If you had to guess what the World Economic Forum named the #1 risk to the global economy in the next two years, you might think it’s climate change. In fact it’s another, closely related global crisis: the rapidly deteriorating health of our information environment.
Gossip and falsehoods have always been with us, intentionally spread or not: as George Elliot put it, “nettle seeds need no digging.” But these seeds spread differently in a media environment where disinformation is monetized and sophisticated technologies of deception are widely accessible. Misinformation (wrong information) and disinformation (“wrong, on purpose, for money”) are already undermining democratic processes in many countries, a threat that is “supercharged” by generative AI. The resulting cycle of civil unrest, repression, and manipulation of information by authoritarian governments – already visible in the United States – threatens further social fragmentation, undermining our ability to address global challenges.
One outcome of November’s Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a response to this (other) environmental health problem: the Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change (GIIICC).
This commits signatory countries—including Canada—to promote climate information integrity at all scales of government, and establishes a global fund to support this work.
In January 2025, Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission named misinformation the “single biggest risk” to Canadian democracy.
The GIIICC marks the first time information integrity has been addressed in the UNFCCC, and is a step toward folding information integrity into intergovernmental processes more broadly.
It recognizes that a toxic information environment is exacerbating the already profound barriers to addressing climate change.
The creation of the GIIICC was announced in September at the Summit on Climate Mis/Disinformation, which I attended at the Information Integrity Lab at the University of Ottawa. Co-sponsored by the Canadian Commission for UNESCO and the Trottier Family Foundation, the summit offered a deep dive into why information integrity is a critical climate issue, and what Canadian and international organizations and researchers are doing about it.
Below are my six key take-aways from the summit:
TAKEAWAY #1
Disinformation inhibits climate action at multiple scales. A recent UN-mandated study from the International Panel on the Information Environment noted that climate disinformation is “turning a crisis into a catastrophe,” and climate conspiracies now have vocal proponents in national leadership positions around the world. The summit shed light on how this impacts Canadian climate action. Daniel Stockemer of the University of Ottawa argued that, by undermining public understanding and social license for action, climate disinformation is “a structural barrier to climate decision-making”.
Nicholas Diamond of Impact Canada said that the stressors on federal climate policy are rooted in the erosion of the social fabric and societal trust; the decline of local news; gaps in education, including science literacy, media literacy, and civics; and declining trust in government. Local governments are on the frontlines of this of this crisis: Zoe Grams of Climate Caucus described how climate conspiracies are causing some local governments to pull back from larger-scale partnerships. This creates a vicious circle in which misinformation prompts backlash, limiting political ambition. A resulting sense of government inefficacy further exacerbates barriers to government action.
TAKEAWAY #2
The problem is getting worse. A complex economy of falsehood is driving backlash and social conflict at a destabilizing pitch. Even in 2018, on ‘old’ Twitter (now X), fake news spread six times faster than real news, and the platform has seen a persistent rise in misinformation after Elon Musk took over. In Canada Meta’s news ban, enacted in response to the Canadian Online News Act, exacerbates this problem by curbing the circulation of real news while allowing misinformation to circulate. Aditi Rames of the digital advertising watchdog Check My Ads detailed how opaque supply chains and AI-driven prioritization in online advertising are driving advertising dollars to sites peddling fake news.
TAKEAWAY #3
It’s not only about climate. Charlotte Scadden of United Nations Global Communications cautioned: “don’t silo this as a climate issue; it’s not. It’s a democracy issue.” Climate disinformation shares messaging, information channels, messengers, and audiences with false information about COVID-19 and other issues. Cybersecurity expert Dave McMahon stressed that climate disinformation is highly networked with other types of disinformation and foreign interference, including homophobia, misogyny, and even child harm.
And Catherine Abreu of the International Climate Politics Hub showed how climate disinformation comes alongside campaigns to shut down civil rights and freedoms—campaigns that in many parts of the world are life-threatening for land defenders, journalists, and climate activists.
These interconnections mean that, as McMahon quipped, if we solve for climate misinformation, we solve for misinformation in general. Michael Khoo of Climate Action Against Disinformation, one of the advisory organizations to the GIIICC, described how they werenaturally led into an intersectional approach to the issue: they tracked climate denial groups as their messaging shifted to anti-masking, anti-Black Lives Matter, and then to
misogyny against Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Now some of these same actors are bankrolling transphobia and other “anti-woke’ agendas.
TAKEAWAY #4
There are specific culprits. These are still the usual suspects – the fossil fuel industry and the far-right political institutions into which it is deeply networked – with some major new(ish) players in the tech industry. These actors are massively resourced and globally networked,and they now have seats in the highest halls of power.
