On the March 14 edition of far-right outlet Rebel News’ The Ezra Levant Show, longtime climate denier Marc Morano appeared in a segment entitled “Coronavirus hysteria is the future environmentalists want.” He stated that climate activists are “just drooling at the prospect of this government expansion, the government power that is going to happen because of coronavirus fears, and they want to apply that, they want those powers for climate.” And writing in Breitbart on March 18, Penny Starr took a few examples of straight reporting that pollution has declined because of the pandemic to claim that “the media is celebrating that the coronavirus –– which has killed over 3,000 in China –– could be combating climate change as nations’ economies around the world are ground to a halt,” adding, “Leftists hope this trend continues.”

Another emerging claim within right-wing media is the idea that the coronavirus is accomplishing the “goals” of the Green New Deal. Daniel Turner focused his article in The Federalist on this idea, concluding that “coronavirus is a glimpse of the long-term pain a Green New Deal and environmental radicalism would inflict on America.” Rush Limbaugh also picked up on it, claiming, “If you want to know what the Green New Deal would look like, you're starting to see it.” And on March 19, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said that “The coronavirus chaos is nothing compared to what the Green New Deal would do to our society, and I'm sort of glad that we get a little preview of this so that people stop talking seriously about this policy proposal.”

On the more extreme side of things, Morano retweeted a post titled “The Green New Deal Has Arrived” promoting a YouTube video by fringe, far-right climate denier Tony Heller in which he claimed that climate activists and the media “are celebrating the demise of Western civilization.”

These right-wing media figures and climate deniers generally assume that the Green New Deal will lead to mass deaths, an economic recession, some extremely authoritarian form of socialism or communism, and total government control over our lives. Although he didn’t point to the Green New Deal by name, longtime denier and tobacco and coal industry shill Steve Milloy recently shared the sentiment that the coronavirus crisis is being used to bring about “climate communism.”