European Far-Right Politicians Met with US Climate Denial Group in Florida

Euro­pean far-right politi­cians trav­eled to Flori­da to meet with lead­ers of a promi­nent US cli­mate denial orga­ni­za­tion, rais­ing con­cerns about coor­di­nat­ed attacks on EU envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies. On 19 Sep­tem­ber 2025, DeSmog revealed that Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty MEP Har­ald Vil­im­sky and Ger­man AfD politi­cian Markus Buch­heit met with Heart­land Insti­tute pres­i­dent James Tay­lor in Tam­pa, Flori­da, in July to dis­cuss strate­gies for coun­ter­ing EU cli­mate leg­is­la­tion. The arti­cle begins:

Mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment flew 5,000 miles to Flori­da this sum­mer to meet with the head of a U.S. cli­mate denial group, DeSmog can reveal. Free­dom Par­ty of Aus­tri­a’s Har­ald Vil­im­sky and Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) MEP Markus Buch­heit, vocal crit­ics of EU cli­mate pol­i­cy in their respec­tive far-right par­ties, met with James Tay­lor, the pres­i­dent of the Heart­land Insti­tute, one day apart in July in Tam­pa, Flori­da. It comes after DeSmog and The Guardian revealed in Jan­u­ary how Heart­land, which has for decades been at the fore­front of deny­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for man made cli­mate change, had attempt­ed to scup­per major EU cli­mate reforms by forg­ing alliances with far-right politi­cians. The lob­by group, which has received fund­ing from U.S. oil giant Exxon­Mo­bil, calls itself “the lead­ing glob­al think tank coun­ter­ing cli­mate alarmism”.

Read more: https://www.desmog.com/2025/09/19/pro-trump-climate-denial-group-meets-with-far-right-european-politicians-in-florida/

Key Points

• Aus­tri­an FPÖ’s Har­ald Vil­im­sky has now held eight meet­ings with Heart­land Insti­tute since 2019.
• The Heart­land Insti­tute has received fund­ing from Exxon­Mo­bil and backs Trump’s with­draw­al from the Paris cli­mate agreement.
• Meet­ings occurred dur­ing record-break­ing heat in Tam­pa, where tem­per­a­tures reached 100°F for the first time since 1890.
• Aus­tri­an Green MEP calls the col­lab­o­ra­tion “a scan­dal” and a threat to Euro­pean cli­mate goals.

The Free­dom Par­ty (FPÖ) of Aus­tria and the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) are the key rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) in their respec­tive countries.

The Global National Conservative Alliance (GNCA) and Climate: Obstructionism, Denialism, and Diversion

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly weaponized cli­mate pol­i­cy as a sov­er­eign­ty bat­tle­ground, with par­ties treat­ing EU Green Deal and Paris tar­gets as out­side impo­si­tions rather than shared oblig­a­tions. Nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents con­sis­tent­ly reframe cli­mate action as threats to jobs, farm­ers, and nation­al iden­ti­ty while promis­ing to rene­go­ti­ate or slow reg­u­la­tions they char­ac­ter­ize as puni­tive for­eign inter­fer­ence. The Her­itage Foun­da­tion’s coor­di­na­tion of this strat­e­gy rep­re­sents active sup­port for far-right par­ties in fram­ing cli­mate action as glob­al­ist tyran­ny, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly orches­trat­ing what it calls “nation­al­ist inter­na­tion­al­ism” to counter envi­ron­men­tal coop­er­a­tion frame­works through coor­di­nat­ed resis­tance across borders.

The alliance’s cli­mate obstruc­tion oper­ates through sys­tem­at­ic fund­ing net­works that con­nect fos­sil fuel inter­ests with broad­er cul­ture war strate­gies, as evi­denced by 80% of anti-trans­gen­der orga­ni­za­tions receiv­ing finan­cial sup­port from oil and gas com­pa­nies or their wealthy own­ers. Major fos­sil fuel enti­ties, includ­ing Shell USA Com­pa­ny Foun­da­tion and bil­lion­aire Phil Anschutz, have donat­ed sig­nif­i­cant sums to groups like Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, illus­trat­ing how fos­sil fuel bil­lion­aires fund anti-trans move­ments to divert atten­tion from cli­mate change risks while uphold­ing tra­di­tion­al social struc­tures that sup­port fos­sil fuel-depen­dent eco­nom­ic mod­els. This inter­sec­tion­al approach shows how cli­mate denial and social con­ser­vatism share both fund­ing sources and strate­gic objec­tives with­in the broad­er alliance framework.

The coor­di­nat­ed approach cre­ates a drag coali­tion that sel­dom tears up cli­mate goals but con­sis­tent­ly slows their exe­cu­tion, with each delay — whether five-year coal reprieves in Poland, stalled auto-emis­sions rules in France, or expand­ed U.S. drilling leas­es — ratch­et­ing glob­al CO₂ lev­els high­er and squeez­ing the remain­ing car­bon bud­get for effec­tive cli­mate action. The sys­tem­at­ic nature of this obstruc­tion extends beyond indi­vid­ual poli­cies to coor­di­nat­ed mes­sag­ing that posi­tions fos­sil fuel extrac­tion as patri­ot­ic while char­ac­ter­iz­ing envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion as for­eign inter­fer­ence, cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic incen­tives that raise financ­ing costs for renew­ables while direct­ing sub­si­dies toward fos­sil fuel secu­ri­ty across mul­ti­ple allied nations simultaneously.

Exter­nal References:

• The Far Right Has a ‘Bat­tle Plan’ to Undo Cli­mate Progress Should Trump Win in 2024
• Far-right win in France could deal blow to cli­mate policy
• Fos­sil fuel bil­lion­aires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement

 Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.