This denial may have several reasons: either they do not want the climate to change, or they do, but they believe that nothing can be done, or that all disasters have another fault. In the latter case the culprits are usually “enemies of the nation.” However, for those who say time is still normal, the “enemies of the nation” are those who want to highlight climate change. Even if it sounds absurd, these interpretations reflect a worldview, a narrative. And even though weather events are exceptional and extraordinary damage, they're not always as strong as changing some narratives.

All normal, all good

In Arizona, lawmakers prayed at their first session in early August to combat the extraordinary heat of this summer: “We pray to you, Dad, to find solutions to end the suffering and to bring our temperature back down, to restore peace to so many.” In the capital of Phoenix, 43 degrees were exceeded every day of July, surpassing all historical brands and killing dozens of people. As at the beginning of the pandemic, they had to buy new refrigerators for collecting corpses. On the contrary, some members of the Arizona Republican Party seemed to repeat Antonio Turiel’s famous saying, “all normal, all good,” but not ironic. Republican Senator Justine Wadsack said on social media that “time is normal,” and some of his party colleagues said that there is a frenzy in the media, with the aim of echoing the narrative of left-wing climate change and encouraging people to hold the government accountable.
Justin Heap, Arizona lawmaker, has been more explicit: he believes that the “media narrative” of climate change is driven by “global elites” to get massive public subsidies for green energy development. It is noteworthy that the fossil fuel sector, traditionally linked to the Republican party, has pushed for decades narratives to curb the development of green energies and continue the oil business. Heap acknowledges that, however, the climate is changing and that CO2 emissions may be related, but adds that in the end it cannot allow further government interventions for repair, which would be too pessimistic. In 2012, Virginia state legislator Chris Stolle removed the words “sea level rise” from a report on Virginia’s coastal floods, which he believes are left-wing. Who is politicizing the climate issue?

Kill messenger

In southern Europe, summer has also been hard, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, prolonged drought has caused serious damage to the agricultural sector. No one dared to burn that the situation was normal, but for some this limit was not enough to dare to see if something is really happening with the climate. For those who want to believe that the issue of climate change is a fraud or an excuse “imposed by the global elites”, we have to be somewhere else because of the drought. In the event that the meteorological agency itself AEMET manipulated the time to open rumors and take power, resurrecting that old narrative of chemtrail or traces of air, the workers of this agency suffered a high-level harassment campaign. Some of the messages received were “criminals”, “murderers”, “information collectors at the service of the disease”, “manipulators”, “you will pay”, “we look”. In April, meteorologist Isabel Moreno repeated in a social network that a rain front will avoid Spain. The responses appeared rapidly: “Don’t consider us innocent,” “they dry us and you are your spokesperson.” Moreno never saw answers to his message, nor so much aggression. AEMET spokeswoman Estrella Gutierrez explained that in the 30 years she has been working, she had never suffered this situation.

More excuses for racists

There have been hundreds of fires in Greece, many of them uncontrolled. The largest has been in the region of Evros, on the border with Turkey, which according to the Copernicus service has been the largest fire seen for many years in Europe. Although the police and fire brigade confirm that the fire has been caused by lightning, the narrative that the refugees have set in motion has spread rapidly, faster than the fire itself. Without surprises, the ends on the right have called for militias to be formed to hunt for humanity. Essayist Pavlos Roufos explains that a neighbor from the Evros region detained fifteen people in a car, after publishing a video, most comments called shooting refugees or smoking live. Although 18 other people were killed by fire trying to flee the police in the jungle, the atmosphere has not calmed down. The most outrageous rumours spread, such as that refugees are trying to hinder the work of the fire brigade by throwing stones at the planes. Too many local people believe that. In addition to the fact that the Government is not opposed to this group of localities, the Minister of Migration stated that the eighteen deaths are the result, without further ado, of overcoming the illegal limit. Roufos says that in Greece it is the dominates themselves who transmit it, involution fueled by the economic decline of several years and the breakdown of social relations.

Harald Welzer, a social psychology researcher, explained in his book Klimakriege (“Climate Wars”) that when extreme weather events affect the living conditions of a group of people, such as drought in Spain or fires in Greece, the feeling of injustice that occurs can favor the search for an identified culprit. As we can see, they are the culprits of a narrative that plays a political role, the “enemy of the nation” function, which can be a hidden or foreign global elite, to direct attention and indignation towards them, meanwhile to continue not to mention climate change and its social implications.