Lumbees, Climate Change, and Science Communication
Recently, I had a chance to sit down for an interview with David Boraks (WFAE) to discuss part of a campaign speech by North Carolina’s Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 governor’s race. Robinson has a record of inflammatory rhetoric, and his speech from July 2023 matched this pattern. In the speech, Robinson said that a Lumbee history book supported the idea that climate has “always changed” — a statement that echoes a longstanding talking point used by energy corporations and interest groups to downplay the severity of climate change. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and so I was initially inclined to chalk up the similarity between Robinson’s comment and the industry talking point as coincidence. In the same speech, however, Robinson also referred to climate science as pseudoscience, he dismissed links between climate change and fossil fuel consumption, and he called for even more consumption of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas).
Together, Robinson’s statements convinced me that his comment about climate change in the distant past was not simply a coincidental reference to a single industry talking point. Instead, his comments perfectly match a decades-old disinformation campaign by energy corporations and interest groups to distract people from the looming climate crisis. The strategy was exposed more than a decade ago by researchers Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book, Merchants of Doubt. The campaign and its talking points have been repeatedly debunked by climate scientists and science communication experts. Marshall Shepherd, University of Georgia professor and past president of the American Meteorological Society, has spent much time debunking these talking points, and he even refers to them as “zombies” given their tendency to rise from the dead and recirculate through society from time to time.
Robinson not only repeated these debunked industry talking points - he also misrepresented Lumbee history and traditions by claiming that Lumbee history supports a larger disinformation campaign about climate change and fossil fuels.
As a scientist who studies climate change and as a Lumbee person who cares deeply about the preservation of our traditions and life ways, I was in a perfect position to set the record straight. I am grateful that Boraks gave me an opportunity to do so. I acknowledge that I am only one Lumbee voice and that I don’t speak for our entire community, but I also have a responsibility to speak up in cases of blatant misrepresentation. Robinson’s statements are especially harmful because they not only misinterpret Lumbee history — they also use our name to give an air of authority to debunked industry propaganda.
So please check out WFAE’s report by Boraks, and be sure to listen to the audio interview at the top of the page, which includes excerpts from Robinson’s speech.
Ryan presents a research poster at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.