolutionary discourse (the critique of existing society), a philosophical discourse (reflections on human finitude and criticism of that which exceeds the limits of finitude), and a scientific discourse (criticism of prejudices, existing knowledge, dominant institutions, and common practices) (Foucault 1984/2011, 30).

Going back to Greek society, parrhesia took different forms through a ‘whole alethurgy’, i.e. procedures, behaviors, and practices, that were seen to bring out the truth (Foucault 1982–83/2011, 135), where truth-telling is an activity performative of the truth-teller and its ethics (Valverde 2004), without resulting in ‘codified effects’ (Folkers 2016, 8). Next, truth-telling was connected to courageous speech and risk, for example in how Socrates refused to comply with his judges, and how Plato refuted Dionysus of Syracuse (Gros 2014). Foucault also points to an interrelationship between cynicism and skepticism in Greek thought, and how they share an ethical attitude toward truth and are concerned with particular ways of being, and he points out that there are many ways in which people have historically let truth guide their lives (Foucault 1984/2011, 189).

Provocative truth-telling

To explore climate skepticism, we are primarily interested in Foucault’s description of the ancient cynics, and how they manifested truth by living unconcealed, risking their bodily life in favor of practices of courageous truth-telling. The kernel of the cynic’s life is scandalous living (Foucault 1984/2011, 174), similarly to Nietzche’s call for ‘outrageous honesty’ (Luxon 2013, 255). cynic practices were hence analogous to a dog’s life; shameless and taking pleasure whenever possible to break norms. Doing what animals only dared to do in public, the cynic confronted ‘the human’ with animality and the regulation thereof (Foucault 1984/2011, 243). The cynic was to remain indifferent to surprises by refusing attachments. The cynic should instead stay close to his immediate needs and practice ‘barking’ (fighting, disavowing the anemic) and foster a ‘diacritical life’, where one distinguishes the good from the bad, the true from the false, and the master from the enemies (Ibid, 243). When practiced in the public domain, cynic truth-telling was a risky undertaking. The cynics were often despised, as they reversed the role between the powerful and powerless by virtue of bodily provocations (Barber 2004), which leads us to how intrinsic ethics is to truth-telling.

Ethics of truth-telling

By embracing actual physical danger, a cynic could become a Parrhesiast, who ‘always spoke what he genuinely believed to be the truth, harmonising his words and his actions’ (Barratt 2004, 195). Thus, there should be a ‘homophony’ between the said and the lived, truth and body, and an ‘immediate relationship of conformity to the truth in conduct’ (Foucault 1984/2011, 309). For the cynics, this homophony is extremely distinct, as it is their mode of life that should give rise to opportunities to truth, where the essence of life is a condition for parrhesia (Ibid, 171–172). Being ‘fully sovereign over itself’ – the only real monarchy (Ibid, 307) – the cynic should not be attached to anything, so as to unlock the ability to speak the truth to humanity without fear (Ibid, 167). That is why Cynic truth-telling is seen as ‘inextricable from ethics’; it provides an outsider position (Barber 2004, 56). Consequently, instead of regarding cynicism as devotional apathy, ‘producing a toxic form of antipolitical paralysis and rendering critique impotent’ (Stanley 2012, 4), cynic truth-telling has been studied in cases where groups or individuals are actually seeking to turn around a situation to reach another world, life and self (Valverde 2004; Karfakis and Kokkinidis 2011; Munro 2014); which has also been studied in feminism (Valverde 2004), social movements (Munro 2014), whistleblowing (Perry 1998; Weiskopf and Willmott 2013), and radical democracy (Mansbach 2009). This means that the cynics lived out their truth to follow the principle: ‘alter your currency’ (Foucault 1984/2011, 241). The metaphor means that the cynics aimed to exemplify the worthlessness of the existing values that regulate life, and replace them by an other life, which leads us to the aims of truth-telling.

Aims of truth-telling

By practicing ‘free-spokenness and insolence’ (Foucault 1984/2011, 166), the cynic seeks to change the value system by revealing to all men that they live a life other than the true one. The ‘(…) true life is thus an enterprise of demonstration, conviction and persuasion, through discourse – (…) that it is others who are in otherness, mistaken, that they are where they should not be’ (, p. 314). The cynic life entailed the mission to inspect and supervise others without poking into their affairs. Rather, the cynic should be generally interested in the elements of humankind, since these would also be of interest for the care of the cynic’s own self. The aim of cynic truth-telling was thus also to guard the practices of the cynic, to protect the dog-like life itself (Foucault 1984/2011, 243).

