Countercultural Denial in the UK: “New” Social Movements?

Abstract

Climate change is a divisive issue within the United Kingdom, as policy and popular rhetoric circulating within England and Scotland can be at odds with one another. Whilst climate denial is problematic, it is by no means the first form of denial in the broader British cultural sphere. In order to comprehend climate change denial fully, it is useful to gain an understanding of denialism itself as it operates in the UK more broadly, including other sceptically ideological movements, both recent and historical. Ecologies of the Right go some way towards explaining these converging tendencies; however, postmodern deconstructionism — which has left-wing origins — also seems to permeate these sceptical lines of thought. Additionally, postmodernism itself has been adopted by right-wing nationalism (Wolin, 2019), evidencing that it might be more productive to think beyond current political alignments in order to understand climate denial more wholly.