Abreu narrated the evolving messaging promoted by these coordinated actors, much of which focuses on discrediting renewables, as seen in the recent flurry of misinformation around energy blackouts in Spain. In a social mediaverse that amplifies fringe views,
disinformation campaigns have bred new and frightening narratives that frame climate policy — or even climate impacts themselves — as part of a shadowy conspiracy involving vaguely defined left-wing actors, advocates of gender equity, immigrants, or other
scapegoated populations. Chris Russill of Carleton University’s Re.Climate described how, during the 2023 wildfire season in Alberta, conspiracies raged on social media that the fires were the result of eco-terrorism or government-sanctioned arson to advance “climate communism” or an “elite global agenda.”
By creating both the tools and the platforms through which disinformation spreads
and becomes lucrative, the tech industry has an outsized influence on climate policy,
while remaining opaque and resistant to regulation. This is all the more troubling as major tech capitalists like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk wield their influence in support of their own political and even theological fever dreams. For these reasons Stockemer argued at the summit that “tech policy is climate policy.”
TAKEAWAY #5
Without the propaganda, climate deniers would lose. This was the strong message from Phil Newell of Climate Action Against Disinformation. Despite the onslaught of disinformation, the majority of people in Canada and around the world still support climate action. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe reminded the summit 80 per cent of people
globally are concerned about climate change and want their governments to do more. The real impact of disinformation, she argued, is making us feel isolated in our concern, and disrupting the sense of efficacy that makes us feel empowered to act.
TAKEAWAY #6
There are solutions. The summit demonstrated how better regulations, technological tools, and engagement strategies that begin from deeply shared values can disrupt the channels through which disinformation flows, and increase immunity to it. If our algorithms are designed to amplify outrage and polarization, we can redesign them. We can increase transparency in social media and online advertising through smart regulation and litigation. And we can better equip people to verify information, including through
inoculation. As Khoo said, “We have done hard things before. Solving climate change is harder.”
But addressing what Diamond called the “demand side” of disinformation requires
deeper efforts to rebuild societal trust and connection. Juhi Sohani of Imagining an Otherwise suggested that the appetite for disinformation is piqued by “a desire to experience interdependence again”: when people do not see themselves reflected in coalitional spaces, they seek other sources of belonging and affirmation. Coalitional approaches are essential and need to include, in Gram’s words, “unusual suspects.”
For communicators, building a sense of efficacy and connecting the concrete benefits of climate action with people’s daily lives are key. Hayhoe offered “six key truths” for
communicating the gravity of the problem while empowering agency:
It’s real. It’s us. It’s bad. Experts agree. Others care. There’s hope.
Supporting information integrity means tackling the same challenges necessary to push forward ambitious climate action: breaking the consolidated power of industries that profit from the crisis; defending civil rights and political freedoms; mending institutions that are structural to our social fabric, like local news and non-privatized spaces for public discourse; and investing in climate-positive public infrastructure that also supports social connection and cohesion. It requires holding our governments accountable and demanding coherent climate policies
integrated with national economic strategies: when governments tell us to believe the science on climate change while expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, they not only lock in high-emissions futures but also increase polarization and undermine their own trustworthiness. This is the fertile terrain in which disinformation thrives.
Those opposed to climate action recognize its links to broader issues of democracy and justice. This is both an imperative and an opportunity to take a coalitional approach based in the recognition that the health of our information environments is integral to that of our planetary systems.
Further resources on information integrity
Check out of the full summary of the Summit from the University of Ottawa’s Information Integrity Lab, and peruse their comprehensive resource library of research, case studies, and training materials on information integrity.
Climate Action Against Disinformation is a global coalition and an advisory group to the GIIICC.
The Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University’s PoliDashboard can be used to track political and social issue ads across Meta platforms, and their communalytic research tool is available for public-interest social media analysis.
The US-based organization Check My Ads is advocating for increased accountability and transparency in online advertising.
Demos uses bridge-based ranking, a “pro-democracy” algorithm that surfaces information that drives connection across groups instead of polarization and isolation.
The youth-led organization re.generation is working to give youth a sense of efficacy through pro-climate careers, while mobilizing Canadian economic nationalism in their messaging on renewable energy.
The AI fact checker Laura is named after the Canadian hero of the War of 1812, Laura Secord.
The DISARM framework aims to provide widely applicable tools to identify and thwart information threats.
MediaSmarts is working to increased media and science literacy and equip youth and adults with the tools to spot and verify information.
Similar to other public health challenges, when exposed to a small dose of disinformation and its debunking, people are more resistant to these messages in the wild. We Make the Future’s alternative infrastructure for race-class narrative is a communications framework informed by this ‘prebunking’ approach.
Dr. Sara Nelson is Climate Foresight lead at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.