Marc Morano - The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change

Rave Reviews

In 2015, I appearedas the villainin the Sony Pictures climate activist documentary Merchants of Doubt. The reviews were glowing (as in, I was torched). Reviewers called me terrifyingly impressive, sadistic

Rolling Stone magazine named me one of the planets seventeen climate killers in its December 2009 cover story. The magazine described me as the Matt Drudge of climate denial and a central cell of the climate-denial machine.

In 2012, I was (dis)honored by climate activists at Media Matters as the Climate Misinformer of the Yearan award that former vice president Al Gore helped promote. While I was attending the UN climate summit in 2015, my face was plastered on posters around the streets of ParisI was wanted as a climate criminal.

I started out my political life as an eleven-year-old volunteer for Ronald Reagans 1980 presidential campaign. I always considered myself a Republicanexcept when it came to environmental issues. I was not a fan of James Watt, Reagans Interior secretary, as I was upset by his land-use policies and by what I perceived to be his general anti-environmental stances.

As a kid I loved to spend time in the woods fishing, hiking, and building forts. I even thought my ultimate job would be as a forest ranger, living deep in the wild in the great Pacific Northwest. I was always passionate about animals, having grown up with what can reasonably be called a small zoo in my home, including alligators, snakes, turtles, lizards, frogs, rats, mice, hamsters, and of course dogs. So I was very sensitive to environmentalists claims of deforestation and species extinction. From the 1980s through the early 1990s, I became increasingly concerned about the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. I watched documentaries and read up on the issue; vivid images of jungle animals habitat being cleared, trees cut down by chain saws, made a huge impression on me.

But then, in 1992, I experienced an epiphany. My first doubts on the deforestation issue were raised by physicist Dixy Lee Ray, who attended the Rio Earth Summit and filed reports on Rush Limbaughs radio show debunking the claims that the Amazonian rainforest was about to disappear. I started investigating and was very surprised to find out that the green movement was in many cases wildly exaggerating deforestation claims.

My investigation of the issue eventually culminated in the production of my own documentary on the Amazon, released in 2000 and titled Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths.

The film made a huge media splash when it was released, helped by my interview with comic actor Chevy Chase, who claimed socialism works and pointed to Cuba as the model. My documentary debunked the myth that environmentalists and celebrities are the friends of indigenous people. I interviewed the tribal leaders who have contempt for environmental activists and celebrities because they feel exploited by them. I also spoke in depth with the scientists monitoring the Amazonian rainforests at that time. When I showed them one of the travel guide books on the Amazon claiming that the forests were about to disappear, the scientists threw down the guide book and shouted Bullshit! on camera.

My film showed that the Amazon was one of the most intact forests in the world. The greens were using double accounting when they claimed that X number of football fields of forest per minute were disappearingthey werent taking into account the regeneration forests. The film generated huge publicity for taking on Hollywood and the environmentalists.