Energy corporations and wealthy individuals funded the Heartland Institute who then ran public influence campaigns to discredit climate change. Conspiracy theorists and talk radio hosts predictably made a buck amplifying it. Conservative politicians, ever eager to lower taxes and reverse the growth of government, latched onto it as a wedge issue. Rural and blue collar America, angry at being left behind after deindustrialization, bought into the lies.

It didn't help that the threat was remote and abstract, that the cost was to be paid by future generations (mostly elsewhere), and that the elites who advocated fighting it were conspicuous in their own consumption.

All of these actors were entirely motivated by money and power. No whiteness required.