Analyzing truth-telling

Before relating Foucault’s genealogy of parrhesia to contemporary forms of courageous truth-telling and scandalous ways of living, we will clarify some general analytical orientations. Going into depth about how the climate skeptic figure uses frank speech to shape its ethics and true self requires a thorough investigation of ‘accounts of the self’ and ‘forms of veridiction’ (ways of producing the truth: see Dyrberg 2014, 76 and Foucault, 1982–83/2011, 41–43). This means that our analysis will not engage with whether the skeptics’ arguments are true or false, good or bad, but how the skeptics’ statements and interactions accomplish certain things in an everyday fashion. We therefore study ethics as unfixed, ascribing the same ability to skeptics as has been ascribed to governed subjects in general: the ability to question truth by means of a critical attitude, to create an ethical relation to one’s own conduct (Cadman 2010) and incept one’s body in authentications of a truthful self (Legg 2016).

Tellingly, withholding judgment of the ‘truth’ told by the climate skeptics demands that the analysis follows a poststructural take on pluralistic ethics (O’Leary 2010) and a recognition of polyphonic truth construction (Schrift 2014). Our analysis builds on the basic assumption that ethics is unfixed and negotiated, that what is considered ethical for some is not considered ethical for others. For example, in our case, the climate skeptics may be of the opinion that climate scientists are unethical. Looking at how climate skeptics practice their truth-telling, we may get closer to their ethical position. By analyzing provocative truth-telling, its ethics and its aims, mainly in accordance with the above illustration of ancient cynicism, but also with the help of more modern forms of parrhesia, we ask: What is opposed by the figure of the climate skeptic, and how is this opposition articulated? How is truth-telling performed and how does it fashion an ethics for the climate skeptic? How are skeptics giving an account of themselves, and how does their truth-telling give form to an other life?

Truth-telling at flashback forum

Several statements at Flashback express a direct ‘skeptic’ position, saying that ‘[i]t is natural to be skeptical when those who present the theories start to yell that the debate is over just a few months after it surfaced’ (Flashback 2015a). Accusing them of ‘yelling’ downgrades the scientific authority of the organization, which further on is coupled with the ‘disgusting’ political approach of the organization .

I’m not saying that I am a non-believer (know too little to be able to speak on the issue) but what the fuck, someone other than the IPCC and their villainous methods has to step forward before I will even start looking at it. (Flashback 2015a)

The skeptic thus speaks truth to power and seeks to establish his/her own more objective  position, in line with a merger of cynics’ provocative speech and modern truth-telling that relies on scientific discourse (Foucault 1984/2011, 30). Another member calls for a ‘healthy skepticism’, referring to the ‘1/3 [who] don’t believe in the climate threat’ which ‘gives a small hope for this society which has been obsessed about ethanol cars (…) garbage sorting, pellet boilers and carbon allowances’ (Flashback 2015c). By creating a contrast to an ‘obsession’ for the environment and particular solutions, skepticism is positioned here as something that even provides ‘hope’ in a display of ‘response skepticism’. Overall, it is ‘the neutrality of expert knowledge’ which is at stake (Forsyth 2011, 318), as repeated by another of the recurrent skeptics:

I would not directly call myself conservative, nor a denier, but so far I have not seen any research results that can prove that CO₂ has such a great (and dangerous) impact on climate change as is claimed in the Summary for Policymakers, written by the IPCC, which in turn underpins what the Swedish media seems to take as an absolute truth. In other threads here on FB, one may find a variety of links to scholarly articles (most posted by Quantilho) that makes me question the theory, and before there is empirical evidence, I will continue to “deny” it. (Flashback 2015a)

