For the first time ever, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will speak at a gathering of activists, politicians and scientists who deny human activity influences climate change.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will open the 16th International Conference on Climate Change, which runs Wednesday to Thursday in Washington, D.C. The sold-out conference will be livestreamed starting at 9 a.m. EST Wednesday, April 8.
The conference concludes with the presentation of the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award.
The ICCC event, billed as “The only climate conference dedicated to the examination of data rather than the propagation of dogma,” is sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a conservative, free-market, anti-regulation group that questions the scientific consensus on climate change and opposes environmental regulations.
The event is “the premier venue for climate science that challenges mainstream assumptions.” That makes it a fitting forum for Zeldin, who has turned the EPA upside down under President Donald Trump, who calls climate change a “hoax.”
Heartland is part of a network of climate denialism groups that collaborate to influence leaders and educate the public, including churches. Last year, these groups teamed with the American Energy Alliance in a letter to Trump urging: “Don’t Let Congress Preserve the Green New Scam.”
In February, Zeldin’s EPA reversed an Obama-era finding that greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane endanger human life and contribute to climate change. As a result, the EPA no longer will regulate tailpipe emissions and other sources of proven harms.
This year’s ICCC conference theme is “Climate Realism Rising,” a nod to the fact that under Trump, ideas promoted by once-fringe groups like Heartland now play a role in U.S. policy.
“ICCC exists to provide a platform for scientific debate unconstrained by political pressure or ideological conformity,” says Heartland, which has been criticized for taking funding from energy companies and the energy billionaire Koch brothers. It no longer reveals who its donors are.
The group claims: “We bring together researchers, experts and policymakers who are committed to examining the actual data on climate change rather than accepting predetermined conclusions.” But critics say ICCC does accept predetermined conclusions from its anti-regulation allies and rejects scientific data that contradict its ideology.
Heartland was founded in 1984 and has a long history of discrediting scientific studies in the service of deregulation. In the 1990s, Heartland worked with tobacco giant Philip Morris to discredit the science linking smoking to cancers and other health risks.
Heartland worked with tobacco giant Philip Morris to discredit the science linking smoking to cancers and other health risks.
In the 2000s, Heartland transitioned to fighting climate science using a similar approach to its earlier tobacco work. Its goal is not to disprove the climate science they oppose, which would be difficult if not impossible, but to merely raise doubts about it, relying on scientists who have done little peer-reviewed research in the field.
Heartland claims that while climate change is happening, humans aren’t causing it, it isn’t as bad as climate scientists claim, it is actually beneficial to humans and all living things, and addressing climate change is too expensive and shows few concrete results.
Heartland’s partners include The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which created a climate-skeptic DVD series for churches, “Rescuing People from the Cult of the Green Dragon,” featuring Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, David Barton of WallBuilders, and leaders from Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and National Religious Broadcasters.
Other partners are Discovery Institute, which focuses on intelligent design but also promotes fossil fuels and advocates against environmental regulation; CO2 Coalition, which “educates thought leaders, policy makers and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy”; CFACT, whose mission is “advancing sound science and free market solutions to address today’s pressing environmental and energy challenges while rolling back government overreach disguised as environmental protection.”
Other speakers at ICCC this week include Gov. Patrick Morrissey of West Virginia, the nation’s second largest coal-producing state. During his years as the state’s attorney general, Morrissey filed numerous lawsuits against environmental regulations. Morrissey attended a groundbreaking for a major new coal facility last week.
Baptists and other evangelicals long promoted “environmental stewardship” before embracing Republican free-market ideology and charging that environmentalism is a form of paganism. That, too, was a fringe view before EPA’s Zeldin made it the official U.S. policy.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said last year as he touted the EPA’s new role in reversing environmental rules.
Last month the Trump administration said it would pay an energy company nearly $1 billion to cancel wind farms on the East Coast of the U.S.
Trump has called Zeldin his “secret weapon” on climate issues and has mentioned him as a possible successor to recently fired Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Climate is not the only issue Heartland Institute advocates on. It has a YouTube channel and operates websites Free to Choose Medicine and Stopping Socialism.
