HEAT: Harmful Environmental Agendas & Tactics

This report examines the narratives, actors and tactics driving climate-related misinformation, disinformation and malinformation across Germany, France and the Netherlands. Drawing on digital content collected between October 2024 and April 2025, it analyses activity on X, Facebook, Telegram and alternative media through four categories: conspiracy narratives, culture war and partisan discourse, hostile state actors, and fossil fuel-aligned campaigns. The findings show how conspiracy theories about geoengineering and weather manipulation, anti-elite narratives and misleading claims about climate policies are adapted and amplified across platforms, including through Russia-linked information networks.

The key takeaway is that climate disinformation increasingly extends beyond outright denial of climate science to narratives portraying climate action as authoritarian, economically harmful or politically motivated. The report argues that these narratives contribute to polarisation, institutional distrust and resistance to climate policies. It recommends recognising climate disinformation as a systemic risk under the EU Digital Services Act, strengthening platform transparency and accountability, monitoring coordinated manipulation, regulating misleading fossil fuel advertising and establishing coordinated mechanisms to respond to disinformation campaigns.