By questioning the lack of empirical evidence for climate science, and by extension discrediting its results, this comment turns around the entitlement to speak. The disclaimer – neither having a political stake, nor being a denier – constitutes this skeptic as more objective. It is a form of veridiction that reminds us of the will to find criteria for truth claims (cf. Popkin 2003) and to follow reason (Foucault 1984/2011, 144), and questions mediatized taken-for-granted truths (cf. Carr et al. 2014; Tranter and Booth 2015). The statement is not a preoccupation with a scandalous self, but a desire for a more stringent and scientific objectivity, as in the case of ‘epistemic skepticism’. Similar to a cynic quest to turn around power relations, the climate skeptic strips away the IPCC’s right to speak the truth on climate change. Earlier, the IPCC has also been disentitled to speak by claims of being a ‘hysteric’, following a ‘new religion’ and which ‘sticks to the high priests and priestesses and believes that they can affect the global climate with this kind of action. Soon we will probably see human sacrifices of white heterosexual men with a view to appease the Climate God’ (Flashback 2013). These provocative formulations transfer the IPCC to a subject position of religious humbug instead of scientific facts. The skeptics become the legitimate part by hoping that climate scientists are sent to ‘mental hospitals’, rhetorically stating that ‘Talibans and Muslims are nothing compared to these environmental lunatics if they are allowed to continue, and it is worth noting here that our children become proficiently indoctrinated by this kind of crap in the schools’ (Flashback 2013). Asking the Flashback followers to recognize climate terrorism accomplishes a normal position for the skeptic, at the same time as the climate experts gain cynic status via revolutionary connotations (cf. Foucault 1984/2011, 185).

Other statements are more focused on climate actions and exemplify ‘response skepticism’, complaining here about the disciplining of everyday activities by turning to provocative binge carbon consumption:

I will consume overmuch energy during Earth Hour. (Flashback 2013)

Time for sauna party (electrically heated it will be!). 28/3

We have to show that there are many who are tired of doomsday prophets, sun deniers, and alarmists. (Flashback 2013)

All rooms will be lit. Fridges and freezers will be left open. Oven and hob on max! # 340. (Flashback 2017a)

Anyone who wants to spit in the face of climate fascism should light up and turn on EVERYTHING tonight at 20:30 to 21:30. Let’s meet their utterly pointless manifestation by an equally meaningless anti-manifestation just to make them angry and to take a piss on them! (Flashback 2017a)

Lamps and saunas are common artifacts invoked in propositions of overtly emitting behaviors supporting collective resistance at a specific time (for lamp resistance see #266 #841 #832, and sauna resistance see #254) (Flashback 2017a) . Other people’s carbon conduct is ridiculed by pointing out that they are not living the true life (cf. Foucault 1984/2011, 314). The climate skeptic called Foulcunt (Flashback 2017a) constructs excessive energy consumption as a forceful way to actually ‘piss on them’ and resist the oppressive climate regime. The bulimic practice is not to be pursued behind a locked door, but the opposite; it is to ‘say everything’ (Foucault 1982–83/2011, 43). Truth-telling on Flashback differs from topped-up forms of indifference that are bleak and covert. It is not enough to consume the regular amount of energy during Earth Hour, but to consume ‘overmuch’, and become scandalous and insolent, similar to cynic parrhesia (Foucault 1984/2011, 166, 174). Aligned with the scandalous mode of being is the statement that relaxing in a wood-heated sauna is not enough. It is relaxing in an electrically heated sauna that is articulated as proper anti-climate change behavior. By mirroring an exaggerated position found in the so-called ‘hoax’, an ethical self-relation is formed. By not being monetarily greedy, the skeptics at Flashback craft their truthful selves as carbon-excessive by means of household resistance to climate self-regulation.

However, provocative indifference is expressed in relation to the entire situation: ‘I don’t give a shit about the climate threat and environment, whether it is natural or anthropogenic’ (Flashback 2015c). ‘Nowadays I’m even throwing out garbage from the car window’ (Flashback 2017e). This is truth-telling as ethical practice, where one is crafting oneself as a non-carer about the climate at the same time as one is opposing moral calls, thereby proposing a different perspective on what is good for humanity. The rhetorical trick to become a true non-carer is to add a fuller conception of life, and thus counter even broader environmental questions:

Most people know by now that I do not care the least about the environment. I do not separate the waste and I never will. Instead, I will go in good spirit, sunshine in my eyes and swaying balls, mixing my garbage haphazardly. Always have and always will. Food waste, tin cans, old newspapers, light bulbs, old electronics and bottles, I naturally throw in the bin closest to me, I promise, I absolutely do not care whether it says ‘Only paper products’ or ‘Only colored glass’ on the bin. The batteries are going the same way, and recently I even threw a car battery in a bin and I didn’t even check what was stated on it. I giggled when I did it. One only has as much fun as one makes by oneself. (Flashback 2013)

