Trump pulls out of UN climate agreement, 66 bodies deemed 'contrary' to US interests: SBS NEWS

The US will withdraw from the treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements and the UN climate science body, according to a White House memo.

United States President Donald Trump has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet and has pulled the US out of the landmark Paris climate accord in both of his terms. Source: AP / Evan Vucci

United States President Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from a foundational climate treaty and the world's leading global warming assessment body, as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced on Wednesday.

A total of 66 international organisations — comprised of "35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities" — were named in a White House memorandum as being "contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty".

Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements.

Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, deriding climate science as a "hoax" at the UN's high-level summit last September.

The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved later that year by the US Senate during George HW Bush's presidency.

LISTEN TO

Hopes dashed as global fossil fuel emissions increase in 2025

SBS News, 04:44, English

The US Constitution allows presidents to enter treaties "provided two-thirds of Senators present concur", but it is silent on the process for withdrawing from them — a legal ambiguity that could invite challenges.

Trump has already withdrawn from the landmark Paris climate accord since returning to office, just as he did during his first term, a move that former Democratic president Joe Biden later reversed.

Exiting the underlying treaty could introduce additional legal uncertainty around any future US effort to rejoin.

Speaking before the General Assembly in September, Trump delivered a scathing broadside against the world body founded in 1945 to promote global peace and cooperation in the wake of the Second World War.

"What is the purpose of the United Nations?" asked Trump in a wide-ranging speech, whose litany of complaints extended even to a broken escalator and teleprompter at the UN's New York headquarters.

The United States skipped the annual UN international climate summit last year for the first time in three decades.

UNFCCC exit 'a whole order of magnitude different'"President Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the bedrock global treaty to tackle climate change is a new low and yet another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people's wellbeing and destabilise global cooperation," Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told AFP.

 Jean Su, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP: "Pulling out of the UNFCCC is a whole order of magnitude different from pulling out of the Paris Agreement."

"It's our contention that it's illegal for the President to unilaterally pull out of a treaty that required two-thirds of the Senate vote," she continued. "We are looking at legal options to pursue that line of argument."

"The United States would be the first country to walk away from the UNFCCC," said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. SBS NEWS

Trump pulls out of UN climate agreement, 66 bodies deemed 'contrary' to US interests

 

"United States President Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from a foundational climate treaty and the world's leading global warming assessment body, as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced on Wednesday.

A total of 66 international organisations — comprised of "35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities" — were named in a White House memorandum as being "contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty".

Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements." SBS NEWS

Trump gutted environmental protections. How quickly can Biden restore them? (excerpt): GRIST

President Donald Trump hands coal miners the pen he used to sign a bill eliminating

 regulations on the mining industry in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, 

D.C. Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images

Just a month before he won the U.S. presidential election in 2016, Donald Trump vowed to spend his time in office systematically slashing government rules. “I would say 70 percent of regulations can go,” Trump told a crowd of town hall attendees in New Hampshire. “It’s just stopping businesses from growing.”

Now, four years later, it looks like Trump did his best to keep those promises. Over the course of his term, Trump has erased or watered-down dozens upon dozens of regulations designed to keep pollutants out of the water, air, and soil. He has allowed oil and gas companies to leak planet-warming methane into the air. He has told power plants that they can keep emitting dangerous levels of carbon dioxide. If all those rules stand, according to one analysis, they will be responsible for 1.8 billion metric tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.

With President-elect Joe Biden preparing to move into the White

House in January, this anti-environment era is about to come to an end. Biden has promised to re-enter the Paris Agreement, prioritize climate change across the federal government, and push for sweeping clean-energy legislation. But putting the most ambitious plans in place will prove especially difficult if Republicans keep control of the Senate. (Democrats will have one more chance to recapture the chamber in two Georgia runoffs, though they’re facing tough odds.)

