Tad Delay: The Plague and Futures of Climate Denial

Durning the 14th century Black Death, plague could wipe out entire European towns inside of two months while people ignored it, downplayed it, laughed it off. In the Roman plague of 590 CE, massive public gatherings to pray for relief were credited with ending the plague even though in reality these processionals served as super spreader events.

In September 2020 while ominously red skies covered the Northwest, a group of rightwing paramilitaries set up illegal checkpoints outside Portland to search for imaginary ANTIFA saboteurs. Instead of crediting wildfires of unprecedented scale to climate change, these paramilitaries chose to believe a social media conspiracy blaming the Left. In so doing, the paramilitaries slowed the fleeing evacuees and, in particular, harassed African American families caught in their sights.

Denial is a bedrock function of society, but we often hear that the realities of climate change will force science denial to disappear. This is dangerously naive. Instead that climate denial will convert to new modes, and we can use classic responses to plague (all of which we saw durning COVID-19) to model the futures of denial.

Tad DeLay, PhD is the author of three books, most recently Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want? (2019). He teaches philosophy and religious studies in Colorado and Michigan.

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