Environment of lies and false truths exposed - March 29 - 3.50pm - 2022

Professor Peter Stott on the battle against climate change denial

I was surprised. Any talk on the environment, let alone one so clearly signposted as being potentially explosive, just sounded Heaven-sent to attract a sell-out crowd…but it didn’t. Instead, ‘Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial’ played to an audience that should have been so much more, especially within the borders of Oxford and Oxfordshire. Why it wasn’t I can’t imagine. It had ‘vital’ and ‘imperative’ stamped all over it but for whatever reason, it felt grossly abandoned. Still, climate scientist Professor Peter Stott did a game job of using his passion and enthusiasm for the subject to clearly outline the recent landmark moments in determining climate truth, as well as those lies and subterfuge, politically and economically motivated, that such revelations have launched. There were graphs and photographs and Stott himself was terrific and hugely likeable, but I do think the ‘promised battle’ that the event inevitably professed to expose between the forces of Good and Evil never really materialised. In short, it needed more meat, more toxic gristle to highlight the sly and viscerally damaging methods that have been used to derail the climate crusade. But it took a good stab nevertheless to brightly illuminate that the obvious, the ‘obviously obvious’, is being hunted like a lamb to the slaughter.