 See complete Grist article 

 

Related:  Politicians Try to Rally Support for Coal Despite Economics and Biden Presidential Win (excerpt): DeSmog

 

#climatecriminals, Trump, #fossilfuelcompanies, fossil fuel industry, Biden,

 

 

The Trump administration is burying dozens of studies detailing the promise of renewable energy, impeding a transition away from fossil fuels (excerpt): Grist

 ‘It just goes into a black hole’ 

Vote for my future climate

The Trump administration is burying dozens of studies detailing the promise of renewable energy, impeding a transition away from fossil fuels

By Peter Fairley on Oct 26, 2020

"But what went unsaid at the grip-and-grin was that one of those high-ranking officials, Dan Simmons of the U.S. Department of Energy doesn’t appear to fully support renewables. In fact, he has presided over his agency’s systematic squelching of dozens of government studies detailing its promise.

One pivotal research project, for example, quantifies hydropower’s unique potential to enhance solar and wind energy, storing up power in the form of water held back behind dams for moments when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. By the time of the Hoover Dam ceremony, Simmons’ office at the Energy Department had been sitting on that particular study for more than a year.

In all, the department has blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies. The department has replaced them with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Department of Energy, or DOE, and its national labs.

Bottling up and slow-walking studies is already harming efforts to fight climate change, according to clean energy experts and others, because Energy Department reports drive investment decisions. Entrepreneurs worry that the agency’s practices under the current White House will ultimately hurt growth prospects for U.S.-developed technology."

Go to complete Grist story

 

 Related: Polling Shows Growing Climate Concern Among Americans. But Outsized Influence of Deniers Remains a Roadblock (excerpt): DeSmog

 

Anxiety Mounts Abroad About Climate Leadership and the Volatile U.S. Election (excerpts): InsideClimate News

"VIENNA, Austria—Whenever artist Michael Aschauer returns home after an extended stay in the United States, people here pepper him with questions about the direction America is heading. 

With gallows humor typical of the city, they often ask, "Will it fall apart slowly, or very fast?" he said, adding that Vienna has plenty of experience with how rising and falling empires can destabilize global systems.

Aschauer is married to an American and keenly watches climate and energy politics on both sides of the Atlantic while trying to imagine a post-carbon future. In an informal social media art project, he documents gas stations that have been abandoned or converted to other uses. 

He said it's hard to imagine that Americans would re-elect the

incumbent president, but that it can't be ruled out, either, given the current volatility of U.S. politics. "The outcome will have profound consequences for the future of Earth's climate," he added.

Carbon budgets detailed in recent climate reports show that four more years of pro-fossil fuel policies in the U.S. would make it much harder for the world to reach the Paris climate agreement goal of preventing catastrophic global warming, he said. On the other hand, Biden's decarbonization plan would accelerate demand for renewable energy in the world's biggest consumer economy and speed the global shift to a zero-carbon economy. "

.................

"Debate Debacle

But it's not all fear and loathing—people here say they feel a cultural, social and economic affinity with the U.S. And the interest is even more intense this year, after extensive international media coverage of the escalating cycle of police violence and destructive protests, as well as wildfires, hurricanes, the botched pandemic response and potential election chaos all painted a picture of a country in turmoil. 

Last week's presidential debate reinforced global concerns about the direction of the U.S., said Reimund Schwarze, an environmental economist with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. Trump's recent statements questioning the legitimacy of the election process raise the specter of widespread unrest, he said."   "

................................

"  "From what I see in the Democratic Party, there is a lot of movement, a lot of mobilization from the other side." Even with time running short for meaningful climate action, he said, there is a hopeful scenario that a generational shift in politics in the U.S. could upend the political landscape for many years to come, leading to fundamental changes in U.S. policy. 

All over the world, people are waiting in suspense to see if Nov. 3 marks the start of that shift.

"I don't want to put any pressure on anyone," Austrian ecologist Sarah Höfler posted on Twitter recently, "but the American election will, in my opinion, decide whether humanity has still a chance in the #ClimateCrisis. It is as simple as that."  "

Go to complete story by Bob Berwyn in InsideClimate News

Related: America's year of fire and tempests means climate crisis just got very real (excerpt): Guardian

 Pics from this blog

 

Trump,Biden,#climateaction,voters,#USA,European Union,#jailclimatecriminals, 

Trump baselessly questions climate science during California wildfire briefing (excerpt): CNN

"(CNN) President Donald Trump on Monday baselessly asserted that climate change is not playing a role in the catastrophic wildfires overtaking forests across the west, rebutting an official briefing him who pleaded for the President listen to the science.

