This is well defined by Peter Jacques in his paper "Rearguard of Modernity", I append the conclusion below. There is a follow up paper by Jacques and Dunlap that actually tracked the propaganda to the source and documented with certainty that what is in the paper below is true.
I'd just try to make him understand how he is being played for a fool by companies like ExxonMobile and Koch Industries, because his real benefit is emotional, and if you can sour the positive emotion then you might move him.
Conclusion
Environmental skepticism presents itself as "speaking truth to power" through contrarian claims they say objectively "debunk" the myths of the environmental movement and environmental science. Yet, the analysis of this literature indicates that environmental skepticism is specifically issued from a conservative ideology supported by a coherent conservative countermovement opposed to environmentalism. This positions the bias of skeptic knowledge claims, and while environmentalists' claims clearly have their own bias, the claim that the skeptical project is generated from a sense of objectivity and value neutrality is flatly rejected as part of an attempt to subvert reflexive interrogation and the implied counter-hegemonic resistance this entails.
In particular, environmental skepticism is opposed to the establishment of global environmental concerns and those related to human sustainability. The substantive arguments of environmental skeptics are guided by a "deep anthropocentrism" which dissolves society from non-human nature. Importantly, a severed nature-human relationship effectively challenges the institutionalization of obligation to environmental changes and the people who are affected by these changes. Skepticism therefore preserves a conservative hope for limited government in the global market while it protects a consumptive elite against responsibilities for these systemic changes. In the process, environmental skepticism defends the structure of dominant social values in world politics such as the state system, expansive resource exploitation under world capitalism, and a hegemonic and consumptive North (and US in particular from where most skeptics hail) to flourish unmolested by the gadflies of the environmental movement.
Therefore, being overly concerned with the contrarian knowledge claims of environmental skeptics misses skepticism's more important political message about duty and the legitimacy of public environmental concern. Environmental skeptics, even if they are conclusively proven wrong on all counts, will succeed in — at least temporarily — guarding a falling hegemonic order if academia, the press, and government become overly interested in Darth Vader and Obi Wan dueling at the bay doors.101 I suspect that skeptics will be happy to continue to create this kind of conflict because it ultimately provides an indefinite defense of the dominant social norms and institutions. They do not need to win the debate about the state of the world to maintain this power and dominance. They only need to establish enough doubt about the environmental epistemic community having the debate to throw public action into doubt as well.
Kysar, in Ecology Law Quarterly, notes that both environmentalists, such as Worldwatch Institute, and skeptics like Lomborg are guilty of hyperbole which they use to focus attention on their own policy agenda through competing Litanies.102 These Litanies are, among other things, struggles over the ability to frame risk, and therefore regulation:
As a result, science becomes a contested space in which competitors
vie for the legal authority to impose costs on other parties, whether
in the form of regulatory compliance, or externalized physical and
environmental harms.103
However, Wildavsky, correctly I think, argues that risk is politically assessed by morality, and this makes the framing of public risk a civic exercise.104 From here, he argues that environmental policies need to be made with a preponderance of evidence, not evidence from probabilities. But skeptical ethics severely limit what counts and is available to create such a preponderance of evidence. Thus, contrary to what Lomborg argues, understanding what is to be done and prioritizing action is not just a simple matter of adding up the costs and benefits. The real struggle is over what can count as a cost or benefit or even whether such a conceptual tool is fair, appropriate, or relevant.105
Environmental skepticism is therefore a struggle over the core values and beliefs that frame who and what risks should count as important. But these are no ordinary historical risks. The state of the world debate centers on what core civic values should organize risk in society regarding human development and progress. Wildavsky's "culture" model is based on core fears and different cultural sets have different core fears of risks, and that environmentalists have a specific culture guided by "radical egalitarianism." I do not disagree that some environmentalism is deeply concerned about the fair distribution of ecological space and change.106 Turning this around though, it is just as plausible to frame skeptics as struggling for a "radical in-egalitarianism" within the core values that already organize world politics.
In conclusion, skepticism's influence in politics and culture presents a dramatic threat to human ability and political will to protect the critical life support systems found in ecological goods and services because they dismiss these systems as important. Many civilizations have actively decided, for one reason or another, to ignore the erosion of this essential relationship between society and non-human nature, only to collapse or find themselves at the mercy of a Dark Age that is defined by misery and suffering.107 Jared Diamond writes, Our world is interconnected and interdependent, like Easter Island's 11 clans. Today, we face the same problems—loss of forests, fisheries, biodiversity, fresh water, and topsoil—that dragged down past societies. But for the first time in world history, we are producing or transporting toxic materials, greenhouse gases, and alien species. All these environmental problems are time bombs. The world is now on an unsustainable course, and these problems will be resolved one way or another, pleasantly or unpleasantly, within the next 50 years.108
Yet, Lomborg shrugs off the matter of accountability to exactly these kinds of changes as "blame" and says our true priorities should be more along the lines of a low-fat diet instead of "focusing on pesticides, oxygen depletion, global warming, forests, wind power, biodiversity, etc.—issues which are more clearly someone else's fault."109
To some, the song of skepticism sounds like a sweet song, laden with the security and power of modernity. Diamond points out with optimism I share, when Easter Island collapsed, it did not have the benefit of knowing that other societies had collapsed by undermining ecological life support systems.
However, taking responsibility for global environmental integrity would be a positive step towards paradigmatic and r/evolutionary changes, one of which could be an incorporation of obligations to human societies commensurate with membership and impact within a larger international and ecological community.110 This directly challenges the way power and wealth are concentrated in the current world system, and environmental skeptics have organized as the rearguard for this system and its globalizing—but beleaguered - paradigm. To be sure, the fact that conservatives have felt the need to rally around the DSP indicates that the ecological position is gaining strength.
Skeptics however wish to postpone this change. Their placations sound good to the elite who are part of the dominant world order. From Diamond's lessons, this skeptical song is like lulling the boiling frog to sleep, ignoring that someone put the frog in the pot to begin with, and then telling the frog that things are, "in fact," getting better all the time.
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