For the second year in a row, a self-declared “leader” in the fight against global climate change will host the Super Bowl of climate change denial.
In February, the right-wing Heartland Institute is scheduled to convene its three-day “International Conference on Climate Change” at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista hotel, near Walt Disney World Resort. The Illinois-based think tank is unwavering in its dismissal of established climate science and has a long history of cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry and fighting environmental regulations and renewable energy projects.
In true contrarian fashion, the theme of Heartland’s upcoming event is “The True Crisis: Climate Change or Climate Policy?” Like conferences before it, it will be a who’s who of the climate denial movement and advance the conspiracy that governments around the globe are using climate breakdown in a concerted effort to control people’s lives.
“From the green energy boondoggles in the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ in the United States, to the ongoing wind-power disaster in Germany, and threats of energy cuts in the winter in the UK, the climate policy ‘solutions’ are a real and growing problem for the people of the world,” reads a description of the upcoming event. “Why are we making life poorer and more miserable for most of the people on the planet when there is no climate crisis?”
As usual, Heartland has tapped go-to leaders of the denial movement to be keynote speakers, including William Happer, the retired Princeton University physics professor who served as an adviser to President Donald Trump and has declared Earth is in the midst of a “CO2 famine”; Myron Ebell, director of the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute who led the Trump EPA transition team and was a key figure in Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the historic Paris climate agreement; and Steve Milloy, a former tobacco and coal lobbyist who also served on the…
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