Climate Obstruction: On the State and Spread of Climate Disinformation in Canada

Résumé analytique

Between the 1980s and early 2000s, fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil ran extensive, multi-million dollar disinformation campaigns aggressively downplaying the realities of climate change. But while climate denial historically defined opposition to climate action, discourse is increasingly shifting into new territory online: climate delayism, which accepts the existence of climate change but downplays its urgency and sows doubt about potential solutions. The rapid spread of mis- and disinformation online, and platforms' inability and recent overt unwillingness to regulate it, has supercharged these climate delay narratives. Climate disinformation is not just a social media problem: it operates through a complex, historically situated network of powerful actors with vested interests and is woven into the fabric of Canadian nationhood and identity itself. This report traces the history and development of Canadian "petroculture" and the regional and national identities formed around it, examines the key players active in Canada's climate (dis)information ecosystem, and evaluates trends in the Canadian public's resonance with five prominent climate delay narratives, using a mixed-methods approach.

All five tested climate delay narratives had high resonance among Canadians. Hypocrisy and elitism narratives (the claim that those pushing climate action are elitist and hypocritical) were the most persuasive, at 67% agreement. "Ethical oil" narratives, which justify extractivism by framing Canadian oil as more ethical than oil from countries with poor environmental and human rights records, drew 54% agreement. Absolutionism, the idea that a country or region should be absolved of climate action because others bear more responsibility, drew 53%. Unreliable-renewables-and-ineffective-EVs narratives drew 41%, and narratives positioning Indigenous involvement in fossil fuel extraction as economic liberation and reconciliation drew 40%.

The survey also identified a prominent "impact gap": while 74% of respondents agreed climate change is real, less than half believed they are currently being impacted by it. Partisanship overwhelmingly predicts attitudes toward carbon pricing, with Conservative-partisan respondents over three times more likely than Liberal or NDP partisans to oppose it. Respondents preferred climate action at the government or corporate level over the individual level, favoring measures perceived to have the least impact on their own economic wellbeing. The report concludes that as platforms become increasingly unwilling to address the known harms of climate disinformation, robust accountability mechanisms through government regulation will be needed, with future efforts focused on reforming online advertising models, improving algorithmic transparency and data access, and cracking down on greenwashing.