In what many have described as a ‘post truth’ world riddled by a dizzying barrage of fake, and illusory information, a disturbing trend has emerged: within contemporary environmental governance, the utility of information to advance political beliefs, cultural biases and economic ideologies has become increasingly more important than preserving the veracity of the environmental information itself. Motivated by this current climate of instrumentalist obfuscation that has deep historical roots, this paper illuminates several inaccurate explanations of environmental change, and the stealthy yet influential – and oftentimes outdated and biased – sensibilities, values and epistemologies that undergird them. To make this argument, the concept of “disingenuous nature” is introduced. Disingenuous nature refers to the misaligned and oftentimes ineffective management practices and resulting biophysical conditions that emerge from environmental knowledge distortions and erroneous environmental narratives.