Group denying climate change claims its voice suppressed

The group’s “counter conference” at the Hotel California filled just a handful of the 70 seats, and was punctuated by shouts from protesters. Unlike at past UN summits where their presence was a fixture, the mostly American sceptics have this time been forced to hold court at a downtown Paris hotel, dogged by climate change activists.

“This is the only group essentially that has had to make their own space and their own time to get heard,” said Jim Lakey, of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is sceptical of climate change. To diplomats and officials, the sceptics are yesterday’s men. “Now you don’t hear much about sceptics,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday as he opened the second week of talks to bind both rich and poor nations to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. “The only endangered species now,” said Unilever Chief Executive Paul Polman during a business leaders’ lunch in Paris this week, “is the climate change denier.”