Social media is undermining environmental action

The proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media are creating roadblocks for addressing various environmental issues. A recent report published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlights how targeted bot attacks on social media are undermining support for actions needed to tackle climate change, including reducing emissions. Owen Gaffney of the Stockholm Resilience Centre told the Guardian that the inability to tell fact from fiction “is undermining democracies, which in turn is limiting our ability to make long-term decisions needed to save the planet”. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science report suggests that a combination of “legislation, best-practice agreements, and individual skills of judging the quality of sources” may eventually tackle the negative side-effects of social media and eventually shift the world towards just and sustainable pathways.

Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

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