US thinktank climate science deniers working with rightwingers in EU parliament
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Representatives of Heartland Institute linking up with MEPs to campaign against environmental policies. Climate science deniers from a US-based thinktank have been working with rightwing politicians in Europe to campaign against environmental policies, the Guardian can reveal.
MEPs have been accused of “rolling out the red carpet for climate deniers” to give them a platform in the European parliament, amid warnings of a “revival of grotesque climate denialism”. The Heartland Institute, which has links to the Trump administration and has drawn on funding from companies including ExxonMobil and wealthy US Republican donors, has seized on a time when rightwing anti-climate action sentiment has been surging, and has set up a new European base in London.
For the past two years, representatives of the thinktank have been working with MEPs and have spoken in the European parliament to campaign against bills, including the nature restoration law. They have sought to cast doubt on established climate science, and connected climate-sceptic MEPs from Poland, Hungary and Austria to help coordinate campaigns against proposed environmental laws.
Heartland has made some extreme and incorrect comments on climate. In the past, it has compared people who believe in global heating to the Unabomber, the US terrorist jailed for killing three people and injuring many others, as well as branding the concept of human-caused climate change “fake news”.
The Guardian and DeSmog understand that the organisation first established a foothold among rightwing MEPs in February 2023, when the far-right Austrian MEPs Harald Vilimsky and Roman Haider from the anti-migration Freedom party (FPÖ) attended Heartland’s International Conference on Climate Change in Orlando, Florida.
