Lead author of anti-trophy hunting import ban letter is oddly friendly with a notorious climate denier
Sustainable use activists and climate change deniers - name a more iconic duo.
Sustainable use activists published yet another seriously flawed Conservation Biology letter in support of trophy hunting. But this time, instead of having a co-author from a climate change denial organization, they picked a lead author that is oddly friendly with a notorious climate change denier.
Despite their radically different opinions on science, sustainable use activists and climate change deniers will, ultimately, always find themselves aligned due to their commitment to maintaining the status quo and protecting the capital order.
Sustainable use activists’ Conservation Biology letter flops, again
Back in 2020, leading UK sustainable use activists published a letter in Conservation Biology bemoaning trophy hunting criticism that they declared was based on misinformation. But, as always, the sustainable use activists’ letter was filled with flaws.
For starters, the letter was co-authored by a research fellow at climate deniers Property and Environment Research Center and, unironically, implied that “inaccurate coverage of trophy hunting” was similar to climate change denial. Additionally, the letter cited a Safari Club International-funded study to prove that polar bear trophy hunting was sustainable.
Fast forward to 2023 and many of the sustainable use activists from the 2020 letter (Adam Hart, Amy Dickman, Dilys Roe, Charles Jonga) wrote another Conservation Biology letter. This time the sustainable use activists picked a new lead author with expertise in polar bear research to strengthen their criticism of the UK’s proposed trophy hunting import ban bill.
Unfortunately for the sustainable use activists, they botched yet another letter. Douglas Clark, the letter’s lead author and polar bear expert, is oddly friendly with Susan Crockford, a notorious climate denier and pseudo-polar bear expert.
Susan Crockford, climate denier and pseudo-polar bear expert, validated by Douglas Clark
A study on denier blogs that downplayed the threat climate change poses to polar bears found that about 80% of denier blogs cited Crockford even though she has virtually no peer-reviewed research on polar bears. Unsurprisingly, the Safari Club International-funded disinformation campaign featured Crockford on multiple occasions to spread the narrative that polar bear populations are thriving.
Typically, a polar bear expert concerned about climate change would only engage with Crockford to invalidate her anti-science rhetoric. Yet, when Crockford shared a story on Twitter about a polar bear entering a remote community, Clark asked if she would like to make a friendly bet about the sex of the polar bear.
In a Twitter thread about a polar bear “invasion” on a Russian community, Crockford criticized a polar bear expert for blaming sea ice failures. Crockford, of course, had a different explanation than failed sea ice and linked to a blog post with her explanations for the incident to which Clark commented, “Thanks Susan for the details on context here- very helpful!”
Clark also gave one of Crockford’s books, Eaten, a glowing review. Crockford’s website promoted Clark’s review with the headline .l,;0—l;0-“Colleague says EATEN possibly a real service to polar bear conservation.”
“I study conflicts between polar bears and people for a living and I like thriller novels, so I had to see what this book was all about. “Eaten” is a great read with a thought-provoking scientific premise, and it gave me the freaking chills […] It would be a mistake to dismiss this book simply as climate change denial because it explores an unconventional scenario about climate/sea ice/polar bear relationships […] Susan Crockford has not only written a fun novel that gets readers thinking, she has probably done polar bear conservation a real service. Because of how politicized polar bears have become as symbols of climate change, fiction is the only arena where one can really present this kind of scenario right now.” – Douglas Clark’s review of a climate denier’s book.
Douglas Clark also validated other climate deniers on social media
Clark retweeted a right-wing cancel culture talking point in a thread about gas stoves from Roger Pielke Jr.
Pielke Jr. is a favorite climate denier of conservative politicians. He plays the part of believing the climate change is real but then says that natural disasters aren’t getting worse or aren’t impacted by climate change which helps politicians push back on actually doing anything about climate change.
Clark also retweeted a Twitter poll from Eric Weinstein which was a climate change denier dog whistle.
Weinstein rose to fame thanks in part to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and the Intellectual Dark Web community (Weinstein coined the IDW term). He is the modern version of a climate change denier.
Weinstein, publicly states that he believes in climate change but then defends more obvious climate deniers like Jordan Peterson and criticizes the idea that the “science is settled.” Like Pielke Jr., Weinstein comes up with any excuse possible to ensure that action is not taken on the climate crisis.
Why do sustainable use activists find themselves attracted to climate deniers?
Sustainable use activists like Clark fear the politicization of polar bears due to climate change. They’re worried that, because of climate change, trade bans will be enforced that negatively impact indigenous communities and fail to do anything to solve the problem of climate change.
But this attempt to depoliticize polar bears weaponizes them for the climate denial community and creates an environment where people like Clark and Crockford can have “common ground.” Believing that regulations will harm people that did not cause the problem is the same reason why Clark would retweet the gas stove trope from Pielke Jr. and the climate change denial dog whistle from Weinstein.
Polar bear experts that oppose trophy hunting or trade restrictions often also do so on the argument that indigenous communities would be the first to notice unsustainability and would, therefore, stop when necessary. This argument is flawed though.
For example, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialty Group opposed the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board’s proposed increase in Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation hunting quotas in 2011 because the current (at the time) harvest was not sustainable.
But, this is not to say that the problem is that indigenous people do not know how to hunt sustainably (or at least more sustainably than non-indigenous people). The problem is the capitalist system in which they function that needs unfettered growth to survive.
You can’t simply switch out the people in the system and expect the system to all of a sudden be sustainable. But putting the onus on the people helps to protect the capital order.
Sustainable use activists will not accept that capitalism is the problem. To do so would be heretical and would require deviating from the status quo.