The ‘Big Footprint’ conference takes place in Los Angeles, 12-13 June, 2011. Photograph: americanfreedomalliance.org
Here we go again: prominent climate sceptics gathering together to meet under the welcoming awning of a right-wing, libertarian thinktank. And some people still choose to question the notion that climate scepticism tends to be far more motivated by rigid ideology rather than reasoned objections to the science?
This time the event is being held in Los Angeles and has been organised by a group called the American Freedom Alliance, which claims to be “a non-political, non-partisan movement which promotes, defends and upholds Western values and ideals”.
On Sunday, it will host “Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny” at the UCLA Faculty Center. Speakers on the programme include Lord Monckton, Benny Peiser, James Delingpole, Phelim McAleer, Steven Milloy, Christopher Horner, and Richard Lindzen – all of whom are very familiar figures to anyone conversant with the climate debate.
Topics to be debated include: “The Assault on Human Exceptionalism”; “Agenda 21 and the UN Mandate for Social Revolution”; and “Transhumanism, Deep Ecology and Ecocide: How Are Shifting Social Attitudes Re-shaping Our Appreciation of Human Uniqueness?”
That these characters are meeting up once again to thrash out these issues is no great revelation or surprise. After all, they wear their agenda with pride and promulgate it in the media and on the internet week in week out.
What is more surprising, perhaps, is that some of them are happy to accept the invitation of an organisation that has promoted intelligent design and seems to tread a very fine line indeed between fighting “Islamic fascism” and outright Islamophobia.
Continue reading this article at www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog.