One of the most notorious climate change denial groups is Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is largely funded by fossil-fuel industry interests. In the past, it has been part of the “Hot Air Tour” where it sent staffers to 40 cities in hot air balloons to try to convince the public that climate change is not happening.
AFP’s latest venture to try to deny the science of global warming and obstruct any real action on climate change has been to extend its “Hot Air” tour to Copenhagen, Denmark, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held. Yet as the astroturf deniers conducted their alternative conference today (to five attendees), they were surprised by the presence of nearly 50 youth activists from the United States who entered the event to call out AFP’s junk science and dirty agenda:
The students entered the event in small groups, joining a paltry audience of five conference attendees, who had come to hear climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton speak about the Copenhagen climate negotiations. After the first five minutes of the event, student representatives from SustainUS, the Sierra Student Coalition, the Cascade Climate Network, and other American youth NGOs displayed banners reading “Climate Disaster Ahead” and “Clean Energy Now.” After security agents at the event took the banners, the young attendees began a chant of “Real Americans for Prosperity are Americans for Clean Energy.” <...>
“Clean energy creates jobs,” says Rachel Barge, a 24-year-old entrepreneur from San Francisco, CA who was the first young person to raise her voice at the event, “These climate action delayers and science deniers are stealing bold, new economic opportunities from the American public.”
As the protesters continued to chant, one of the AFP speakers, Lord Monckton, called the activists “Hitler Youth” and “Nazis.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/09/monckton-crash/