I Crashed A Climate Change Denial Conference In Las Vegas

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Originally published at VICE.com, excerpt republished withย permission.

Iโ€™ve been researching the climate denial industry for almost three years and the best way to gather information about this incredibly small yet influential clique is to hang out withย them.

I attended their 2012 conference of theย Heartland Institute, anย oil and tobacco fundedย free market think tank that spends a lot of time and effort trying to call bullshit on what is clearly not bullshit โ€“ the science of climate change. My presence was clearly unwelcome โ€“ but I guess they forgot to scrub me from their email invitation list, because I got invited again this year, to theirย 9th International Conference on Climate Changeย in the deep heat of the Nevada desert amid the chaos of Las Vegasย casinos.

The choice of Vegas byย Heartlandย seemed brilliantly provocative. A celebration of high-stakes capitalism in the very gambling dens whereย $92 billion is lost each yearย in pursuit of the American dream. The dazzling lights, the grotesquely oversized hotels, the freeย drinks.

Perhaps nowhere on earth is more profligate and wasteful of increasingly scarce natural resources than this twisted utopia. The Republican Party reportedlyย blackballed Vegasย for its 2016 convention fearing its Christian supporters would be repelled by this den of iniquity โ€“ and that its legislators would be lured into its brothels and casinos. Scientists have explicitly stated we are โ€œloading the diceโ€ by raising temperatures so that extreme weather and deadly catastrophes will become more frequent โ€“ gambling with our future, basically.ย Joseph Bast, the president of Heartland, was surely thumbing his nose at hisย detractors.

Heartland has had a torrid two years. Drย Peter Gleick, a hydro-climatologist and author, took the unusual step of posing as a board member and tricking Heartland staff into sending himย a trove of highly secret internal documents.ย The papersย revealedย that Heartland was working with a coal industry consultant in order to enter American schools and attack climateย science.

Two months later, and just ahead of their 2012 conference in hometown Chicago, Heartland made the bizarre decision to erect aย huge advertising billboardย attacking climate science on the basis that the terrorist Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, had apparently been concerned about global warming. This gave their archenemies Greenpeace US and Forecast the Facts the ammunition they needed to successfully lobbyย funders to withdraw.

The Vegas conference was going a good opportunity to enter this strange world again. But did I really want to spend a week in the middle of dustbowl America with three hundred climate cranks who would crowd around trying to tell me how wrong I am about everything if they knew the first thing aboutย me?

24 hours later and I touched down at the Vegas airport in the dead of night, bathed in light.ย The Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, aย gold-plated monumentย to excess, appeared to be next to the runway. Still it took 20 minutes and $20 dollars for a cab driver to get meย there.

This sub-prime feeling hotel was the perfect setting for Heartland. The deregulated casinos glared as they took peopleโ€™s money and the acrid smell of tobacco was pervasive. The hotel was brash, huge, and run down. All fur coat and moth eaten. There were loud renovations taking place when I arrived. The front desk had double booked my room, so when I finally got there I was confronted by a stout, hairy American wearing tight black underpants. Mercifully I wasย relocated.

The morning after my arrival I metย Christopher Monckton, who had agreed to have breakfast with me. Within minutes I found myself almost entirely lost in confusing nonsense. Monckton repeated his claim to be a member of the House of Lords, which has beenย denied by the House of Lords, and having been the scientific advisor to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s when she first championed climate science,ย which has also been debunked.

The aristocrat, a classically trained architect and one-time journalist, told me he had produced a very simple climate model that proved actual scientists had exaggerated the threat of climate science and that there was no evidence that heating the atmosphere wasย dangerous.

Monckton hasย workedย closely with the ominous sounding neoliberal think tank, theย Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). They even hired a plane so he couldย parachuteuninvited into the Durban climate conference.ย CFACT has enjoyed significant funding from ExxonMobilย and other oil and car industrialists. So I asked Monckton if he had benefited from ExMoโ€™s largesse. โ€œThe cheque has not yet arrived in the post,โ€ he joked, before asking if I was โ€œleftย wingโ€.

Monckton then told me he attended climate conferences because it was better than sitting at home on his sofa and he cared for the future of society. He had refused his $1,000 Heartland fee. I asked him how this chimed with his belief in the free market, that rested on the idea that people only respond to financial incentives. Heย grinned.

After I had paid for his breakfast he said something that really surprised me. We were walking past the slot machines when I asked him what he thought of Vegas. He said he believed gambling to be immoral. The casinos were profiting from peopleโ€™s lack of a good education and fundamental misunderstanding of mathematics. He said Heartland had, in fact, chosen Vegas to make the point that climate scientists had failed to understand risk. โ€ฆ

CONTINUE READING THE REMAINDER AT VICE.COM

This article originally appeared on VICE.com. This excerpt is republished with permission.

Image credit:ย Alex Epstein, author of forthcoming The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, sports his I Heart Fossil Fuels T-Shirt. Photo by Brendanย Montague.

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