Submission No 19: Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy: ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions

Executive Summary
The Australian National University (ANU) Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions (ICEDS) welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy.

In this submission we examine the growing challenge of climate and energy misinformation in Australia and provide recommendations to strengthen information integrity. We outline the context of climate misinformation, highlighting its amplification through digital platforms, traditional media, and interpersonal communication.

We consider the prevalence of climate and energy misinformation in Australia. Examples include conspiracy narratives around Cyclone Alfred, false claims about bushfire causes during the 2019–20 Black Summer, and misleading statements about progress toward climate goals and energy costs.

We then examine the factors that enable the spread of climate and energy misinformation, including: the role of digital platforms, where algorithms amplify sensationalist content and create echo chambers; the challenge of effectively communicating science in ways that engender trust; and the greater vulnerability of minority communities due to limited access to culturally appropriate information.

Finally, we explore the role of actors spreading misinformation, including climate contrarian think tanks, AI-driven bots, and astroturfing campaigns that undermine renewable energy initiatives and seed distrust in climate policies.

We recommend:
1. Requiring greater transparency from social media and digital platforms about how their internal algorithms curate users’ social feeds and determine content recommendations.
2. Funding digital and media literacy education training initiatives and climate change education that specifically teach students and youth how to evaluate the credibility of information they encounter and how people’s biases may affect their judgements.
3. Funding professional training and education to enhance the quality and accuracy of science reporting. This could include the importance of localising climate coverage in order to tie stories to local identities and impacts.
4. Improving cultural sensitivity of government climate and energy messaging. This could involve the formation of collaborative networks to deliver linguistically and culturally appropriate messages to minority groups.
5. Supporting research into the effectiveness and potential adverse impacts of “pre-bunking” or psychological “inoculation” campaigns. These would educate people about the rhetorical techniques being used by dishonest actors to seed disinformation, and how to build resilience against such techniques.
6. Funding research into how digital research methods could be enhanced to detect networks of fake opinion and bots as they emerge in response to public debate about climate and energy.
7. Supporting research into the efficacy of these recommendations and any unintended consequences thereof, as some have limited evidence or formal evaluation, particularly in the Australian context.