Transcript

Gregory Wrightstone: 

Embrace the warmth. Embrace the warmth and the benefits, and embrace more CO2.

Embrace that high carbon lifestyle because the carbon you’re emitting is showing to be a huge, huge benefit.

Nina Zibetti:

Welcome to the Climate Dreamers, a research project and podcast series by Momus, formerly known as Platform Authentieke Journalistiek.

In this series, we cover climate obstruction. In other words, different types of conscious and unconscious efforts to obstruct or delay climate action and policy.

I’m Nina Zibetti, investigative journalist, and this is episode 2, Clintel: climate denial in the 21st century.

It is based on a story published on DeSmog in July of 2024. You can read it on DeSmog in English, or check out our website for the Dutch version.

Nina Zibetti:

It’s 09:01 on June 18th and I’m in the parking lot of Central station on the Jaarbeurs side in Utrecht waiting for Jilles, who’s running a little bit late and testing the microphone.

Everything works out.

All right, I see Jilles, so let’s go.

Nina Zibetti:

On June 18th, 2024, I attended the five-year anniversary conference of the Climate Intelligence foundation, or Clintel for short.

If you go to their website, Clintel’s stated mission is to “generate knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of climate change as well as the effects of climate policy on the economy and the environment.” Sounds about right.

But the blue banner at the top of the website tells a different story. Their motto is a simple and deliberately provocative statement: There is no climate emergency.

This statement is also the title of a one-page document which they refer to as the ‘World Climate Declaration’.

The declaration, which Clintel claims has been signed by a worldwide network of over 1900 scientists and professionals, includes statements such as “Warming is far slower than predicted”, “CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth”, and “Global warming has not increased natural disasters”.

If in the last few years, you have ever come across a news article or dubious social media post saying that hundreds or thousands of scientists have signed a petition dismissing the existence of a climate crisis, chances are this is what they are referring to.

In the Netherlands, Clintel is mostly known for their request to intervene in a prominent court case – Milieudefensie et al. v. Shell – in which an environmental organization, Milieudefensie, successfully sued Dutch oil major Shell.

They have also made appearances on public television, and have been touring the country to promote a film ripe with debunked claims, Climate: The Movie. They also hold local meetings around the country to mobilize their followers against wind turbines.

In June of 2024, I had been researching climate disinformation for a few months.

Clintel’s anniversary conference seemed like the perfect occasion to take a peek behind the curtains of one of the Netherland’s most active organizations of this kind.

Little problem: my Dutch skills are terrible, and this would have been my first time doing field reporting. So I asked my colleague Jilles if he would come along with me.

Nina Zibetti and Jilles Mast:

So where are we? We are on the highway.

Yeah. We are on our way to a beautiful place called Hal60, in Roelofarendsveen. Again. Yes.

Roelofarendsveen. Even for a native Dutch speaker, that’s hard to pronounce. Yeah.

So we’re attending the Clintel Jubileum. What is it a jubileum of? Five years from their founding, perhaps? No, it should be longer. 2019, I think, maybe.

Like, how long is climate change a thing?

[Nina laughs]

Nina Zibetti:

In Dutch, a jubileum is the celebration of a special anniversary.

And indeed, this conference celebrated five years from the founding of Clintel, in 2019.

We pulled up to the venue around 10am. It was a remodeled warehouse in the industrial area of the small town with the hard-to-pronounce name. The entrance was decorated with festive balloons, white and blue, the colors of Clintel.

A few older men were having coffee in a veranda just outside of the conference hall, waiting for the program to start.

Nina Zibetti and Jilles Mast:

I saw a comment yesterday on the Climategate.NL blog of somebody who was like, could you organize these events in days where people who are not pensioners can attend or in times where people who are not pensioners can attend? So I expect there to be a lot of pensioners.

Yeah, you could see it already, like in the cars.

Yeah, well, there was a younger looking guy, so I don’t know, maybe I won’t be the youngest person there. Well, actually, I might be.

Nina Zibetti:

I was not too far off. With the exception of the catering employees, I was about a few decades younger than most guests, as well as one of the few women. The attendees, about 120 based on the number of tickets sold reported on Clintel’s website, were mostly men, over the age of sixty.

Inside the hall, some tables had been set up as book stands. The books had titles were weird. Like, “A Very Convenient Warming” and “The Global Coup d’Ètat”.

Next to the tables, there was a blue banner carrying Clintel’s motto – there is no climate crisis – in Dutch and English.

The stage area was behind some heavy curtains. We sat at the back of the room, leaving a few empty rows of seats between us and the rest of the audience.

Guus Berkhout:

Dear friends, colleagues, and interested parties. Five years ago, Clintel was founded by Marcel and me. There was absolutely nothing at that time, but we did have a vision: Clintel should become a worldwide organization.

Nina Zibetti:

The program of the conference was an all-you-can-eat buffet of the many flavors of climate science denial,

The speaker list a who’s who of Dutch and international climate skeptics, including Clintel’s co-founder Marcel Crok, and Willie Soon, described by Desmog as a prominent climate change skeptic who has received much of his research funding from the oil and gas industry.

Throughout the day, we heard that climate change is happening, but not primarily due to human activity.

That the adverse effects of climate change are exaggerated or non-existent.

That the energy transition will cost 4.5 trillion euros, or almost four-and-a-half times the size of the Dutch economy.

And that, even if climate change is happening, and is caused by human activity, that’s a good thing because its effects are beneficial.

Gregory Wrightstone: 

The main fact here is: life is good and getting better.

What do people respond to? It’s a positive message. They want to hear a positive message about what’s happening.

And I think all of us as we talk, instead of just saying there is no climate crisis, that’s being reactive, let’s be proactive. It’s not, yes, there is no climate crisis. I get that, that’s easily disproved.

But we’ve moved beyond. In my new book, I’ve moved beyond ‘there is no climate crisis’. I moved to what we’re seeing here: Embrace the warmth, embrace the warmth and the benefits, and embrace more CO2.

Embrace that high carbon lifestyle because the carbon you’re emitting, it’s not really carbon, carbon dioxide. It’s showing to be a huge, huge benefit. And so we should celebrate that.

Nina Zibetti:

That was Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of an American group called the CO2 Coalition.

The CO2 Coalition describes itself as “the nation’s leading organization providing facts, resources and information about the vital role carbon dioxide plays in our environment.”

As we later reported in our piece on Desmog, The Coalition has received funding from the Koch brothers, libertarian oil billionaires who have been at the heart of climate change denial in the United States, and the Mercer family, who provided financial backing to former U.S. President Donald Trump for his successful election bid in 2016.

During the conference, we learned that Clintel is eager to learn funding strategies from this American group.

Marcel Crok:

Gregory and I will have a meeting tomorrow because they are doing a very good job.

The CO2 coalition is now growing rapidly, they have much more funding than we have. And tomorrow he’s going to teach us how to do it. So that next year we are in the RAI, or somewhere, you know, Ahoy!

Nina Zibetti:

But where is Clintel getting their money now? I asked my colleague Alex to walk me through his analysis of Clintel’s financial records.

Nina Zibetti and Alexander Beunder:

Hey Alex, so did you look at Clintel’s financial records?

Yes. On their website, you can find reports of their revenues and expenses. I just put the numbers together, and you can see that they doubled their revenue between 2019 and 2022. So they reported €104 thousand income in 2019 and €202 thousand in 2022. So that’s like a big increase in revenue.

And do they say where their money comes from?

Well, their largest known sponsor is a Dutch real estate investor called Niek Sandmann who pledged half a million euros to Clintel when the organization was founded in 2019. Based on the records I accessed, he alone is responsible for about 22% of Clintel’s funding.

And the rest?

More than half of donations come from other private individuals, of which about 17% are registered as periodic donors, or Friends of Clintel. Then you have some donations from other non-profit organizations, which are not mentioned by name, so anonymous non-profit organizations. And finally some 16 thousand euros from unspecified companies, over the period between 2019 and 2022.

Okay, thanks! Do we know anything else about their funding?

Well, a little bit. I think what is important…  Clintel maintains that they never received funding from the fossil fuel industry, like oil and gas firms. But, in a previous publication we wrote with Follow The Money and Pointer, 4 years ago, we discuss how Clintel seemed to emerge, in 2019, from another foundation which actually did receive funding from oil and gas companies, like a lot, like 1,2 million euro. So, Clintel was not directly funded by oil and gas, but there seemed to be an indirect link at least. Also, later, in 2022, Clintel did publicly mention it received a “generous donation” from Edward Heerema, the sole shareholder of a big offshore company which builds pipelines for the oil and gas industry, including Shell. So that’s again a link, at least indirect, with the fossil fuel industry.

That’s super interesting. Thank you so much Alex

Nina Zibetti:

So what does Clintel do with this funding?

Well, for example, as I mentioned before, in late 2022 Clintel tried to intervene in the appeal of a court case which saw the environmental organization Milieudefensie (or Friends of the Earth, in English) go up against the oil company Shell.

