The following individuals and groups, who have historically focused on denying or downplaying the risk of man-made global warming, have turned their attention to the COVID-19 crisis.
This set of examples examines those who have used the coronavirus epidemic as an excuse to attack renewable energy and green policies like the Green New Deal (GND).
*Please note that automatic transcripts were generated for some of the video materials, and while we have reviewed the transcripts, there may still be errors. Contact DeSmog if you notice any errors and we will address them as soon as possible.*
These examples are taken out of a larger body of evidence DeSmog has gathered on COVID denial.
Alex Epstein
“Power Hour: 4 Ideas About COVID-19 You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else,” via SoundCloud, March 18. Note that this episode seems to have been since removed from SoundCloud, however is still available at Apple Podcasts.
[00:49:01] The Corona recession is a mild preview of the Green New Deal.
Bjorn Lomborg
^^Links to “Sorry, but the Virus Shows Why There Won’t Be Global Action on Climate Change,” Foreign Policy, March 27.
Chris Horner
Competitive Enterprise Institute
CEI launched the website subdomain https://neverneeded.cei.org arguing regulations removed during coronavirus fight were never needed to begin with.
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
April 9 online livestream with Ann Coulter (see mention in CFACT Newsletter):
CFACT’s Director of Collegians, Adam Houser, addressed the crowd at the beginning of the event, and explained some of the shameful things the radical greens are doing during the coronavirus crisis.
“Did you know that some are claiming the coronavirus is somehow Mother Nature’s revenge for climate change, mining, and logging? That’s what Pope Francis and even the Democratic Socialists of America are claiming. It’s shameful.”
European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE)
“Ending the energy transition, stopping ‘climate protection’ measures: AfD proposals in the Bundestag,” EIKE, April 3. Translated with Google Translate.
The alternative for Germany introduced a comprehensive program in the Bundestag last week to deal with the Corona crisis. It wants to work to ensure that Germany gets through the crisis well and that democracy is not harmed.
Beatrix von Storch summarizes some of the numerous AfD proposals. The important points include:
The AfD supports the special programs for employees and solid German companies. But she says “no” to a blank check for the government. The rescue measures would first have to be limited in time. After about four weeks, these would have to be checked again and adjusted or corrected if necessary.
The AfD is calling for the abolition of the “soli”, the suspension of the energy transition, the abolition of the electricity tax, the termination of the coal phase-out and the suspension of the nuclear phase-out to relieve the citizens. In this difficult time, neither high electricity taxes nor a blackout could be allowed.
The AfD also calls for an end to auto-hostile politics. In the coronavirus crisis, his public transport system was a place of contagion. Many citizens have to switch to the car here. You shouldn’t put any obstacles in their way because of stricter restrictions.
The AfD calls for the promotion of agriculture to ensure food supplies even in times of international trade difficulties. The AfD is proposing to exempt agriculture from flat tax and sales tax, initially for a period of six months.
In addition, unemployed and large families are to be supported in the crisis.
Harry Wilkinson
Wilkinson is head of policy at Global Warming Policy Forum (of Global Warming Policy Foundation).
“We must not let green extremists exploit the Coronacrisis,” Free Market Conservatives, April 7
Already, environmentalists are applying ‘coronavision’ to the climate change debate. A certain type of green activist welcomes the virus, seeing it as a sort of divine punishment for a civilisation that has lost its way. For most of human history, people have tended to view plagues and other natural disasters in much the same way.
A more sophisticated response comes from decarbonisation advocates who argue that the experience of the pandemic is a striking vindication of the ‘precautionary principle’ – that is, better safe than sorry. This approach demands that we do everything possible to prevent a climate crisis regardless of the lack of certainty about the efficacy of our ‘preventative’ actions.
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The growing band of eco-fundamentalists are not invested in developing a rational response to climate change because they are far more interested in spreading fear. For them, COVID-19 is but a minor precursor to ‘catastrophic climate breakdown’, albeit one that might engender a necessary societal transformation.
It is no surprise that they have embraced the precautionary principle. We have now seen first-hand the extraordinary license that it gives to those wielding authority. In our own country, police forces have been given the ability to decide for us what counts as ‘essential’, but in other parts of the world children have been shot for disobeying strict lockdown rules.
Make no mistake, environmental activists will seek to exploit the fear and political instability of this crisis to try and extend the precautionary principle indefinitely. It would be doubly tragic if this pandemic is also the harbinger of the Big Green State.
“We mustn’t let green lobbyists use coronavirus to turn us back into the ‘sick man of Europe’,”GlobalVision, March 23
Once this terrible disaster is over, the overriding priority needs to be on enabling a rapid return to economic growth and stability. Those who advocate exploiting the crisis to impose radical new decarbonisation policies are guilty of a dangerous kind of magical thinking.
James Delingpole
Marc Morano
“Is the coronavirus lockdown the future environmentalists want?” CFACT video featuring Marc Morano and Heartland Institute president James Taylor, April 30
Marc Morano [00:45:35] The idea of green living is actually antithetical to virus panic and viral fears. Why don’t we use the virus fears to oppose their rules? We’ve always been told, you know, if a driver is, a lone driver in a car driving commuting to and from work, it’s bad for the planet and polluting. Well, given the age of virus scares, and we’re all supposed to be terrified of all these viruses now, why would you want to pack on mass transit that’s green-approved? Why would you want to take the subway system? Why would you want to be on the commuter train when you can take your glorious fossil-fuelled car in isolation away from the virus. So, I would argue, let’s turn the fears around, you know, where necessary to throw it back at them.