A counter position is formed here by exhibiting daily practices, whereby how to live unconcealed is vocally shared (Foucault 1984/2011, 173). Not only is climate change resisted, but the ethical self-relation is formed around a general disapproval with environmental self-regulation, i.e. response skepticism. The self-narrative also shows how the skeptic should make his life of resistance into something fun, with ‘swaying balls’, whereby the skeptic becomes an ‘ostentatious vagabond’ (p. 195). Laying bare the normally hidden forbidden fruits to public scrutiny stresses animality, similar to how cynic philosophy affirms natural dog-like practices (p. 113). The statement constructs garbage non-sorting as manly, cool, and fun, by which garbage becomes the locus for resistance. Another Flashback figure also resists garbage sorting by provocatively ridiculing: ‘Al Gore is a media whore’ and adds that ‘now I can hear how Svensson gasps for air in the cabins: “What a ….. murderer!”’ (Flashback 2015c). Here, Svensson connotes Swedish normality, being one of the most common Swedish surnames, whereby the skeptic points to how anti-recycling undermines social solidarity. Similarly to the cynic, the skeptic de-attaches to be able to tell the truth (Foucault 1984/2011, 170). By expressing exaggerated non-care and indulging in excess and luxury, the skeptic affirms death, apocalypse (Flashback 2015d), or catastrophe (Flashback 2015b):

- Do you believe we can have this luxurious lifestyle with overconsumption forever? Wake up and see the reality. (…)

- No, not forever, but hopefully for the rest of our lifetime.

In comparison to the cynics, who renounced luxuries (e.g. see Barber 2004, 56), the statement resurrects luxurious living as essential. A luxurious and excessive mode of being is a provocation linked to the formation of an other life free of attachments to future risks and downfall. The care of a consuming self unfolds, resembling the cynic establishment of a ‘blessed life in a relation of self to self in the form of acceptance of destiny’ (Foucault 1984/2011, 308). Flashback skeptics often make fun of the pointlessness of existence by nihilistically embracing ‘destiny’. Some even ‘promote a manifestation to nothingness’ (Flashback 2017d), but where exaggerated frank speech is still present. The aim of these examples of truth-telling can be understood as a wake-up call targeted at those aligned with responses to climate change.

Truth-telling in the focus group

The argumentative interaction unfolds differently in the focus group due to directions from the researcher:

Researcher: We started talking about the fact that you did not think that you had any alternative way to look at this, and you did not agree that I should even call you ‘alternative’.

R1: No, I’m just saying that I do not think we perceive ourselves as alternative, possibly a little controversial, but not alternative. That there could be another reality, besides ours, so to speak, that is what I don’t think we perceive.

This dialog happened as the very beginning as the researcher attempted to avoid the word ‘skeptic’. Nonetheless, asking for their ‘alternative’ way of looking at climate change was not seen as creating the skeptic worldview as a reality in itself, but as a mere ‘alternative’. In addition to not accepting the alternative position given to them, they referred to themselves as ‘we’ and ‘skeptics’, by disqualifying a common enemy – the climate science consensus. The participants sought to create both individual and collective counter-positions (cf. Hutchby 1992), by affiliating themselves as ‘skeptics’ and persuading a potential public audience of both the validity of their accounts and the justice of their complaints (Drew and Holt 1988). They were therefore not only interested in discussing climate change, but the circumstances for the discussion per se, where they complained about being silenced in a Swedish context.

A common notion for the participants is ‘reality’. One of the participants constructs himself as a ‘critical realist’: ‘[W]hen a lot of claims pop up I first take a critical position, and then I try to see the reality, and see if there might be some truth in what is being claimed’. This is not only a reflective practice exercised in relation to climate change, but all aspects of life, he continues. For him, it is crucial to ‘obtain an opinion about what I know myself’.

