Essay by Eric Worrall
A Guardian journalist reports back from the Heartland Conference.
Inside a jubilant DC conference where ‘the climate deniers are in charge now’
Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say
Dharna Noor in Washington DCTue 14 Apr 2026 23.00 AEST
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The clearest sign of the crowd’s rising power was the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general. “It is a day to celebrate vindication,” he said on Wednesday morning.
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“Twenty years ago it would have been shocking … for the EPA administrator to take seriously a group of people whose positions are so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,” said Oreskes. “But essentially, climate deniers are in charge now.”
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The youth-focused panel was disrupted by activists with Climate Defiance.
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In an interview, an organizer of the protest who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation said the action was intended to ensure the panel was not “allowed to go undisrupted”, especially because the panel’s audience “was almost entirely geriatric white men who will not live to see the effects of climate change the way that my generation will”.
“The message that we wanted to bring was that climate change denial is not just a matter of a difference of opinions,” said the organizer, adding that they do not believe efforts to spread climate denial to youth will be effective. “These people think that they are untouchable and that they can spread this kind of misinformation entirely unchecked? No.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/14/dc-conference-climate-deniers-trump-epa-chief
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A tweet from Climate Defiance about their disruption of Heartland, claiming to speak on behalf of young people;
“These people think they are untouchable” sounds a bit ominous. But desperation is to be expected in times like these. The collapse of the climate movement and climate funding is forcing activists to make painful decisions, like whether to apply for a job.
