CCDH at the Climate Information Integrity Summit 2025
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and it affects us all. Yet unregulated social media and search engine companies have enabled a cascade of misinformation and disinformation about climate change, which stalls climate action.
CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed talked about the dangers of climate mis and disinformation and the role that social media companies have at CAAD’s Climate Information Integrity Summit in Brazil in preparation for COP30 later this year.
Watch our CEO Imran Ahmed’s speech:
Transcript
Democracy, liberty, and science depend on freedom of expression.
The fathers of free speech – Milton, Locke, Madison, et al – understood this clearly.
They knew our societies could not flourish without the right to speak, challenge, and dissent.
But they also explicitly recognized that freedom must never become a license to harm.
James Madison, the author of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, warned, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.”
That is, even freedom can become destructive if misused.
Joseph Goebbels once mocked, “It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed.”
Decades later, Vladimir Putin echoed the same playbook—crying “freedom of speech” when Western democracies pushed back against Russian militarized disinformation campaigns.
Enemies of democracy do not revere free speech; they exploit it until it’s no longer needed.
Today, social media companies claim they are the true protectors of freedom of speech, but they seek only to use it as a shield to protect their own commercial interests.
They claim that regulation is akin to censorship, but their intent is not to protect our freedoms… It is to protect themselves and their companies from speech that might hold them accountable.
How do I know this? Look at their actions.
Elon Musk’s X Corp unsuccessfully sued my organization simply for quantifying how his platform spreads hate…
He wasn’t defending free speech. He sought, as a judge in California ruled, to silence the voices of criticism.
Mr Musk has claimed that he is a true defender of free speech. He once tweeted that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” yet defined free speech simply as whatever is legal.
That is nonsensical, reductive billionaire logic, defining democracy and the values that underpin it as doing whatever you can get away with without consequences.
Madison knew that free speech is about more than the right to speak; it’s about the right to know the truth. He said, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
Platforms aren’t defending liberty; they suppress the truth and knowledge, and promote and profit from lies every day.
In the US, the First Amendment protects us from government censorship.
But democratic societies have the right to demand transparency and responsibility from powerful private companies—especially when the stakes involve the survival of our planet.
At my organization, we’ve painstakingly used data science and investigative research to document how social media enables climate denial.
In our report, The Toxic Ten, we showed that just ten publishers created nearly 70% of Facebook’s climate denial content. This wasn’t hidden; it was openly spread, algorithmically boosted, and monetized.
Even after being reported, most of it stayed online. And the platforms were not just profiting from it, they were sharing those profits back with the cynical producers of these lies.
You see, that’s the point. Platforms deliberately choose not to act because lies generate profit both for them and the people to whom they give their megaphone.
These lies aren’t just alternative facts.
Climate denial doesn’t aim to just confuse people.
It is designed quite precisely and cynically to delay action – as our 2024 report The New Denial shows to – damage trust, and sabotage cooperation precisely when the world needs unity most.
This isn’t freedom of speech; it’s deceptive manipulation.
Social media today isn’t a free exchange of ideas.
It’s a polluted space where outrage and clicks outweigh truth.
Real freedom demands informed citizens.
When powerful voices drown out the truth, that’s not freedom; it’s digital feudalism —where a few powerful voices dominate, while the majority remain unheard.
COP30 must address this problem directly. Tackling climate change requires more than technology or funding—it demands trust.
The climate crisis isn’t just a scientific or political issue, it’s a communications issue. If we can’t agree on facts, we can’t find solutions.
If lies spread unchecked, action will stall.
Trust in science, in institutions, in each other is necessary. And trust cannot survive when lies spread unchecked.
We aren’t calling for censorship.
We’re calling for transparency, for more informed speech — so we know who moderates content and who funds it.
We’re calling for accountability — so platforms take responsibility for harm.
We’re calling for democratic responsibility — so the most powerful communication tools aren’t the least regulated.
We can’t solve climate change if lies continue to build in our information ecosystem, blocking us from seeing the truth.
For too long, we’ve tried negotiating with these platforms. It hasn’t worked. They profit by causing harm through addictive algorithms.
As Brazil hosts COP30, it can lead — not just in policy but in courage.
We can’t protect the planet unless we first protect the truth.
The time to act is now.
Inaction means environmental collapse, societal breakdown, and the erosion of democracy itself.
I have a child at home in Washington DC.
Her smiling face is the last thing I saw when I left, and it’s the reason I am here.
Because I would only leave her, leave that joy, that love, that hope, if I believed that in doing so I could help make the world better.
Because I know that the world is under threat. It is being ravaged by two interlinked crises: climate disorder and information disorder.
Both driven by human greed, both sustained by indifference, and both are stealing the future from our children, bit by bit.
Let’s not be timid, tricked, or silenced by billionaires pretending to champion freedom.
This is a fight we must win. Not tomorrow, not next year, but right now.
For the future of democracy and the survival of our planet.
For my child, my family. For yours. For all of us. Thank you.