You may recall from a previous article that the curiosity of the narcissist had led me to ask Google Gemini what it thinks about me. Amongst the unwelcome criticisms precipitated by my enquiry was the fact that I am the perfect example of what is being referred to as the ‘new denier’. Naturally, I did not warm to such condemnation. Firstly, there is nothing new about me – I have been pushing the same ideas for years now. Secondly, I have never denied the existence of climate change, nor the fact that there is an anthropogenic component, so I think ‘climate change denier’ would be an inaccurate epithet, whether new or old. But apparently the label sticks, simply because I am prepared to challenge the strength of the argument for requiring a UK transition to net zero by 2050. This is ‘delayism’ in the eyes of the so-called mainstream, and delayism is the new denial.

It is often very sobering to see how others see you, and the knee-jerk reaction can be to stomp off in self-righteous indignation. Of course, in my own eyes I am neither a denier nor a delayer; I am simply someone who wishes to be rigorous and open-minded when it comes to the application of risk science. However, I have to be realistic and accept that, in a framework were speed of action is the primary moral or practical metric, any reservation that acts to slow things down will be categorised by its opponents as a form of denial. I may not like the label, but I am certainly stuck with it.

To explore this issue further, it may be helpful to first lay out the essence of my position before going on to see why it is so enthusiastically dismissed as being part of an ill-informed and obstructive movement.

The first point to note is that there is uncertainty, and it matters how it is evaluated. Secondly, whilst claims are made for the catastrophic possibilities of unmitigated climate change, it should not be forgotten that the same can be true regarding the proposed solutions. This introduces a symmetric or double precautionary dilemma: identifying that catastrophe is a worst-case possibility in both the problem and solution domains introduces a symmetry that nullifies the precautionary principle. To me that is a reality that should be acknowledged and one for which a solution should be found. However, to those who see me as being part of the problem, I am simply re-framing mitigation as a threat. My argument is not viewed as a neutral risk assessment but as a fear-inducing narrative designed to dull the public and political appetite for net zero. I am also introducing a seemingly unsurmountable barrier to rapid action – how do you disprove the possibility of a resultant economic and social catastrophe? Put simply, those who advocate a precautionary approach to justify climate action do not take kindly to those who would do the same to support the idea that inaction may be a rational alternative.

Not that inaction is what I am proposing. On the contrary, I have repeatedly called for an approach that embraces the principles of Robust Decision Making (RDM). This is not a strategy designed to support the precautionary principle, nor does it argue for inaction. Instead, it is one that provides a practical alternative in the teeth of a deep uncertainty compounded by a double precautionary dilemma. It is a well-established approach within risk science in which robustness is achieved by sufficing with respect to a full range of possible futures rather than optimising with respect to a single presupposed risk. It offers a mathematically sound epistemic humility that avoids the mainstream dichotomy of either demanding acceptance of an uncompromised rush to net zero or simply doing nothing. Applying RDM therefore necessarily requires that both problem domain and solution domain risks be identified and constantly re-evaluated as actions are taken. In this respect, it recognises and addresses the deep uncertainties and extreme possibilities that may accompany both action and inaction.

And yet, being an advocate of RDM still does not get me off the hook as far as accusations of new denialism are concerned. Whilst I may think that RDM is a tool with which to implement flexible, pragmatic actions that protect against weather-related risks without committing to economically ruinous net zero transformations, my critics would argue that I am weaponizing RDM to justify a position I have taken within a culture war. To my critics, RDM remains a tool for obstruction in my hands simply because it can be used to justify delay. There are those who would, for example, point out that I focus upon the desire for reducing epistemic uncertainty before commitment. I also have a tendency to challenge the epistemic value of consensus and to frame action as overreaction (claims of alarmism). I have also been known to say that policy is being driven by ambiguity aversion rather than risk aversion. Mainstream advocates see all of this as using the language of decision science to undermine the need for immediate decarbonisation. I may be advocating valid risk management methodology but I do so to push back against the urgency, cost and necessity of global climate mitigation strategies. And I do this, apparently, because I assume the solution to be worse than the disease, at least from the perspective of my narrow, vested interests.

Except that I am not making that assumption at all. Instead, I challenge the assumption that the remedy could not possibly be worse than the disease. In this respect, I am challenging what seems to be an unexamined assumption rather than arguing for a different one. I would therefore insist that RDM is not being used as a tool of obstruction but as a tool of methodological rigour, because it forces consideration of regret in both the problem and solution domains. That rigour or neutrality doesn’t do me any good, however, because the socially accepted definition of ‘new denial’ explicitly targets arguments that frame climate policies as economically or socially ruinous (or, as is in the case of the UK, pointless). Therefore, the moment an analyst uses RDM or decision theory to formally elevate the solution-side risk level to that of catastrophe they are fulfilling the sociological criteria used to define a ‘climate denier’. As long as a ‘mainstream’ view is being challenged, you will be branded as a bad actor intent on peddling misinformation. And you don’t have to say that economic or social collapse will happen, only that it might.

The problem is basically that I am trying to adopt a nuanced stance in what is a binary political game. Mine may be a logically coherent challenge, wherein we cannot ignore the worst-case failures of our own interventions, but in a political paradigm where immediate transition is viewed as a moral and physical imperative, showing that the remedy could be as lethal as the disease is seen as a hostile and obstructive act. It is this political friction, not a lack of logic, that ensures that the label ‘new denier’ sticks. Any degree of agnosticism is intolerable because it implies criticism or doubt regarding a position that society has supposedly already decided upon. Indeed, the very architecture of climate governance is being challenged. In a binary political environment, attacking the implementation of a solution is seen as so functionally dangerous that it gets culturally and politically conflated with denying the basic science. Hence, the solution sceptic receives the exact same rhetorical label as the climate change denier. Being called a denier is supposed to be an accurate description but it would be truer to say that it is a measure of opprobrium.

Irrespective of personal intent or the technical validity of my risk management critique, my philosophical commitment to scepticism regrettably makes the ‘new denial’ label practically inevitable, particularly once every argument supporting climate action has become labelled as a universally valid truth. So, the moral of the story is this: Never take a sophisticated decision theory argument to a political debate.