The ethical position formed is thus based on the individual ‘epistemological subject’, with an ability to draw one’s own conclusions (Hannah 1999, 18). Such truth-telling creates an ethical stance to truth as concerned with direct experiences to the here and now. However, relying on himself as an individual knowing subject, he does not acknowledge the limits of knowledge. In contrast to a skepticism suspicious toward epistemological truth, ‘or at least withholding judgment from affirming absolute claims to knowledge’ (IEOP 2015), truth-telling is established as something one can only fully perform if truth is obtained by one’s own senses. The other focus group participants also do not engage in a Kantian form of critique, to question their ‘own internal limits’ to know (Cadman 2010, 547 italics in original). Rather, the self-proclaimed skeptics use ‘the reality’ as an external point of reference as they seek to construct the ‘real reality’, by scrutinizing the vocabulary used by the climate scientists.

The focus group displays epistemic skepticism by questioning the objectivity of talk behind a climate ‘crisis’: ‘The main argument’ against climate science is

the problem that there is no crisis, huh, one is trying to emphasize an awareness about a crisis over something, but what crisis? There’s no crisis, first, the heat has leveled off, and that’s uncontroversial, all agree, (…) so the crisis, what would it consist of?

After some discussion between the participants, it is emphasized that the climate scientists do not talk about a crisis to come, but a present crisis. ‘Not the coming climate crisis, but the crisis now, because that was what one believed, and that crisis does not exist. I think it would be a different situation if one actually experienced that there was a crisis, but there isn’t [one]’. Another skeptic agrees with the previous speaker, and adds that the contemporary quests for change of behavior in everyday life look increasingly silly in relation to the talk about a crisis.

[O]ne might even want to hope that there is a crisis, it has its justification in many respects, politically anyway, so you wish for a crisis, since a crisis always brings opportunity for policymakers to increase their power, huh, that’s the only really good way to take a larger grip on things.

Hence, the skeptic seeks to speak truth to power (Jacques 2006) by portraying the crisis as exaggerated and fake. The climate skeptic stance is thus formed through speaking frankly about a truer view of reality. Furthermore, by comparing the experienced absence of a crisis to the demands on people to change simple everyday behavior, the skeptics further mock the knowledge regime on climate change. ‘[W]e’re supposed to stand and sort every single piece of garbage manually here, as if we were in the 1800s, which of course is completely absurd’. Household garbage is repeatedly equated to a place for voicing resistance in an effort to ‘alter your currency’, i.e. change the value system attached to garbage sorting (Foucault, 1984/2011, 241).

The strategic positioning of the more expensive ecological products in the grocery store is another mutual complaint. It is too difficult to find the normal milk products nowadays since they are hidden away, the participants explain in chorus. The skeptics also discuss the injunction to eat less cheese, proposed by an expert at the Swedish National Food Agency. They caricature the ‘environmental look’ of the female expert, creating a common platform for laughter. The demand for less cheese eating is further contrasted to the picture of the made-up crisis. It is a contrast that creates a more reasonable and objective position from which to speak (Foucault 1984/2011, 144). The contrast between crisis and everyday mundane practices opens up for the next argument; that the interventionists who gain increasing power are ‘a young cadre who want to show off’, ‘without being anchored in reality’. With these idiomatic criticisms of Swedish state administrators, the climate skeptic becomes a subject with supposedly less inclination to steer others, someone with more pure, less oppressive power needs. This resembles a traditional virtue connected to parrhesia, i.e. the desire to make others prone to ‘constitute an appropriate relationship to themselves’ (Foucault 1982–83/2011, 43) without being overtly forceful in directing others, but rather functioning as a living example of an other life, a truer life. At the same time, the skeptic outspokenly downgrades the experts and interventionists by pointing to young age and an implicit lack of experience, as well as a blind focus on career and truths flexibly linked to that. Their truth-telling is therefore pursued with the hope of establishing a different type of rule (Cadman 2010).

They further discuss the difference between climate change, which includes many more ‘deep scientific issues’, than the broader area of the ‘green environment’. Scientific questions are normally possible to answer in relation to the green, but in the case of climate change much more refined experiments are needed, according to one of the skeptics; after all, it might never be possible to verify anthropogenic climate change at all, the participants argue in chorus. Except for agnostically problematizing how the science would need to go about solving the question, they also provocatively ridicule the ‘consensus’, asking ‘how this grotesque “snömos” [“slush”, or confused empty talk] can be allowed to exist in the Academy of Sciences’. Stating that it is ‘a total mystery’, one of the skeptics even ‘seek[s] to scrutinize some of the chairmen’ by reading dissertations to understand ‘how they can motivate their business’. Hence, the scientific base is further questioned by speaking about an organization that should know better; ‘the Academy of Sciences’. The scientific legitimacy of the organization is questioned by an interpellation of other epistemic resources, primarily by speaking about how he, with an academically schooled critical eye, has been scrutinizing the science supported by the Academy. By contrasting the skeptic’s ‘correct’ attitude to climate science’s ‘grotesque messy talk’, he continues to disqualify climate science:

I do not think I was clear, that is, when I saw them, those models, it’s just such an absurd humbug. It is not the case that they are possibly a bit iffy, but it’s complete humbug to do something like that, it is super nonsense, which can be demonstrated with one stroke of the pen, how anyone at all for a second can believe in such rubbish is totally incomprehensible. It is an extreme over-reliance on the precisions of their own work.

The veridiction at play repeatedly utilizes provocative speech such as ‘absurd humbug’, ‘super nonsense’, and ‘totally incomprehensible’. Additional frank talk exemplified by the focus group is the use of ‘bizarre, humbug, wacko, balderdash and sick’. These provocative formulations create a polarization to that which is to be disputed. Repeatedly, a more objective and sensible position is sought for the skeptic, in comparison to the climate scientists. It is not only the research practices behind the scientific results that are questioned, but how the scientists invest themselves and rely on their work to an exaggerated extent.

Even though the self-proclaimed skeptics can be compared to the polemical and quite aggressive nature of the cynic life, in order to be sovereign over itself (Foucault 1984/2011, 307–309), the focus group does not engage in the same type of ascetic exercises as those found on Flashback. While Flashback exemplified extremely frank speech, the focus group members use a more regimented tone. They position themselves in direct relation to scientific ways of reasoning, i.e. epistemic skepticism, and do not pay as much attention to how they can resist carbon governance with the help of certain practices, i.e. response skepticism. Instead, they actually find some of these practices useful for optimizing themselves as economic subjects, since energy saving is less costly.

The self-proclaimed skeptics also seek to validate their claims by making up more personal epistemic resources, and test these in relation to one of the members who functions as a touchstone, ‘basanos’, to scrub oneself against (Foucault 1984/2011, 144). In this case, truth-telling is not insular, but unfolds by a collective that shares a will to be heard, where each and every person seeks to have their own worldview justified. While Flashback exemplifies a parrhesiastic pact that embraces extensive provocations (cf. Foucault 1984/2011, 142–143), the parrhesiastic pact in the focus group is dependent on this touchstone. The focus group continuously repeats that they have nothing against talking with climate-friendly people. They stress that they seek no trouble, but wish to engage with others in conflict as a democratic way to develop society similarly discussed academically at the interface between cynicism and democracy (Stanley 2012). Still, in promoting an other life, their truth-telling is formed as resistance to what they together conceive as the dominant ethics, an ethics that they demonize as oppressive and built on faulty climate consensus. By means of their awareness of themselves as struggling against a dominant ethical trajectory (in Sweden), they pursue frank truth-telling, which includes the risk of being despised as immoral (Barber 2004).

From climate skeptic to climate cynic

The above analysis shows how climate skeptics can be understood in relation to truth-telling. Both groups display animality, as in ancient cynicism (Kynismus) as well as nihilism, as an affirmation of meaninglessness in modern cynicism (Zynismus) (Foucault 1984/2011, 179). Even if occasionally following this nihilistic mode, the skeptics do not form a life as if truth is not necessary (cf. p. 190). They move away from a questioning of absolute claims to knowledge, to embrace truth-telling as an ethical practice, whereby the climate skeptic becomes a climate cynic. Breaking out of the climate consensus by strongly manifesting their own personal truth, they provocatively show that others are mistaken, similarly to how the cynic lived out an enterprise of demonstration, conviction and persuasion (cf. Ibid, 314). Climate skeptics are convinced that it is others who are in otherness, and that this is the wrong path for humankind. While they repeatedly proclaim an alteration of others, so as to alter the world by selling certain forms of life, they are scouting (p. 167), and providing prophecies of a carbon-regimented society.

