The New Climate Denialism - When the Narrative Accepts the Problem in Order to Destroy the Solution
The New Climate Denialism - When the Narrative Accepts the Problem in Order to Destroy the Solution
The new climate denialism does not begin with the ordinary citizen repeating a wrong sentence on the internet. That is the visible effect. The cause lies higher up: in large flows of money, in families and groups that control land, credit, media, public offices, funds, and political influence. The climate crisis is not sabotaged only by ignorance, but by an engineering of patrimonial preservation. Today’s denialism accepts that there are floods, droughts, heat, smoke, and biodiversity loss; what it denies is the causal chain that connects these effects to land concentration, financed deforestation, excess production, lobbying, and the capture of the State.
This mutation already appears in recent research. A study of 226,775 Brazilian YouTube videos, published between 2019 and 2025, identified the transition from classical denialism to a “new denialism” that accepts climate change but attacks mitigation, adaptation, climate governance, renewable energies, and environmental defenders. The visible effect looks like public debate; the cause is the capture of the response. Climate false Jiwasa gathers society around a real pain, but directs collective energy against the solutions that would touch the center of power.
This method has a genealogy. In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway showed how manufactured uncertainty was used around tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming to delay regulation. The operation did not need to prove that science was wrong; it only needed to keep controversy alive. In today’s climate debate, scientific jargon is captured: people speak of “uncertainty,” “productivity,” “energy security,” “cost-benefit,” “technological neutrality,” and “more studies.” When jargon brings society closer to the cause, it is science. When it pushes society away from action, it becomes a commodity of doubt.
The layer that must appear more strongly is land. In Brazil, the real CPF can often hide behind CNPJs, holdings, funds, leases, front persons, corporate structures, and financial instruments to control vast territorial extensions without appearing as the body-territory responsible for them. The climate cause, therefore, is not only “land use”; it is who controls land without living on it, without answering for it, and without returning yield to the territory.
In a responsible State, all land should belong to, or be linked to, a living, situated, and responsible body-territory, with clearly defined maximum limits. Land cannot be merely an abstract asset held by a CPF hidden inside a CNPJ, fund, or holding. If land sustains water, forest, food, climate, soil, culture, labor, and future, it cannot belong infinitely to a legal fiction that does not breathe that territory. When land becomes a financial asset without a body, the biome becomes an invisible liability. The CPF profits, the CNPJ operates, the fund accumulates, but the local body-territory pays: river, soil, forest, community, city, and climate.
This financialization of land is one of the causes protected by the new denialism. Recent research on land foreignization and financialization shows the growing interest of national and international capital in land, natural resources, and agro-environmental assets in Brazil, especially after the 2008 financial crisis and with new private credit instruments linked to agribusiness. The effect is presented as investment, modernization, or productivity. The cause, however, is the transformation of living territory into an asset portfolio. Where there should be body-territory, a portfolio appears.
This structure resembles the sophisticated organized crime of high money flows. It does not first appear as direct violence, but as procedure, legal opinion, license, public office, lobbying, budget, appointment, exception, prescription, and technical language. In the environmental field, destruction can be legalized before it appears as crime. When laws weaken licensing, when self-declaration replaces serious analysis, when lands without clear destination become opportunities for regularization, the biome stops being a living subject and becomes an administrative obstacle. In 2025, critics called Brazil’s new environmental licensing legislation the “Devastation Bill” because it weakened environmental controls and expanded simplified authorization mechanisms. The effect is “simplification”; the cause is removing the biome from the center of power.
Here lies the constitutional failure. The Brazilian Constitution protects the environment, but the biome still does not appear as a subject of power capable of interrupting the law that wounds it. The biome is treated as a good, heritage, resource, ecological balance, or diffuse interest, but not as a political presence with causal veto power. As long as the biome is not a subject of power, any captured congress can produce new legality to deforest, grab land, compensate poorly, mine, or regularize damage. Destruction changes names: it becomes land title, license, credit, regularization, compensation, or development. The cause remains the same: body-territory without power before those who write the rules.
The phrase “let the cattle pass,” said by Ricardo Salles when he was Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, became a symbol of this engineering. The causal point is not only one person, but the method: occupying the State to dismantle regulations from within. In 2021, Salles became the target of an investigation related to suspicions involving illegal Amazon timber exports and possible obstruction of the investigation; he left the ministry in June of that year. When operators of deregulation reach the best positions in environmental institutions, denialism stops being opinion and becomes public administration.
This operation also depends on communication. The infrastructure of public attention in Brazil is concentrated. Media Ownership Monitor Brazil maps the groups that control influential outlets and the risks to media plurality and independence. This does not mean that every journalist acts in bad faith. It means that those who control media, advertising, reputation, and influence have greater capacity to define what appears as progress, radicalism, exaggeration, threat, development, or freedom. The new climate denialism does not only want to hide data; it wants to control the emotional frame through which society interprets the cause.
