https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/14/dc-conference-climate-deniers-trump-epa-chief
By Dharna Noor in Washington DC
Excerpt:
At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying thinktank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist.
“I feel wonderful,” James Taylor, the president of the Heartland Institute, said in an interview. “The truth is winning out.”
The clearest sign of the crowd’s rising power was the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general. “It is a day to celebrate vindication,” he said on Wednesday morning.
In previous administrations, Zeldin said, a “cabal” of elites promoted climate science to further their agenda. Now, “we aren’t just following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom-and-gloom prediction of the day is,” he said.
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As people entered the event, held in the basement of a hotel near the White House, they were greeted by wares promoting climate denial.
“Good news,” read a banner outside the main ballroom, erected by the CO2 Coalition, a climate-denying non-profit that co-sponsored the conference. “There is no climate crisis.”
A table overflowed with displays reading “CO2 is a lifesaver”, pamphlets titled “Fossil fuels are the greenest energy source” and “Challenging ‘net zero’ with science”, and children’s books falsely claiming the acceleration of sea level rise is insignificant. Baskets held buttons proclaiming “Unashamed about my carbon footprint”, as well as stress balls resembling tiny Earths that read: “Don’t stress. There is no climate crisis.”
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“Twenty years ago it would have been shocking … for the EPA administrator to take seriously a group of people whose positions are so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,” said Oreskes. “But essentially, climate deniers are in charge now.”
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