 |
| A Facebook post by the AfD youth wing names Seibt as a member and she spoke at a recent AfD event, though she has denied membership of the party. |
'Anti-Greta'
teen activist to speak at biggest US conservatives conference
Naomi
Seibt, who tells YouTube followers that Thunberg and other climate activists
are whipping up hysteria, to speak at CPAC
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Tue 25 Feb
2020 19.56 GMTLast modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 00.55 GMT
A German
teenager dubbed the “anti-Greta” – climate sceptics’ answer to the schoolgirl
activist Greta Thunberg – is set to address the biggest annual gathering of US
grassroots conservatives.
Naomi
Seibt, 19, who styles herself as a “climate sceptic” or “climate realist”, will
this week address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near
Washington, joining speakers including Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike
Pence.
Seibt is in
the pay of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank closely allied with the White
House that denies established science showing humans are heating the planet
with dangerous consequences.
CPAC will
be the biggest stage yet for Seibt, a so-called “YouTube influencer” who tells
her followers Thunberg and other activists are whipping up unnecessary hysteria
by exaggerating the climate crisis.
“Climate change alarmism at its very core is a
despicably anti-human ideology,” she has said.
The
teenager, from Münster in western Germany, claims she is “without an agenda,
without an ideology”. But she was pushed into the limelight by leading figures
on the German far right and her mother, a lawyer, has represented politicians
from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in court.
Seibt had
her first essay published by the “anti-Islamisation” blog Philosophia Perennis
and was championed by Martin Sellner, leader of the Austrian Identitarian
Movement, who has been denied entry to the UK and US because of his political
activism.
A Facebook
post by the AfD youth wing names Seibt as a member and she spoke at a recent
AfD event, though she has denied membership of the party.
In May 2019
she posted her first video on YouTube, reading out verses submitted for a
poetry slam competition organised by the AfD.
The impact
of the clip and its follow-ups put her on the radar of the Heartland Institute,
which is based in Chicago. It has lobbied on behalf of the tobacco and coal
industries but recently concentrated its efforts on challenging the scientific
consensus on climate change.
Last
December, as Thunberg addressed the United Nations’ Cop25 global warming summit
in Madrid, Seibt gave the keynote speech at a rival conference organised by the
Heartland Institute a few miles away.
In a sting
operation carried out for German broadcaster ZDF and investigative outlet
Correctiv, the Heartland Institute strategist James Taylor told journalists
posing as potential donors his thinktank had signed up Seibt to record climate
change sceptic videos for young people.
Seibt has
admitted that she receives “an average monthly wage” from the institute.
According to official figures, the average net monthly income in Germany is
just under €1,900 (£1,590, $2,066).
The
Heartland website features a low-budget video introducing Seibt, who speaks to
the camera from what appears to be a home.
“I’ve got
very good news for you,” she says. “The world is not ending because of climate
change. In fact, 12 years from now we will still be around, casually taking
photos on our iPhone 18s
“We are
currently being force-fed a very dystopian agenda of climate alarmism that
tells us that we as humans are destroying the planet. And that the young
people, especially, have no future – that the animals are dying, that we are
ruining nature.”
In another
film, Naomi Seibt vs Greta Thunberg: Whom Should We Trust?, Seibt says:
“Science is entirely based on intellectual humility and it is important that we
keep questioning the narrative that is out there instead of promoting it, and
these days climate change science really isn’t science at all.”
Seibt has
also uploaded a video with the title Message to the Media – HOW DARE YOU – an
obvious reference to a speech by Thunberg at the UN in which she rebuked world
leaders: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk
about is money, and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Thunberg
began her activism at 15 by missing school and camping outside the Swedish
parliament. She has since met the pope, addressed members of Congress in
Washington and heads of state at the UN and helped inspire 4 million people to
join a global climate strike. Last year she became the youngest Time magazine
Person of the Year, much to Trump’s chagrin.
The
Washington Post observed: “If imitation is the highest form of flattery,
Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve,
especially among teens and young adults.”
Since
Trump’s election, CPAC has paraded hard-right figures such as the former White
House officials Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka as well as numerous climate
sceptics.
In his
speech there last year, the president mocked the Green New Deal, proposals
championed by Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“No
planes,” the president said. “No energy. When the wind stops blowing, that’s
the end of your electric. ‘Let’s hurry up. Darling, darling, is the wind
blowing today? I’d like to watch television, darling.’”
Connor
Gibson, a researcher for Greenpeace USA, said: “Climate science is understood
by a majority of Americans, liberal and conservative alike. Unfortunately, you
won’t meet any of those people, or any climate scientists, at an event like
CPAC.
“The
Heartland Institute is funnelling anonymous money from the US to climate denial
in other countries. It relies on the media to advance false equivalence
strategies to attempt to normalise fringe beliefs. Climate denial is not a
victimless crime, and it’s time for the perpetrators to be held accountable.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário