This article was first published by the German investigative outlet CORRECTIV

Donald Trump may have only recently re-entered the Oval Office, but his radical anti-climate ideas are on the march across the globe. 

A CORRECTIV investigation can reveal that politicians, think tanks, and economists are now spreading Trump’s ideologies in Germany – right up to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its leader Friedrich Merz, the front-runner in the race to be Germany’s next leader, with federal elections due to take place on 23 February. 

It’s a late summer morning at the Alte Münze complex in Berlin-Mitte. The Prometheus Institute, a libertarian German think tank, and one of its founders, Frank Schäffler, have organised an event that they describe as a “Freedom Summit”. 

Schäffler is a member of the German Bundestag (parliament) for the Free Democrats (FDP) and is a self-described climate sceptic. The event is aimed at young people up to the age of 35 who, according to the event’s advertising, should consider the institute to be a “home for freedom”. 

On a table in a workshop held in the summit’s “Thatcher tent” lies a collage of the Statue of Liberty with Argentinian President Javier Milei’s head, wielding his trademark chainsaw. It’s a symbol of his intention to cut the state down to the bone. Growing numbers of FDP politicians have been publicly backing Milei in recent months, with party leader Christian Lindner saying on a talk show in November that we should dare to be a little more like Milei. 

At first glance, the summit appears to be a colourful mix of talks, drinks, and free market projections of the future. But there’s much more to it, as CORRECTIV’s research shows. 

We have tracked financial flows and investigated political and economic connections that extend from the U.S. and Hungary to the top echelons of German politics. 

Our findings show that this network not only includes Schäffler’s Prometheus Institute. A number of politicians from the FDP and CDU, and groups closely associated with these parties, are also closely linked to controversial anti-climate organisations in the U.S. – with some of them benefitting financially. 

Indeed, Trump and Milei’s election victories are fuelling an alliance between conservative and libertarian think tanks in the U.S. and Germany, joined by politicians and corporate lobbyists. 

This alliance currently feels emboldened to push through its political agenda. Although many of the economists and neoliberal think tanks have little or nothing in common with the authoritarian and haphazard ideas of Donald Trump, they do exhibit shared convictions on climate policy – chiefly the belief that we need an unregulated market through which the world can continue to pump oil and gas. 

Big American Donors

The case of the Prometheus Institute is indicative of how German organisations are collaborating with American groups. In 2023, the institute received $250,000 for one of its programmes from the Templeton Foundation.

The Templeton Foundation, which began as a religious sponsor of science, has a history of funding apparently anti-science activities including around climate change. To this day, criticism persists that the foundation mixes religion and science in a questionable way. The foundation told DeSmog that it “does not fund and has never funded climate change denial”, and that climate science is not one of its areas of funding.

Money from the Templeton Foundation also flows to the Atlas Network – a group based in the U.S. that has helped to turbocharge climate denial organisations across the world. In July 2019, Templeton granted $2 million to Atlas and its partners, and claims these donations are designed to help poorer people by strengthening their economies.

The Atlas Network – an official partner of Prometheus – in turn gave $25,000 to the institute via a funding programme last year. Prometheus has received at least four project-related grants from Atlas since 2015. 

The Atlas Network is an umbrella organisation for what it claims are more than 600 libertarian and neoliberal think tanks worldwide. These groups, such as the Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute (an Atlas member until 2020), often actively deny human-induced climate change.

The link between climate scepticism and Atlas doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. Atlas has previously received money from major American fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, and the owners of Koch Industries – a leading global sponsor of climate science denial. 

The network’s annual income in 2023 was just under $30 million – an increase of around half within a single year. In 2023, its four top managers earned around twice as much as the German chancellor, between $300,000 and $400,000. 

A spokesperson for the Atlas Network told CORRECTIV that it had not received any donations from oil and gas companies for 15 years. They said Atlas has a commitment to individual rights, free enterprise, and the rule of law. 

The Prometheus Institute told CORRECTIV that it values Atlas’s efforts to “strengthen and promote pro-freedom projects and institutions worldwide”. The director of the institute, Clemens Schneider, told CORRECTIV that deniers of human-caused climate change have never been given a prominent platform at Atlas. However, Atlas has worked with climate deniers in the past and continues to do so. 

According to Núria Almiron, a Spanish researcher who investigates the influence of think tanks on climate debates, “a particularly large number of radical market think tanks and those close to right-wing parties have been founded” in recent years. 

They are more numerous and more effective than left-wing or environmental think tanks, she said. “They defend the economic interests of industry – and thus find donors more easily.” 

The connection between the Atlas Network and the Prometheus Institute’s modest Berlin event shows how libertarian groups in Europe and the U.S. are currently joining forces, and how well-financed think tanks from Trump’s political ecosystem are sponsoring their new friends across the Atlantic. 

At the Berlin event, just a few weeks before November’s presidential election, the attendees had broad smiles. Despite the polls showing a close contest, they were sure that Trump would overcome his Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris. 

“Drill Baby Drill” Comes to Germany

While not all European neoliberal think tanks would subscribe to Trump’s worldview, some in Germany are adopting his aversion to climate legislation and his commitment to “drill baby drill” for more oil and gas.

The so-called Family Entrepreneurs would likely agree. The group set up an information stand at the Prometheus Freedom Summit, while Clemens Schneider, thanked the group for supporting their event. 