Trump at the briefing in California. Video at CNN article

 

"I don't think science knows, actually," Trump said at a Monday briefing with officials in McClellan Park, California, with a laugh.

 

 

He told Wade Crowfoot, secretary of California's Natural Resources Agency: "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch."

 

 

Crowfoot had warned the President of the dangers of ignoring the science and putting "our head in the sand and thinking that it's all about vegetation management." 

 

 

Climate experts tell CNN due to human-caused climate change, temperature extremes are climbing higher and the vegetation is drier, which affects fire behavior.

 

 

Trump was also directly confronted by the state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who has been adamant about climate change's role in the wildfires, bluntly telling the President: "Climate change is real." 

 

 

"We obviously feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter," Newsom said. 'The dries are getting drier. When we're having heat domes, the likes of which we've never seen in our history.'  "

 

Go to complete CNN article by Maegan Vasquez

Related: Australia in January, California in August': Aussies watch on in horror as wildfires ravage US west coast (excerpt): SBS

Joe Biden if president will push allies like Australia to do more on climate, adviser says (excerpt): The Guardian

Biden

Jake Sullivan says the former vice-president, if elected, won’t ‘pull any punches’ on what is a global problem

Joe Biden will not pull any punches with allies including Australia in seeking to build international momentum for stronger action on the climate crisis, an adviser to the US presidential candidate has said.

"If elected in November, Biden will hold heavy emitters such as

Biden and Harris

China accountable for doing more “but he’s also going to push our friends to do more as well”, according to Jake Sullivan, who was the national security adviser to Biden when he was vice-president and is now in the candidate’s inner circle.

In a wide-ranging podcast interview with the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, Sullivan also signalled that Biden would work closely with Australia and other regional allies in responding to the challenges posed by the rise of China.

While Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, is likely to welcome the pledge of US coordination with allies on regional security issues, there may be unease in government ranks about the potential for tough conversations about Australia’s climate policies.

The Coalition government has resisted calls to embrace a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 and it proposes to use Kyoto carryover credits to meet Australia’s 2030 emission reductions pledge. Some Coalition backbenchers still openly dispute climate science......"

Pics are from this blog

Go to The Guardian article   

by Daniel Hurst

Mon 7 Sep 2020

Related:The Federal Government’s plan to use clean money to fund dirty projects - Video: The Climate Council



Biden, Harris, Trump, PM Morrison, #cambio-climatico, #climateaction, #Australia, #climateemergency,

Trump and Biden: Little Room for Climate Change in 2020 Election (excerpt 2): Deutsche Welle

Trump digs coal.

(Pics by this blog)

"U.S. President Donald Trump has undone many major pieces of climate policy during his term, walking out on the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming and eliminating numerous Obama-era environmental regulations. 

 Trump's Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, has promised as part of his presidential campaign to invest $1.7 trillion in a "clean energy revolution and environmental justice" over the next decade. It falls some $14 trillion short of what the progressive U.S. senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, pledged on climate action during the Democratic primaries.........................."

...............................................................................................................................................................

Related:  Trump will roll back more environmental regulations if reelected, says EPA chief: CNBC
..........................................................................................................

"......  Growing Impatience Among Young Republicans

Some younger Republicans are starting to become critical of their party's inattention to climate change. During the recent Republican National Convention, a small group turned to Twitter during the online event, to ask "#WhatAboutClimate"?

Another Pew study from June 2020 found that millennial and Gen Z Republicans, currently aged 18 to 39, are more likely than older GOP voters to think humans have a significant impact on the climate and that the federal government is doing too little to tackle the problem.

Trump and climate

That doesn't mean they're ready to switch allegiance to the Democrats, though. 

"Being a Republican is very much rooted in my upbringing," said Kiera O'Brien, who founded the group Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends (YCCD). "Conservatism at home in Ketchikan, Alaska, has a focus on community and nature." 

O'Brien dislikes the Democrat's "regulatory approach to climate" and is instead lobbying for free market solutions to climate change through YCCD.

Biden and climate change

Reframing Climate Action  

Environmental policies can be a complicated issue when it comes to federal elections and hard to address for presidential candidates. Many regions in the U.S. have unique challenges: from wildfires in California and storms wiping out harvests in Iowa to water pollution in Flint, Michigan.

Harvard's Ansolabehere also pointed out that opposition to climate policies in the past were typically connected to the fear of losing jobs and that prohibiting coal or retooling the auto industry will "adversely affect employment" in places like Kentucky and Michigan.

How Climate Change is Killing Us: Book

Daron Shaw added that Republicans typically "try to frame environmental issues as a matter of high taxation and job killing proposals with the hope that they can peel off Democrats."

Biden might be trying to assuage fears that tackling climate change means job losses by framing his plan as an opportunity for employment in new industries and a reinvigorated green manufacturing sector.

But when it comes to the swing states of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio, Trump's climate record and support for jobs in the fossil fuel sector might give him the upper hand. His backing for ethane cracker plants, which take natural gas and converts it into the basis for making plastics, has received a lot of support, said Ansolabehere, especially from local unions. 

Go to original article.. By Julia Mahncke in Deutsche Welle 

The last generation who can do something about climate change

Related:  Trump will roll back more environmental regulations if reelected, says EPA chief: CNBC

Biden, Trump, #climateaction, Republicans, #methanegas, jobs, Paris Targets, Paris Agreement, 

‘Climate Donors’ Flock to Biden to Counter Trump’s Fossil Fuel Money (excerpt): New York Times

(Pics by this blog)

Koch Industries are behind Trump

WASHINGTON — In 2009, the Obama administration’s environmental team called a group of climate activists to the White House to deliver a message: Climate change doesn’t sell and only provokes economic attacks from the right that are too difficult to counter.

As former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to assume the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the changing climate is now a core campaign issue — and a focus for fund-raising. Plans for tackling rising global temperatures will be in the spotlight Wednesday at the Democratic convention. And Mr. Biden has raised more than $15 million in candidate contributions from hundreds of new donors who specifically identify with climate change as a cause.

Biden: Build Back Better

That climate-specific fund-raising may make up just about 5 percent of the total he has raised so far. It’s dwarfed by fossil fuel donations to President Trump, who took in $10 million from a single fund-raiser in June, held by the oil billionaire Kelcy Warren, and whose super PAC,America First Action, has seen millions pour in from coal and oil moguls, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations.

It is not known how much unregulated money is going to super PACs aligned with Democrats from other self-identified climate donors.

But the hard money climate donations represent a growing counterweight to oil, gas and coal money that has long warped the

Biden and Harris at first joint campaign event.

energy conversation in Washington. Self-identified “climate donors” are a new phenomenon in the 2020 election and are working overtime to show candidates that campaigning to eliminate emissions from fossil fuels pays — in cash.

“That is a sea change. We’ve now got a class of people called ‘climate donors’ in a way we had environmental donors before,” said David Bookbinder, general counsel for the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Trump's environmental rollbacks

“Climate has taken over as an issue on its own. People are finally understanding that we have a truly existential crisis on our hands,” Mr. Bookbinder added. Publicly embracing climate change solutions was viewed as a political liability, as recently as a decade ago, he said. During Barack Obama’s re-election run in 2012, the issue was hardly mentioned.'

Now donors are sending a new message: “We want to make it easy to do the right thing. We should reward campaigns and candidates for having the right policies,” said Matt Rogers, a co-founder of the digital thermostat company Nest."  ............

"A version of this article appears in print on

By Lisa Friedman

• Aug. 18, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020"

Go to complete NYT online article

Related:  Trump will roll back more environmental regulations if reelected, says EPA chief: CNBC

 Trump, Biden, Harris, #climatechange, fossil fuel industry, Koch brothers, political party donations from corporations, Democrats, Republicans, #jailclimatecriminals

Trump will roll back more environmental regulations if reelected, says EPA chief: CNBC

Koch industries fund Trump

 "Key Points

 

* President Trump will continue to weaken environmental regulations on industries if reelected in November, the EPA’s Andrew Wheeler told The Wall Street Journal. 

* The administration would establish a cost-benefit analysis of any new regulation and expand the use of “science transparency” to justify new regulations. 

* After three years in office, the administration sought to reverse

Politicians and Climate Change

more than 100 major environmental rules that it has deemed burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, even as climate change accelerates. 

* Analysts say many of the administration’s rollbacks could increase emissions and lead to thousands of additional deaths from bad air quality."

 

...........................

 

"Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has released a plan to put $2 trillion into green infrastructure and energy over four years to curb climate change and spur economic growth, which the Trump campaign has argued would hurt the oil and gas industry. "

 

Go to the CNBC article 

Published Thu, Sep 3 2020

Trump and Biden: Little room for climate change in US election (excerpt): DW

The White House

As the US faces wildfires and storms, climate change remains one of the most divisive topics among voters. Yet despite the high stakes, so far, it has played a minor role in the upcoming election. 

US President Donald Trump has undone many major pieces of climate policy during his term, walking out on the Paris Agreement to limit global warming and eliminating numerous Obama-era environmental regulations. 

However, climate change doesn't even make the top 10 concerns among registered voters, even as the US faces extreme weather from wildfires to storms, scientists say are more prevalent by global warming. It ranks 11th behind the economy, health care, Supreme Court appointments and the pandemic, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center published in August. 

While climate doesn't top the voters' agenda, it's still one of the most divisive issues among Trump and Biden supporters. Some 68% of Democratic voters see climate change as high priority compared to 11% of Republicans, found the Pew survey. 

Following a storm in Iowa last month, estimates suggested that almost a third of the state's crop-growing land was affected

Wildfires are becoming more frequent in California, where the ground and vegetation has suffered from long, dry summers

But what are the Biden and Trump campaigns promising to do on climate change and the environment — and how does it tally with what voters want?

Go to complete DW article

 Related: Donald Trump is hampering fight against climate change, WEF warns (excerpt) : The Guardian (2 years ago)

Trump, Biden, #USA, USA, voters, #climate crisis, #climatecriminals, #jailclimatecriminals, 

Donald Trump is hampering fight against climate change, WEF warns (excerpt) : The Guardian (2 years ago)

Trump digs coal

Two years after 2018 the situation is even worse.

"World Economic Forum outlines huge increase in all five eco risks since the US president assumed office


The World Economic Forum delivered a strong warning about Donald Trump’s go-it-alone approach to tackling climate change as it highlighted the growing threat of environmental collapse in its annual assessment of the risks facing the international community."

............." the WEF avoided mentioning Trump by name but said “nation-state unilateralism” would make it harder to tackle global warming and ecological damage.

The WEF’s global risks perception survey showed Trump’s arrival in the White House in 2017 had coincided with a marked increase in concern about the environment among experts polled by the Swiss-based organisation.

It said all five environmental risks covered by the survey – extreme weather events, natural disasters, failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and human-made natural disasters – had become more prominent.

“This follows a year characterised by high-impact hurricanes, extreme temperatures and the first rise in CO2 emissions for four years. We have been pushing our planet to the brink and the damage is becoming increasingly clear. 

“Biodiversity is being lost at mass-extinction rates, agricultural systems are under strain, and pollution of the air and sea has become an increasingly pressing threat to human health.”

Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris agreement under which nations agreed to take steps to limit the increase in global temperature. He has said the commitments made by his predecessor, Barack Obama, would damage the American economy.

Other states have said they will keep to the pledges made in Paris, an approach supported by the WEF."

Larry Elliott Economics editor

Thu 18 Jan 2018

Go to complete The Guardian article

ALSO

Trump suggests the climate may actually be 'fabulous' after an ominous UN report on looming disaster

Sinéad Baker

Oct 10, 2018, 

Trump digs coal

  

   • President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to cast doubt on a UN report on climate change that had dire warnings about how little time we have to stop a global catastrophe.

 
   • Trump suggested that the world’s climate might actually be “fabulous” and that he’d seen reports expressing that position.

 
   • The UN report outlines the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

 
   • Trump has previously called climate change a “hoax,” and last year he announced he would pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.

Trump, WEF, Paris Agreement, #climate crisis, #jailclimatecriminals, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #extremeheat, #icemelting, hurricanes,  climatechangedenial

As QAnon Conspiracy Spreads on the Far Right, Climate Science Deniers Jump Aboard (excerpt): DeSmog

QAnon signs at a Trump rally

(Photos added by this blog)

"Back in December 2019, two conspiratorial worldviews collided as, for the first time, QAnon’s Q suggested his followers should question anew a topic that, by now, has been considered, and reconsidered, for decades: climate change.

QAnon sign at a Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 15, 2019. Credit: Marc Nozell, CC BY 2.0

“The Paris Agreement on Climate is Another Scam to Ripoff Taxpayers and Enrich the Politicians,” the Q-Drop (the term QAnon followers use to refer to messages they believe come from some sort of government insider who signs messages with the letter Q) claimed, labeling climate action a “con.”

Wikipedia says

In May, a second Q-Drop riffed on climate change, with a link to a snarky tweet about science and the Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg by a would-be House Republican who’d lost her primary race in March.

Both of those Q-Drops were picked up by a report commissioned by a coalition of environmental groups and conducted by the research firm Graphika, which found that a group of vocal climate science deniers began using QAnon hashtags in May — and they haven’t stopped since.

“The QAnon movement hasn’t traditionally covered climate change, but in May, when an influential QAnon account tweeted about climate denial, there was a notable and sustained increase of QAnon content shared within the climate denial group,” Michael Khoo, an advisor on disinformation for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, and Melissa Ryan, CEO of CARD Strategies and author of the Ctrl Alt-Right Delete weekly newsletters, wrote in an article published today on Medium."

......................

Trump says QAnon conspiracy theorists are people who 'love our country' - National | G

...........................

"Clutching at Q’s Coattails


Not only is QAnon taking up climate denial, but prominent climate deniers have been taking up QAnon.

“The other thing we see is that the right needs QAnon more and more to amplify their messaging,” said Ryan.

Take, for example, Naomi Seibt, a young German YouTuber who has questioned climate science and who has worked with the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tank and notorious promoter of climate science denial.

“So do you want a beautiful planet that you can stare at but that’s it? It’s just like looking at a TV screen,” the Express, a UK newspaper, quoted Seibt as saying in May. “As a climate realist, I don’t deny that we don’t have some negative impact on the planet. But I don’t think that it’s related to CO2 emissions.”

Seibt briefly rose to broader prominence following a Washington Post article about her in February — though she remains far less well-known than Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist who the Heartland Institute has sought to compare with Seibt. “She reportedly chose not to renew her contract with [the] Heartland [Institute] in April 2020 after facing potential fines from a regional broadcasting authority,” DeSmog’s profile on Seibt notes.

QAnon

In addition to speaking about climate, Seibt has publicly spoken about her views on race and religion. “Seibt’s rise as the young face of climate skeptics has drawn scrutiny of her past remarks. 

On Friday, video circulated of Seibt’s remarks after a shooting at a German synagogue,” Bloomberg reported on February 28. “'The normal German consumer is at the bottom, so to speak. Then the Muslims come somewhere in between. And the Jew is at the top. That is the suppression characteristic,' she said in comments first reported by The Guardian.”

In July, the trial of that synagogue shooter, charged with murdering two people and the attempted murder of dozens more, began with the accused shooter stating that he felt he was “on the bottom rung of society” and that he was “superseded,” as he sought to justify horrific crimes.

As in Germany, white supremacists in the U.S. have increasingly engaged in racially motivated “mass shooter” armed attacks on unarmed people. And QAnon followers have also begun committing violent acts. 

“I think it's also important to remember that the FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorism threat,” said Ryan, “and QAnon has inspired kidnappings, it has inspired at least one murder, it has inspired arson, there is a real danger from these folks who are drawn to this and become just embroiled in it.”

Go to the complete DeSmog article 

Related: Coronavirus doubters follow climate denial playbook: Yale Climate Connections


QAnon, Trump, conspiracy theorists, #fakenews, fake news, climate deniers, Paris Agreement, terrorism, #jailclimatecriminals,