Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center, the group which blends typical right-wing warnings about looming one world government with conspiracies about efforts to protect the environment, on Monday’s edition of Crosstalk claimed that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a threat to humanity or the earth at large because “trees give off carbon dioxide; all the plants around us give it off.” In fact, DeWeese said the earth may not have enough CO2, and called people who believe in human-influenced climate change “idiots.”

However, trees and plants break down CO2 as part of photosynthesis and therefore play an important role in combating the escalating rates of CO2 in the atmosphere. Deforestation, on the other hand, leads to increased rates of CO2.

DeWeese: The bottom line is, CO2 is not a poison to human beings, CO2 is not affecting the atmosphere, there is absolutely no evidence, I can say this with absolute confidence, there is no evidence of man-made global warming causing problems. We are actually going through a cooling period right now, which is going to increase over the next few years, it’s cyclical, it happens. I used to have a weatherman in my hometown who started the weather by saying ‘whether it’s cold or whether it’s hot, we’ll always have weather, whether or not’ and that’s exactly what this is. Every time we have a dry season or we have strong hurricanes or we have a really hot summer or a mild winter, these idiots start this drumbeat again, ‘global warming, see here’s what it is.’ They tried to say that this year is the warmest on record, it’s not. They will just keep coming up with his stuff, it’s just craziness. … Trees give off carbon dioxide; all the plants around us give it off. The fact is some scientists have done some studies saying we’ve got a carbon dioxide shortage right now. That then causes plants to die, that causes environmental damage.

While one Religious Right writer last week claimed that the environmental movement came from Nazi Germany, DeWeese told host Jim Schneider of VCY America that environmentalism actually came from communist leaders who were looking for a new way to destroy freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc: