The activist herself calls herself a "climate skeptic" and a "climate realist". She is expected to speak this week at a Conservative conference outside Washington, where she will join speakers such as Donald Trump and US Vice President Mike Pence, The Guardian reported.
As researcher Connor Gibson of Greenpeace notes, at these conferences you will never meet a speaker or listener who accepts and understands climate science. One can neatly argue with Gibson: there is President Donald Trump. It is true that he denied global warming for many years, publicly mocked the greens and pulled the country out of the 2017 Paris climate accord. However, in 2020 he announced that he no longer considers climate change to be a hoax. Unfortunately, the objection will turn out to be fragile: no one knows the details of Trump's speech at the upcoming conference.
But many details were learned about the “voice of the generation”, for which the conference will become the largest platform. A recent investigation by the German broadcaster ZDF and journalists from the non-profit organization Correctiv showed that Seibt is "on the payroll" of the American think tank Heartland, which is allegedly closely associated with the White House. The institution's activities are aimed at denying scientific evidence regarding global warming and its consequences.
“The Heartland Institute is anonymously funding climate change denials in other countries with American money. He relies on the media to promote a strategy that would make marginal beliefs part of the accepted norm, says Connor Gibson. "Climate denial is not a victimless crime and it is time to bring those responsible to justice."
Heartland strategist James Taylor told Correctiv that the center is serving as potential donors and that he has a contract with Seibt to create "climate skepticism" content aimed at youth audiences. The activist confirmed that she receives royalties in the amount of the average monthly income in Germany (about € 1900). The center's website has a page dedicated to Naomi Seibt.
The German woman mostly spreads "climate skepticism" on her YouTube channel, which has 54 thousand subscribers. In the commercials, she says that Greta Thunberg and other activists only whip up unnecessary hysteria about climate change.
“Climatic alarmism is essentially a despicable antihuman ideology,” the girl is sure. According to Seibt, she operates without any support and does not follow any ideology.
However, it turns out that she is being promoted by German far-right politicians, and Naomi Seibt's mother works as a lawyer and represents the interests of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is criticized as populist and nationalist. In addition, the activist published her first essay on the Anti-Islamization blog and received the support of Martin Zellner, leader of the Austrian far-right movement Generation Identity. In the AfD youth wing group, Seibt is listed as a party member, although she herself denies this.
The German woman published her first video on YouTube in May 2019: she read out a poem she had prepared for a poetry competition organized by the AfD. According to The Guardian, it was the connection with the German far-right that attracted the attention of the Heartland center, based in Chicago, to the girl. The institution is also known to have lobbied for the tobacco and coal industries, but in recent years has focused on building "scientific consensus on climate change."
In December 2019, when Thunberg spoke at a UN summit, a protégé of the center made a keynote speech at an opposition conference organized by Heartland.
Seibt posted 21 videos on her YouTube channel. “We are currently being force-fed an extremely dystopian portion of climate panic, telling us that we humans are destroying the planet. And that young people have no future. That animals are dying. That we are trampling nature. I have good news for you. The world will not end because of climate change. In fact, another 12 years will pass, and we will be here, taking photos with the new iPhone 18,”says the girl in one of the videos.
Another video titled Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: Who Should We Trust? the activist argues: “Science is entirely based on intellectual humility and it is important that we continue to validate the questionable data that exists, rather than promote it. The science of the climate crisis is not science at all these days."
Video Message to the Media: How Dare You? refers to the main phrase from Greta Thunberg's emotional speech at the UN, in which she denounced world leaders. In the video, Seibt comments on the investigation by Correctiv and ZDF.
Greta Thunberg became involved in activism at the age of 15, when she began skipping school and going out to solitary pickets in defense of the climate. For two years, she managed to meet with the Pope of Rome, deliver a speech to the heads of state at the UN, acquire 4 million like-minded people and become Time magazine's man of the year.
The promotion of Thunberg's opponents, according to analysts from The Washington Post, demonstrates that Greta “hurts a nerve, especially among teenagers and young people.”>
