The Washington Post - 24.02.2020

a2 eZ re the washington post.monday, february 24 , 2020

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drid climate conference, two un-

dercover staffers from the non-

profit investigative newsroom

Correctiv approached Ta ylor and

claimed to work for a wealthy

donor from the auto i ndustry who

wanted to give Heartland a half-

million euros. Ta ylor took the bait

and followed up with a three-page

proposal outlining a campaign to

push back against German efforts

to regulate emissions.

“These restrictive environmen-

tal programs are largely unneces-

sary,” s ays the document, a copy o f

which was obtained by The Post.

“Worse, other nations — includ-

ing the United S tates and E urope-

an Union nations — are increas-

ingly being influenced by unwise

German policy.”

The proposal described Naomi

as “the star” of a “Climate reality

forum” organized by Heartland

during the madrid talks.

“funding for our Germany En-

vironmental Issues project will

enable Heartland to provide Nao-

mi with the equipment and the

sources she needs to present a

series of effective videos calling

attention to the negative impacts

of overreaching environmental

regulations,” t he proposal says.

Correctiv aired its report on

Heartland this month on German

TV. Ta ylor dismissed the report,

saying, “Heck, I would have spo-

ken with them if they told us who

they were, and the answers would

have been pretty much the same.”

The report included secretly

filmed footage of Naomi, who

struck back with her own video

response. Invoking Greta, she

said, “To the media, I have a few

last words: How dare you?”

Despite echoes of Greta’s style,

Naomi has objected to the com-

parison.

“The reason I don’t like the

term anti-Greta is that it suggests

I myself a m an indoctrinated pup-

pet, I guess, f or the other side,” s he

says in one video.

Ta ylor said the tendency to as-

sociate Naomi with Greta is “kind

of natural” — and benefits Heart-

land’s m essage.

“To the extent that Naomi is

pretty much the same, just with a

different perspective, yeah, I

think that it’s good that people

will look at the two as similar in

many ways,” he said.

Still, Naomi has a long climb to

reach the level of global attention

lavished on Greta. While Greta

measures her social media follow-

ing in the millions, Naomi counts

slightly under 50,000 YouTube

subscribers.

Through her spokespeople,

Greta declined to comment.

[email protected]

[email protected]

of devastating effects from mas-

sive marine die-offs in South

America to severe wildfires in

Australia and sinking ground in

the Arctic.

In addition to climate change,

Naomi echoes far-right skepti-

cism about feminism and immi-

gration. German media outlets

have described her as sympathetic

to the nationalist Alternative for

Germany (AfD), the biggest oppo-

sition party in parliament, whose

leaders have spoken of fighting

“an invasion of foreigners.” Naomi

says she is not a member of the

AfD — she describes herself as

libertarian — but acknowledges

speaking at a recent A fD event.

Her path to Heartland b egan in

November with a speech at EIKE,

a munich think tank whose vice

president i s a prominent AfD poli-

tician. By then, Naomi was al-

ready active on YouTube, produc-

ing videos on topics ranging from

migration to feminism to climate

change. In the audience was

Heartland’s Taylor. He said he im-

mediately recognized her poten-

tial and approached her about

working with Heartland.

founded in 1984 and funded

largely by anonymous donors,

Heartland has focused on climate

change over the past decade. Its

staff and researchers enjoy ready

access to the Trump administra-

tion, and one of its senior fellows,

William Happer, served as a se-

nior director on the White House

National Security Council be-

tween September 2018 and 2019.

An emeritus professor of phys-

ics at Princeton University, Hap-

per has repeatedly argued that

carbon emissions should be

viewed as beneficial to society —

not a pollutant that drives global

warming. During his time with

the Trump administration, he

sought to enlist Heartland’s help

in promoting his ideas a nd object-

ed to a U.S. intelligence official’s

finding that climate impacts

could be “possibly catastrophic,”

according to documents obtained

by The Washington Post.

Why would an American think

tank want to get involved in Ger-

man politics? Because it worries

that Berlin’s strong stance on re-

ducing greenhouse-gas emissions

could be contagious, according to

a recent investigation aired on

German television.

for two decades, Germany has

been a leader in pressing other

nations t o curb carbon output and

shift to renewable energy. It has

pledged to cut greenhouse gas

emissions this year by 40 percent

compared with those of 1990 —

and by up to 95 percent by mid-

century.

In December, during the ma-

campaign “is not outright disin-

formation,” Brookie said in an

email, it “does bear resemblance

to a model we use called t he 4d’s —

dismiss the message, distort the

facts, distract the audience, and

express dismay at the whole

thing.”

Naomi says her political activ-

ism was sparked a few years ago

when she began asking questions

in school about Germany’s liberal

immigration policies. She says the

backlash from teachers and other

students hardened her s kepticism

about mainstream German think-

ing. more recently, she said that

watching young people joining

weekly “fridays for future” pro-

tests inspired by Greta helped

spur her opposition to climate

change activism.

“I get chills when I see those

young people, especially at fri-

days for future. They are scream-

ing and shouting, and they’re gen-

erally terrified,” she said in an

interview. “They don’t want the

world t o end.”

Naomi said she does not dis-

pute that greenhouse gas emis-

sions are warming the planet, but

she argues that many scientists

and activists have overstated their

impact.

“I don’t want to get people to

stop believing in man-made cli-

mate change, not at all,” s he said.

“A re man-made Co2 emissions

having that much impact on the

climate? I think that’s ridiculous

to believe.”

Naomi argues that other fac-

tors, such as solar energy, play a

role — though the amount of solar

energy reaching the Earth has

actually declined since the 1970s,

according to federal measure-

ments. A slew of peer-reviewed

reports, from scientific bodies in

the United States and elsewhere,

have concluded that greenhouse

gas emissions are the dominant

cause of warming since the mid-

20th century, producing a range

as “the star” of the show. Last

month, Heartland hired Naomi as

the young face of its campaign to

question the scientific consensus

that human activity is causing

dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thun-

berg: Whom should we trust?”

Heartland asked in a digital video.

Later this week, Naomi is set to

make her American debut at the

Conservative Political Action

Conference, or CPAC, a high-pro-

file annual gathering just outside

Washington of right-leaning ac-

tivists.

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 launching her pro-

test two years ago outside the

Swedish parliament at a ge 1 5, Gre-

ta has sparked youth protests

across the globe and in 2019 was

named Time magazine’s “Person

of the Year,” t he youngest to ever

win the honor.

The teenager has called on the

nations of the world to cut their

total carbon output by at l east half

over the next decade, suggesting

that if they don’t, “then there will

be horrible consequences.”

“I want you to panic,” she told

attendees at the World Economic

forum in Davos, Switzerland, last

year. “I want you to feel the fear I

feel every day. And then I want

you to act.”

Naomi, for her part, argues that

these predictions of dire conse-

quences are exaggerated. In a vid-

eo posted on Heartland’s website,

she gazes into the camera and

says, “I don’t want you to panic. I

want you to think.”

Graham Brookie directs the

Digital forensic research Lab, an

arm of the nonprofit Atlantic

Council t hat works to identify and

expose disinformation. While the

seibt from A

Teen advocate for ‘climate realism’ to speak at CPAC

sebastien Van malleghem for the Washington Post

though Naomi seibt is opposed to “climate alarmism,” she rejects being called the anti-Greta. “i don’t want to shame her in any way.”

Retropolis

The past, rediscovered

wpost.com/retropolis

S0 36 4 1x2.

Brain Hacking: the new

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in her writing for the Washington
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findings and the latest tools as
scientists try to unravel the
mysteries of what’s been called the
most complex object in the
universe: the human brain.

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