Singing protesters disturb an event at the COP 23 United Nations Climate Change Conference on Monday in Bonn, Germany. | Lukas Schulze/Getty Images White House coal pitch sparks climate outcry in Bonn The event quickly turned into an outpouring of anger at the U.S. for pushing for energy sources blamed for boosting the Earth's temperatures.

BONN, Germany — The Trump administration's effort to pitch coal at the international climate change meeting backfired on Monday, drawing heckling and booing at White House officials and energy industry representatives at a U.S. event.

The White House-sponsored panel discussion — held on the sidelines of the annual international climate change conference — was designed to promote more efficient use of coal and natural gas as well as nuclear power, but the event quickly turned into an outpouring of anger at the U.S. for pushing for energy sources blamed for boosting the Earth's temperatures.


“Clean coal is bull----,” one person yelled. “Liars, you are a bunch of liars,” another bellowed from the back of the room. About 100 people stood and broke into song after remarks by a White House energy aide, accusing the U.S. speakers of greed that’s “killing across the world for that coal money,” sung to the tune of “God Bless the USA.”

After the event — the only public gathering planned by the White House — some world diplomats were dismayed that the U.S. would then appear in Bonn to try to bolster American coal sales.

Tuaoi Uepa, a delegate from the Marshall Islands, called the event “ridiculous.”

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“There's no such thing as clean fossil fuels. … We can't move to the future like that,” Uepa said.

But some others were resigned to President Donald Trump’s plans to exit the Paris climate agreement struck in 2015 to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the new public push to bolster the market for U.S. coal abroad.

Jochen Flasbarth, secretary of state at the German environment ministry, said Germany was moving toward renewable energy and away from nuclear power, while also trying to speed its a shift from coal. “So, that’s very clearly not the German path,” he said of the U.S. policy. “But the Americans wanted to present this here. They can certainly do this. That’s also found protest, but that’s also OK. I think that’s part of a conference.”

At the event, White House energy aide George David Banks argued that solar and wind were not yet able to supplant fossil fuels in the developing world, and that coal and natural gas will be needed to lift people out of poverty.

"This panel is only controversial if we choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the realities of the global energy system," he said.

Barry Worthington, executive director of the United States Energy Association, a group consisting of government agencies and business, said that the U.S. would finance cleaner-burning coal plants for developing nations, but neither he nor Banks offered details.

Activists and journalists grilled Banks and the panelists — Amos Hochstein, senior vice president of the liquefied natural gas company Tellurian; Holly Krutka, vice president of coal generation and emissions technologies at Peabody Energy; and Lenka Kollar, director of business strategy at the nuclear company NuScale Power — about whether they supported the president’s call to withdraw from the Paris climate pledge.

One reporter from a Chinese news outlet pushed Banks on Trump’s tweet from before he became president that climate change was a “hoax” created by the Chinese.

Banks defended the president’s statement, saying it was taken out of context and that Trump meant that forced climate action in the U.S. would hurt the economy and manufacturing jobs.

Trump’s stance on climate change and fossil fuels has put the U.S. delegation in an uncomfortable spot in Bonn, where advocates are urging countries to ramp up their goals made under the Paris deal because emissions reductions are not yet on track to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, president of the meeting, called the COP23 summit, said on Sunday that coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel and indisputably bad for the climate.

“I really don’t want to get into an argument with the United States of America, but we all know what coal does and we all know the effects of coal mining and of coal,” Bainimarama told reporters. “There is really no need to talk about coal because we all know what coal does with regard to climate change.”

Meanwhile, a group of U.S. state governors were pushing the message that much of the U.S. still intended try to meet the goals laid out by former President Barack Obama in the Paris deal.

"Not one single nation has decided to slow down one mile per hour because Donald Trump has surrendered," Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) told reporters shortly before the event. "Every single nation we have talked to, if anything, is more energized, as is the state of Washington, to defeat climate denial."

Inslee called the administration's panel discussion a "side show" and a "blip."

Peabody Energy's Krutka told the audience that technologies to significantly reduce carbon emissions from coal and natural gas would be vital to achieving the goals of the Paris agreement.

“Nations around the world continue to use coal,” Krutka said. “We cannot ignore their emissions or we cannot meet international climate goals.” And she said technology to capture carbon emissions from power plants is “dramatically underfunded.”

Despite the high-profile event, the White House has been silent about that technology, and White House press aides did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Energy has continued to issue research grants to capture coal emissions, but the White House also proposed halving the funding for the agency’s fossil office, which handles carbon-capture research.

The administration has supported investments in highly efficient coal plants, with Treasury in July changing its guidance to U.S. representatives on boards of multilateral development banks like the World Bank.

Eric Wolff contributed to this report.