This is a very important case in the Netherlands, because the judge ruled that Shell should reduce its emissions by 45 percent by 2030. Shell appealed, of course. On November 12, 2024, about two weeks from now at the time of recording, the judge will rule on Shell’s appeal.

Their request for intervention was denied by the judge in 2023. It gets a bit technical, but essentially the judge ruled that Clintel lacked a “sufficient interest” in the case.

But Clintel is not about to give up.

At the conference, Marcel Crok said they are hoping to intervene again in a new case that was announced earlier this year by Milieudefensie against the Dutch bank ING.

Marcel Crok:

…en als Milieudefensie later dit jaar, ze hebben een zaak aangekondigd tegen ING, en als ze die gaan aankondigen, kunnen wij gewoon weer opnieuw proberen mee te doen.

[Milieudefensie announced a case against ING later this year. If they launch it, we can just try to participate again.]

Nina Zibetti:

But Clintel is not the only organization looking to intervene in Dutch climate litigation cases.

Another Dutch group, Milieu en Mens (or Environment and People, in English), was allowed to join Shell in the appeal proceedings of the Milieudefensie v. Shell case. In their request for joinder, Milieu en Mens said it was representing a group called Concerned Energy Users.

Milieu en Mens has denied any ties to the Climate Intelligence foundation. But in 2022 Marcel Crok of Clintel posted on LinkedIn that he and lawyer Lucas Bergkamp had come up with a new “plan” to intervene in the Milieudefensie vs. Shell case, and encouraged people to sign an online petition. The petition was launched by a group called Concerned Energy Users.

Certainly, the groups appear to share some friends overseas.

Gregory Wrightstone of the CO2 Coalition, who we heard from earlier, announced at the conference that they were helping Milieu en Mens by filing an expert opinion in the Hague. The opinion boils down to one central claim:

“Science demonstrates fossil fuels and CO2 will not cause dangerous climate change. Rather, there will be disastrous consequences for people worldwide if fossil fuels and CO2 emissions are reduced to “net zero,” including mass starvation.”

Nina Zibetti:

The dramatic tone is not a one off.

The conference itself felt like a celebratory event. People were chatting amicably during the lunch and coffee breaks, and they did not shy away from answering some questions from the two clearly out of place people with a press badge. That would be Jilles and I.

But overall, there was a certain gravitas in the conference hall.

People seemed genuinely worried about the state of the world: whether they believed that negative health impacts of wind turbines are being covered up or shadowy UN-funded elites are using climate change as an excuse to control people’s lives, it was clear that this concern played a role in their lives.

People we talked to at the conference were also very passionate about “science”. It was not the same science that I had seen in University or at academic conferences, where the smallest details are scrutinized ruthlessly, but almost everyone in the room agrees on the big picture.

To me, it felt like people in the room had a different idea of science, more romanticized if you will. If 99 scientists out of 100 say one thing, the one guy – let’s be honest, it is often a guy – who says something else must be right. His science must be the most science. Because he is seeing things that others aren’t. Along the same line, almost all the speakers painted themselves as Davids going up against Goliath. Sometimes explicitly so.

And I can see the appeal in that kind of thinking. But I was left wondering about what exactly is revolutionary about repeating long debunked arguments when a majority of people have, for better or worse, accepted the big picture of climate change, and the debate has largely moved on to other grounds.

Over the last months, I have been thinking about what I can take away from attending this conference and writing this story. For our research, for the way that we communicate about climate change and climate policy, as journalists. I don’t think I have an answer yet. But I suppose that I have a better understanding of what is behind the curtain. And that’s a start.

Nina Zibetti and Jilles Mast:

Well, I think we are arriving.

We are.

Perfect. Wow. Okay.

Amazing date. Yeah. Thank you.

Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Perfect. And I’ll see you… I don’t know. In the next episode. In the next episode.

Nina Zibetti:

You have been listening to episode 2 of the 3-part podcast series, Climate Dreamers.

I am curious to hear what you thought about this episode. You can give me feedback by leaving a message on our socials, or sending me an email.

Do you have other stories about climate obstruction that you want to share with us? Then be sure to get in touch as well.

And if you want to stay up to date with our research, subscribe to the newsletter on our website. You’ll find all the information to get in touch with us in the shownotes.

Last but not least, consider supporting us with a financial contribution to make more research and podcasts possible.

This podcast was written and produced by me, Nina Zibetti for Platform Authentieke Journalistiek, now Momus. The recording, sound design and final mix were done by Mathijs Duringhof. The podcast was made possible by the Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek.

Until next time, ciao ciao.