Maurice Strong on climate 'conspiracy', Bilberberg and population control

Read the full transcript of former UNEP boss and environmentalist Maurice Strong's interview with Leo Hickman
The Guardian
Jun. 23, 2010

Maurice Strong on climate 'conspiracy', the Bilberberg Group and population control. Photograph: Wilson Chu/Reuters/Corbis

What's your reaction to how your name has been used and abused over the years?

I've got used to criticisms and, naturally, I try to make sure I don't listen to the more extreme ones because most of the people who have taken their rightwing extremist view of my life are people that I've never met. Most of my supporters are people who actually know me. I just continue to do the best I can and I don't bother to try and respond to every little bit because the best response is just to keep on doing what you think is right.

Is this a phenomenon that has happened over the past decade or so during the internet age, or have you attracted criticism all your career stretching back to the 1960s?

Way back when I headed the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, I was roundly criticised then. I learn something from criticism because when it comes from sources you respect you always examine it and learn. However, the extreme criticism and attacks exclusively come from people I don't know who have an ideological basis for their criticism, and, most often, very little factual basis. I remember years ago the rightwing magazine in the US, the National Review, had me on their cover saying something like Maurice Strong is not a household name, but it perhaps the most dangerous person around, but they didn't interview me or anything. But I've had my positives too. Just recently I was in the Netherlands receiving the Franklin Roosevelt Freedom award.

Some of the criticism, particularly in this internet age, can be like a virus, going completely unchallenged...

If I spent my time responding to it I'd be doing nothing else. The best thing is just to keep doing what you think is right. I have a website for people to get some factual information about me. That is a type of response, I suppose. Anyone who is seriously interested in me would usually do a little more homework and realise that the extreme criticisms are almost exclusively ideologically based. And they don't bother with facts, they just distort or misrepresent the facts. They haven't silenced me.

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