[…]
[00:46:27] Let’s use that against them because they want everyone living in crowded urban areas. I remember one climate activist years ago wanted everyone… wanted to design cities after termite nests. The idea is to have everything just centrally planned, perfectly smart planned out. If you now look at in the lens of the virus scare, which they are promoting shamelessly, that doesn’t fly. So, let’s use their own rhetoric against them.
Mark Mathis
Phil Kerpen
Steve Milloy
Posted April 2:
Posted March 19:
Stephen McIntyre
Thomas Pyle
Taken from; David Blackmon. “Tom Pyle and IER: Punching Above Their Weight for Energy,” Shale Mag, May 25
In a conversation we had had with Pyle a few weeks earlier, he had briefly talked about the “Green New Deal” introduced last year by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and which had been endorsed by every Democratic presidential candidate, including presumptive nominee Joe Biden. Speaking in the context of the current state of the U.S. economy, which is highly depressed at the moment due to the reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pyle said what we see around us is pretty much what life under the Green New Deal would look like.
We asked him to expand on that thought for this article, and he was happy to do so.
“If you like your current situation, you’re going to love the Green New Deal. That’s what it comes down to,” he began. “We have seen folks in the Green movement cheer and celebrate; we’ve seen them make comments like ‘humans are the virus, and the coronavirus is the cure.’ These are things these people are actually saying.
“The bottom line is this, this is what the Green New Deal is: stack people up, put them in public transportation, don’t drive, don’t fly. That’s what it comes down to, and we are living that. And we’re doing it because we were asked by our government to stay home, but this is really the way they want us to live permanently.
“In order for the global Paris Agreement targets to be met, one of my guys crunched the numbers, and he thinks it would take five coronaviruses, that level of economic inactivity, to get to where they would like to be.
“But of course, the Green New Deal isn’t about the environment, it’s about power and control. It’s about who decides: you, me, or them? It’s about who makes the choices about the cars they drive, the places they live, the electricity consumption that they use, even what type of energy is being used and how much they pay. And it’s about who controls it — the government or us, the people, individuals, consumers, Americans? That is what the Green New Deal is, it’s about power and control, it’s not about the climate.”
“InfluenceWatch Podcast #117: The Left Wants the COVID Economy,” Capital Research Center podcast hosted by Michael Watson and featured Thomas Pyle, May 1
Michael Watson [00:00:05] You’ve heard of the Green New Deal, that radical, socialist makeover of the American economy proposed by the hardline wing of the environmentalist movement. More than a few people—including this podcast last week—have noted that the economy envisioned by the Green New Dealers resembles the economy of…right now, in the middle of government-ordered shutdowns of all forms of normal human interaction that have put over 30 million people into the unemployment lines.
Thomas Pyle [00:01:14] Well we would need about 5 or 6 of these coronavirus lockdowns to get to the CO2 emission levels that the fringe, the more extreme elements of the environmental community would like us to get to. And honestly they’re celebrating right now, it’s dumbfounding to me that with 30 million people applying for unemployment, where we’re literally celebrating in our homes and home-schooling our children, they’re talking… saying things like humans are the virus, coronavirus is the cure, look at how wonderful things are…
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[00:02:36] Look, this isn’t about CO2 emissions, it’s about control, it’s about power, it’s about redistribution of wealth.
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[00:03:10] Here’s the bottom line. If you like your situation in the coronavirus lockdown, then the Green New Deal is for you. This is exactly what they want. Massive new government spending, political control of critical industries, emergency protocols that are sort of wartime practices, in the name of fighting the climate. And look, this isn’t like exaggeration. This is literally how – they want us to fly less, drive less, they want to stack us in cities, and they want to take away our plastic. Can you imagine?
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[00:04:20] Yeah look this is, this is really a testament to the shorthanded thinking here with respect to these policies. The very industries that they want to eliminate – namely coal, oil, and natural gas industries – are the very industries that are providing the ability for us to deal with this pandemic. If you think about, if you look at the supply chain situation, if we are banning plastic, if plastic was like no longer a think, imagine the sanitation levels in the hospitals.
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[00:06:28] These things all look and sound and feel good when the economy is humming, and everyone is doing well, and we’re not paying all that much for our electricity or our energy. But man when things change, and go wrong in one direction or the other, none of these policies make sense.
[…]
[00:08:15] We’ve got to get through this. We’ve got to get through this but when we get to the other side of this, we are going, you bet we are going to put a very bright spotlight on the words, the actions, the things that the radical greens have been saying during this pandemic.
[…]
[00:10:21] If you stack people together and you force them to all cram together in public transportation, these things don’t go away, right? Those are the conditions that are creating the bigger parts of the problems with this virus – but that’s the world that they want us to live in, that’s how they want us to be. Like you said, vehicles, there’s a whole lot of freedom to owning a car. These guys, their policies would make cars prohibitively more expensive, make it harder and harder for families to be able to afford a new car, force them into older cars, which are less safe.
