Study uncovers “compartmentalization” as a hidden driver of climate denial

The study highlights a shift from outright denial to so-called soft denial-tactics that obscure accountability for climate-damaging actions.

False sense of progress

This study reviews a range of industrial sectors showing that in each one, adding and omitting certain relevant sustainability elements makes it so that the sustainability credentials are highlighted, while the polluting ones are downplayed. In recent years, this has occurred as companies such as Coca-Cola have made splashy headlines with their pledges to reduce plastic use in their bottles, only to quietly roll back their commitments to little fanfare. Likewise in the fossil fuel industry, impressive commitments to new energy research garnered media attention, and their ditching of these promises amidst rising oil prices received less attention. 

Compartmentalizing how we account the environmental achievements and failures into separate accounting sheets has been a strategy of selective attention that makes it easy to overlook continued unsustainable practices. Such moral accounting — where we are willing to buy more because we have been convinced by the companies that our consumption is less harmful that it used to be — does not actually achieve greater sustainability; it only assuages our climate anxieties, making us think that we are doing something green when we are actually not.

Compartmentalization

Sandboxing actions into separate ledgers on an accounting sheet, so-called "compartmentalization", obscures the continued ecological harms that have not yet been addressed, all the while producing the feeling of triumph without actually delivering it. This insincere emotional economy hurts our perceptions of actual sustainability, the authors argue. Being able to have the total costs and benefits of a company’s environmental impact clearly before us can provide better signals to governments and consumers as to their actual state of sustainable action.