Message From the Editor
After a nearly four year respite, Donald Trump’s return to power also signals a return to power for climate crisis deniers.
This surely feels like their moment. They'll once again have a Climate Denier in Chief in the White House. And they’ll be poised to take advantage of his political ascendancy to boost their own policy aims, which will undoubtedly point a wrecking ball at U.S. climate and environmental regulations and laws.
When Trump lost in 2020, many climate deniers in the government had been spun out of the revolving door into various private sector jobs, sometimes lobbying for energy companies they had recently regulated. But as anyone reading the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plans for a second Trump administration make clear, these people, organizations, and ideas are ripe for shaping not only U.S. environmental policy, should Trump’s team harvest them, but also shaping our very climate.
DeSmog’s Sharon Kelly and Joe Fassler outlined the climate deniers to watch and the Project 2025 policy priorities on climate and environment in every executive branch agency.
This week, Trump named former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who refused to certify the 2020 election results, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. When asked about climate change in 2014, Zeldin reportedly told Newsday, “It would be productive if we could get to what is real and what is not real,” he said. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are.”
Unfortunately, someone else not yet sold on it may be a senior official for the host of the COP29 climate talks, kicking off this week in Baku, Azerbaijan, who was apparently caught trying to broker oil and gas deals using his position of power.
But expect that PR disaster to get the royal treatment from Teneo, the elite New York-based PR agency that the Eastern European nation whose exports are nearly all oil and gas has hired to make it appear like a climate champion. Laundering reputations is apparently this firm’s specialty.
“Teneo is very comfortable working for petro-dictatorships such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia,” said one Teneo employee, who asked not to be named for fear of professional repercussions. “We love to say ‘living our values,’ though I’m not too sure what that means.” Read more.
It’s been an intense time for those who care about maintaining a livable climate. So I’ll end with this excellent, and inspiring, Q&A between DeSmog Global Investigations Editor Matthew Green and former ExxonMobil climate scientist Lindsey Gulden.
After more than a decade at the oil giant, Gulden was fired in 2020 after internally reporting fraud. (ExxonMobil says her termination was unrelated and denies fraud took place.)
Here’s a taste:
Matthew Green: Why did you decide to take on the task of tackling oil industry disinformation?
Lindsey Gulden: It was after I was fired for reporting a garden variety fraud that I really sat back and thought about the implications for climate change…if they’re willing to defraud investors and shareholders in a setting which is very well regulated and audited…there was really nothing that would stop executives from lying about the energy transition, which is an existential threat to their traditional bottom line. And I recognized that I had to stand up and confront the industry on that.
Read the whole conversation. A video version will be available online November 16 as part of the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024.
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Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director
P.S. Readers like you power our journalism dedicated to climate accountability. Can you donate $10 or $20 right now to support more of this essential work?
Image credit: Zach D. Roberts
Meet Teneo: The Global PR Firm Promoting COP29 Host Azerbaijan as a Climate Champion
— By TJ Jordan and Kathryn Clare (2 min. read) —
The elite agency has been going all out to win positive press for the hosts of the UN climate talks.
Climate Deniers Waiting in the Wings as Trump Reclaims Presidency
— By Joe Fassler and Sharon Kelly (12 min. read) —
Meet those aiming to capitalize on Trump’s re-election by slashing climate action, from Koch network fixtures to Project 2025 and beyond.
Q&A: How a Former ExxonMobil Employee Confronted the Climate Disinformation Machine
— By Matthew Green (7 min. read) —
Former ExxonMobil climate scientist Lindsey Gulden: “It was after I was fired for reporting a garden variety fraud that I really sat back and thought about the implications for climate change.”
UK COP29 ‘Partners’ Include Firm With Hundreds of Fossil Fuel Clients
— By Sam Bright (6 min) —
One of the sponsors of the UK pavilion has worked with major polluters to help them extract more oil and gas.
EU Accused of Inviting Fossil Fuel Executives to COP28 Under False Pretences
— By Sam Bright (4 min. read) —
Campaigners say the European Commission has “completely embarrassed itself” by offering “flimsy excuses” for taking oil and gas lobbyists to the flagship summit.
From the Climate Disinformation Database: Mandy Gunasekara
Mandy Gunasekara is a Republican “climate and energy strategist,” former Trump administration official at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, and the founder of the “pro-Trump nonprofit” Energy 45 Fund. Gunasekara is a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group that portrays carbon dioxide as “a nutrient vital for life” and advocates for more of it in the atmosphere. Her CO2 Coalition profile describes her as “the chief architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan.” She’s a former staffer for notorious climate denier, the late Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, and was famously the staffer who handed him the snowball that he presented to the Senate in 2015 as supposed evidence against global warming.
Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database, Ad & PR Database, and Koch Network Database.
