A UN official delivers a speech. An account of that speech is written up to look like a news story. It gets published on a website funded by the UN. Casual readers are unlikely to appreciate that this is 100% spin.

Did you know that 2015 is “the biggest year since 1945”? Mary Robinson, a former President of Ireland, has decreed it so. Now employed as a United Nations special climate envoy, Robinson – who was talking up the Paris UN climate summit scheduled for December – says that:

Now isn’t the moment to get cold feet. 2015 is the moment to catalyse…it is the time for climate justice. [ellipsis in original]

She also apparently

called for $90 trillion of investment in the next 15 years to low carbon development, and for two-thirds of remaining fossil fuels to be left in the ground.

The above account doesn’t come from a bona fide news source. Rather, it appears on a website called ClimateActionProgramme.org. This is a shadowy organization that “works in a unique, contractual partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).” Its About Us page talks about partners, supporters, and clients but doesn’t say who these might be. Nor is there any indication of how much the UN spends on this entity and where additional funding comes from.

The website seems deliberately vague regarding the identity of Climate Action’s leadership, spokespeople, and employees. Oddly, that info appears on another website called COP20Lima.org, which uses the identical street address and phone number as Climate Action:

5 Prescot Street
London
E1 8PA
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)20 7871 0173

(Still another shadowy organization called Green Media also uses those coordinates. It, too, works with UNEP on websites, newsletters, and printed materials – and on organizing meetings, forums, and conferences – but fails to identify its leadership or its staff members on its About Us page.)

What we’re looking at here is a UN-orchestrated propaganda machine. A UN official delivers a speech in support of a UN summit. An account of that speech is then written up to look like a bona fide news story. The fake story is published on a website funded by the UN. Casual readers don’t realize the blatant conflict-of-interest – that the UN is spinning the remarks of one of its own in order to promote its own event.

What’s going on here? Why is the United Nations manufacturing fake climate news?

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