It’s been a month since the Heartland Institute “reorganized” by firing a bunch of people and then replacing its president with longtime climate denier James Taylor, and an early picture of his leadership may be emerging. With spring in the air, let’s see what new growth may be in the works!
The first change is that despite being enthralled with Naomi Seibt at their event back in December, and promising what he believed to be potential funders that he could cultivate her message and grow her popularity, James Taylor hasn’t even been able to keep Seibt on the Institute’s (shrunken) payroll.
The description on Seibt’s latest video includes a disclaimer: “To assure you and the media that I am NOT funded by the oil and gas industry to spread certain views, I have decided to become 100% INDEPENDENT. I did not extend my freelancer contract with Heartland and although I will continue to work WITH them (as I still consider them wonderful true friends), I am currently not being paid for my work. I now rely on DONATIONS ONLY (see below).”
Ah, sounds like her paycheck from Heartland wasn’t worth being associated with the organization. Either that, Heartland has run out of cash, or maybe she was never that impressive to begin with -- not that any of these three are mutually exclusive.
With that relationship demoted to “just friends,” where else might Taylor look to find new partners? The truth is, while deniers writ large are very good about acting in unison to push hashtags or advance a narrative, the actual organizations have always seemed a little stand-offish with one another when it comes to things like promoting one another on their respective digital platforms.
Sure, the limited number of professional deniers keeps their circle small, so Heartland’s conferences have always relied on staff from similar groups to show up and present. But it’s traditionally been more rare for them to promote specific pieces of work done by one another, most likely because they are each competing for the same pot of Koch, Mercer, and fossil fuel industry funding for this sort of work.
But Taylor might’ve found a group that won’t be repelled by Heartland’s reputation. And that’s because it’s the same as its own: CFACT, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which is also little more than astroturf for conservative donors and polluting industries.
Though ClimateDepot is CFACT’s biggest online real estate, it also has its own website, which recently posted a laudatory write-up of Heartland’s new “climate at a glance” project offering simplified denial talking points on different aspects of climate change.
Though there’s no evidence that CFACT posted what is basically a press release for its competitor’s new product as part of a new partnership with Heartland, it definitely stood out to us (and a search on the site doesn’t show any past examples of a similar sort of promotion).
Obviously it would make a certain amount of sense that as the funding pool for these groups has consolidated, the groups that once competed for those funds would begin working in concert at their funders’ request. After all, large swaths, if not the vast majority, of the funding for both Heartland and CFACT has come through the “dark money ATM” called DonorsTrust in recent years, as these groups become increasingly toxic to those who fund them publicly.
Hard to blame those companies for not wanting to be linked to Heartland, whose reputation as a tobacco, oil and gas front group is apparently even too toxic for Ms. Seibt, who’s fine with anti-semitism, claims a white supremacist as an “inspiration” and has marched with Neo-Nazis. But you know who’s not above being seen with Heartland? Their brothers-in-arms at CFACT.
It’s too early to know for sure if that’s the case, but this spring we’ll be watching to see whether or not a meaningful relationship between Heartland and CFACT does in fact blossom!
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