As illustrated in both materials, struggles between broader good or bad lifestyles are used to top up the civic dissent. Most common, however, is the despisal of climate-informed self-policing and a questioning of climate expertise, particularly in the case of frankness at Flashback with its binge carbon disorders, where cynic truth-telling is filled with a scandalous potpourri of overconsumption, nihilism, and honest evilness. The reaction to low-carbon living creates a ‘carbon bulimic’, exemplifying how unfixed ethical positions are. With their brute articulations, Flashback creates a more militant self-assertive position (Foucault 1984/2011, 184) in comparison to the focus group, which mainly questions the expertise.

Thinking about truth-telling as an ethical act in the case of climate skeptics is difficult since climate skeptics are viewed beforehand as being devoid of ethics. Nevertheless, if we look upon their truth-telling as accomplishing an ‘outsider’ position (Barber 2004, 56), it may be easier. Just as with general environmental skeptics, they attempt to ‘speak truth to power’ (Jacques 2006, 78), to counter what they see as a regulating science and confining consensus. There is thus a disjunction between the will to govern via climate change, and the ethical relationship the skeptics wish to have to themselves (cf. Cadman 2010). This suggests that if we want to understand the production of conflicting political realities on climate change, it is crucial to affirm how a number of ethical trajectories coexist and are expressed in a cynic fashion.

Conclusion

We have analyzed how unorganized climate skeptics oppose the climate change consensus through truth-telling. Focusing on epistemic and responsive skepticism (Capstick and Pidgeon 2014), we have illustrated everyday provocative opposition to the climate change consensus. This showed that the climate skeptic does not withhold judgment, but the skeptic turns cynic. In contrast to indifferent cynicism, the climate skeptics hold a critical ontology for the establishment of the truth of the cynic (compare Foucault 1984/2011, 75). Instead of tracing how a discourse becomes recognized as true, we have traced how some persons are seeking to constitute themselves as those who are telling the truth in order to become a subject of truth.

Exhibiting ‘response skepticism’ may be more difficult in parts of the world that rely on high-carbon living. Yet, the Swedish climate cynics attack low-carbon living conceived as a burgeoning norm, which shows how their ethical practice promotes an other life. Importantly though, truth-telling has commonly been ascribed to movements that seek to overthrow old norms (Munro 2014; Valverde 2004). Bearing witness to how the population is deceived is a shared practice of truth-telling between climate skeptics and the environmental movement, but it implies different risks and consequences for the courageous truth-teller (cf. Folkers 2016). Consequently, we argue that the current questioning of the scientific consensus and its correlated expertise can be better understood if we delve into the details of climate skepticism by studying ethics as unfixed. The climate skeptic who questions one truth becomes a climate cynic by living out an alternative truth. The skeptics resurrect an old foundation for what they conceive as life’s basics; a culture of consumption, and not nature, as the ancient cynic doctrine used for the calibration of more ascetic scandalous practices.

The reason social scientists have kept climate skeptics at arm’s length may be due to the latter’s opposition to academic knowledge production. It therefore becomes evident that including the climate cynic in social participatory processes is difficult (Forsyth 2011). And tellingly, the ‘politicization of science’ has focused on organized top-down skepticism and networks of think tanks (Plehwe 2014, 101). Still, everyday truth-telling and ethical positioning could in the future be studied more carefully if we wish to better understand social change processes (Fischer 2016), especially in relation to depoliticizing effects of resilience (Chandler and Reid 2016). Hence, due to a common research focus on climate skeptics that investigates the inability of people to grasp and accept scientific knowledge, it has been neglected how climate cynics engage in truth-telling and high-carbon practices.

Acknowledgement

The article has benefited from generous comments from several colleagues at presentations (Copenhagen Business School (CBS), the departement of management, politics and philosophy, and Stockholm University (SU), The Discourse Seminar. A special thanks to our discussants Prof. Mitchell Dean (CBS) and Prof. Mats Börjesson (SU). We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. We acknowledge the research grant ‘Governing Climate Change’ (Swedish Research Council Formas) and Uppsala University’s strategic investment in equal opportunities, which has facilitated this collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes on contributors

Annika Skoglund

Annika Skoglund is an associate professor at Uppsala University and an honorary associate professor at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include philosophical perspectives on climate change and alternative entrepreneurship, with a focus on new organizational forms.

Johannes Stripple

Johannes Stripple is an associate professor at Lund University Department of Political Science. His research interests include climate governance, urban environments, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by societies.