Beyond traditional media, there is the purchase of virality. NetLab UFRJ analyzed digital advertising by Brazilian agribusiness and pointed to the use of sustainability as greenwashing and disinformation on social networks. The effect looks like a positive campaign: family in the countryside, food on the table, national pride, the farmer as hero, clean technology. The cause may be a war of belonging. False Jiwasa pays to look like the people, while displacing the main question: who owns the land, who finances the narrative, who receives credit, who deforests, who exports, and who pays the climate cost?
Excess production is another deep cause, even if it deserves a separate blog. When a country organizes its economy to produce exportable surpluses — soy, meat, minerals, energy, converted land, commodities, environmental credits, and logistics — this excess begins to demand State diplomacy, tax exemptions, incentives, subsidized credit, public infrastructure, and political protection. The effect is “competitiveness”; the cause is the capture of part of the government’s attention to keep exportable excess competitive, while water, schools, health, local energy, and territorial yield fall into the background.
The financial layer closes the circuit. Deforestation does not survive on opinion alone; it depends on credit, insurance, logistics, exports, land prices, buyers, banks, and institutional access. In 2026, Brazil began requiring banks to verify, through official satellite tools, whether rural credit applicants had deforested since 2019 in order to access subsidized credit, a measure that affected a large volume of rural credit and faced resistance from agribusiness sectors. When money stops financing deforestation, the discourse changes. The abstract defense of productive freedom often hides the concrete dispute over the flow of credit.
For this reason, the metacognitive question cannot be only: “is this fake news?” It must be: who finances doubt? Who occupies the office? Who wrote the license? Who bought the ad? Who made the narrative go viral? Who owns the land? Who hides behind a CNPJ, fund, or holding? Who benefits from prescription? Who turns land grabbing into regularization? Who calls deforestation productive freedom? Who produces excess that does not return to body-territory? Who prevents the biome from becoming a subject of power?
Climate Real Jiwasa begins when the narrative returns the problem to its material cause. It is not enough to say that the planet is warming. We must ask who profits from warming, who delays the transition, who controls communication, who captures licensing, who receives incentives, who concentrates land, and who turns the biome into an object without a voice. ECLAC argues that climate action in Latin America can become a path to overcoming development traps by articulating productivity, inclusion, and sustainability. But this will only be real if the transition returns water, energy, forest, credit, and yield to body-territory — not merely green reputation to the same owners of delay.
The conclusion is direct: the new climate denialism is more dangerous because it has learned to appear rational, technical, popular, and even environmental. It accepts the crisis in order to dispute its interpretation. It accepts science in order to manufacture doubt. It accepts sustainability in order to sell greenwashing. It accepts the people in order to protect the elite. It accepts the law in order to legalize damage. Against this, the New World must place the biome as a subject of power, limit property without body, prevent CPFs hidden in CNPJs from controlling unlimited territory, and make production return to body-territory. Because, as long as the forest cannot block the law that destroys it, the elite of delay will continue calling devastation development.
Selected references
Marcelo Sartori Locatelli et al. — “Mapping Emerging Climate Misinformation Playbooks in the Global South” — 2026
Supports the thesis of the new climate denialism: accepting climate change while attacking solutions, mitigation, adaptation, climate governance, renewable energy, and environmental defenders. The study analyzed 226,775 Brazilian YouTube videos between 2019 and 2025.
Ergon Cugler de Moraes Silva — “Climate change denial and anti-science communities on Brazilian Telegram” — 2024
Supports the relationship between climate denialism, anti-science communities, Telegram, Agenda 2030, globalism, and conspiracy theories in Brazil.
Agência Pública — foreign actors and land control in Brazil — 2024
Supports the critique of land concentration and land control by economic groups, including foreign actors, in areas linked to agribusiness, illegal mining, and mining.
Kato — “Estrangeirização de terras no Brasil contemporâneo” — 2024
Supports the analysis of capital’s interest in land, natural resources, and land-based assets, helping ground the critique of land as a financial asset.
“A geografia dos FIAGROS” — 2025
Supports the layer on new financial instruments linked to agribusiness, private credit, and the financialization of territory.
The Guardian / Reuters — environmental licensing and the “Devastation Bill” — 2025
Supports the critique of environmental licensing flexibilization, self-declaration, and the institutional dispute over weakening environmental protection.
Mongabay — Ricardo Salles, illegal timber, and investigation — 2021
Supports the context of the investigation involving Ricardo Salles, Amazon timber, alleged obstruction, and his departure from the Ministry of the Environment.
Media Ownership Monitor Brazil — 2022
Supports the analysis of concentrated communication infrastructure and risks to media plurality in Brazil.
NetLab UFRJ — greenwashing and digital advertising by agribusiness — 2024
Supports the critique of sustainability being used as greenwashing and disinformation in Brazilian agribusiness digital advertising.
Sumaúma — agribusiness tax exemptions — 2025
Supports the layer on tax waivers, incentives, and excess production that captures State attention and resources.
Reuters / AP — rural credit, satellite monitoring, and deforestation — 2026
Supports the financial layer: banks verifying deforestation data by satellite before granting subsidized rural credit, showing that climate causality passes through money flows.
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway — Merchants of Doubt
A structural reference for understanding the manufacturing of doubt with a scientific appearance as a method for delaying regulation around tobacco, ozone depletion, and global warming.
