Imagine That! TikTok Pledges Climate Somethingsomething, Then Sponsors Canadian Denial-Fest W. Pipeline Jesus

Despite social media giant TikTok’s ambitious campaigns to combat climate denial, go carbon neutral, and support sustainable advertising on its wildly popular video platform, the company sponsored a Canadian right-wing conference featuring a retinue of long-established climate deniers earlier this month. TikTok backed the annual meeting of the conservative Canadian political networking organization Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN), a recent member of the anti-climate Atlas Network of think tanks, on 6-9 May in Ottawa, Ontario.

At the event, established climate deniers and former Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rubbed shoulders with conservative Canadian politicians, including opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, to listen to speeches decrying what the Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, called “eco-extremism” in Canadian government.

“Anti-resource, keep-it-in-the-ground, eco-extremism has left us [Canada] less able to provide a secure supply of energy,” said Premier Smith, who earlier this month told a gathering of Christian leaders that building a new oil pipeline to the west coast of Canada is consistent with the teachings of Jesus. “We have to be able to use fossil fuels as the only available alternative [in Alberta], or literally people die.”

TikTok’s sponsorship of an event with such blatant climate misinformation has led experts in climate messaging, such as Polina Zabrodskaya, an advertising creative director, to call TikTok’s contradicting commitments “greenwashing.”“TikTok’s only true goal is protecting and increasing profits. Being openly anti-environment is bad for business, but being openly anti-fossil-fuel is just as risky. They have to sell to both sides,” Zabrodskaya told DeSmog. “Sponsoring a climate denial conference while sitting on sustainability committees and talking about sustainable advertising is how TikTok covers both flanks.”

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https://www.desmog.com/2026/05/22/tiktoks-climate-pledges-collide-with-sponsorship-of-climate-deniers/