Contrary to what the name suggests, Family Entrepreneurs (or Familienunternehmen in German) primarily represents large corporations, according to the German NGO Abgeordnetenwatch. Family Entrepreneurs was still in favour of the continued operation of coal-fired power plants in 2022 and describes various climate protection projects as the “planned economy”. 

Frank Schäffler, the founder of Prometheus, sits on the advisory board of the Family Entrepreneurs. In November 2022, he described the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) climate activists who threw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in a Potsdam museum as a criminal organisation and compared it to the Red Army Faction (RAF), the far-left militant group that carried out several bank robberies and bomb attacks in the 1970s, killing 34 people. 

This rhetoric has spread. Alexander Dobrindt, secretary general of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), which is a sister party to Germany’s national CDU, picked up the RAF comparison a few days later. 

Members of the Atlas Network have been expressing and spreading this anger against pro-climate groups for years. The podcast Drilled keeps a list of Atlas’s global partners and the environmental and indigenous groups they have targeted. The list ranges from Aborigines in Australia to endangered peoples in the Amazon forest. 

Drilled even uncovered internal documents from the oil company BP, according to which it was planning a social media campaign against the Fridays for Future movement launched by school students across the world, with the largest Atlas members joining in. 

The Atlas Network told DeSmog that its members are “independent partners” and that it supports some groups that believe climate change is a real problem. 

Trump’s Team

Meanwhile, the CDU is flirting with another radical U.S. group: the Heritage Foundation, the organisation behind the infamous Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term. 

Although Trump has publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, the new president has appointed several well-known Heritage representatives to head important institutions such as the Federal Communications Commission, responsible for media regulation.

The 900-page Project 2025 document proposes reversing policies on climate action, slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency. 

As recently as spring 2021, the Heritage Foundation was still listed as a partner on the Atlas Network website. The foundation is considered one of the most influential conservative U.S. think tanks, and continues to question man-made climate change. Its website currently states, for example, that global warming is far lower than predicted and in no way justifies climate protection policies. 

The Heritage Foundation also supports Trump’s economic nationalism, including introducing punitive tariffs on imports in order to protect domestic industry. The Atlas Network is now distancing itself from this concept. Instead, it wants a global, unrestricted market. 

However, the fact that the Atlas Network and the Heritage Foundation differ on this point in no way weakens the power of those who oppose climate protection. 

For Dietmar Plehwe, a political scientist at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin, the dispute between the Atlas and Heritage camps doesn’t weaken but rather intensifies the debate. He predicts that “classic neoliberals and nationalist market radicals could complement each other in the fight for fossil fuels.” 

They may have differences of opinion, for example on tariffs, but overall they are capable of appealing to large audiences and may even increase their influence by working in competition. 

Meanwhile, the CDU has close links to the Heritage Foundation via The Republic, a Berlin-based think tank.

The CDU’s campaign manager, Christine Carboni, spoke at an event organised by The Republic in September. At a strategy panel during the event, a Heritage representative explained how the U.S. election campaign could still be influenced. And a look at the full guest list reveals how well the American and German think tanks are now working together. 

The influential U.S.-based Tax Reforms Association was there, alongside the New Social Market Economy Initiative (INSM), a German group that in 2021 helped to organise the controversial campaign against the Green candidate for chancellor Annalena Baerbock. A large-scale advertising campaign across German social media showed her in a robe, falsely insinuating that she wanted to impose 10 prohibitions analogous to Moses, such as a ban on flying or driving a combustion engine car. 

The INSM told DeSmog that its management changed one year after this campaign. 

But who is behind The Republic, the organisation that many believe is attempting to pull the policies of the CDU and Friedrich Merz further to the right, away from climate targets and renewable energy? 

CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Credit: Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Steffen Prößdorf (CC-BY-SA-4.0)

The association, whose website describes climate activists as “unscrupulous” and “out of their minds”, is headed by Armin Petschner-Multari. He was pleased about the group’s close partnership with the Heritage Foundation, he told CORRECTIV in September. Transatlantic dialogue is a key focus for The Republic, he said.

Even CDU leader Friedrich Merz said he supports the new think tank, wishing its founder “every success” in an interview with the business daily news service Handelsblatt in 2021. 

The Republic also has no issue with cosying up to Hungarian prime minister and Trump acolyte Viktor Orbán. At a Berlin conference in October, The Republic cooperated with the Danube Institute and Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) – think tanks that are close to the Hungarian leader.

Merz’s book, Neue Zeit, neue Verantwortung (New Times, New Responsibility), has been translated into Hungarian and published by MCC. The book and Merz’s “extraordinary” career were praised in detail by the Hungarian think tank. 

These connections reveal an axis of radical neoliberal and anti-climate think tanks running between the U.S., Germany, and Hungary. 

They all share destructive climate policy aims. In fact, The Republic even courts radical climate deniers.

At an informal breakfast after the Berlin conference in October, addresses were delivered by Kevin Dayaratna and Anthony B. Kimvon from the Heritage Foundation. Dayaratna also works for the Heartland Institute, and recently wrote on X that there is no such thing as a climate crisis. 

Over coffee, salmon and German cheese rolls, they explained why the earth’s temperature would hardly rise if the EU and the U.S. were to burn all of their fossil fuels. Instead, oil and gas should continue to be extracted in order to spark “vibrant growth”.

With Trump back in the White House, it seems as though America will be adopting this mission statement – and with the German elections rapidly approaching, Europe may soon follow. 

The post Who is Importing Donald Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda to Germany? appeared first on DeSmog.