Mike Huckabee Is Now Peddling Climate Misinformation to Children

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Beverly Grimmett thought the kids magazines she saw stacked on a coworker’s desk this spring were perfectly innocent, until she picked one up. 

“My stomach turned,” Grimmett said. 

The guides were decorated in bright colors and cheerful cartoons, with titles like, The Kids Guide to Socialism, The Kids Guide to Our One Nation Under God, and, finally, The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change.

Grimmett, who works in construction project management at a six-person office in Norfolk, Virginia, had happened upon one of former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s educational ventures, a series called The Kids Guide from Ever Bright Media, the children’s publishing company he founded.

The company launched its children’s guide to climate change this spring, and has spent thousands of dollars on TV and social media advertising that prominently features Huckabee himself. The guide argues that the climate crisis is not as dire as mainstream media would have you believe, but it does not list its authors or what their credentials might be. And though its title claims to present the “truth,” science educators and climate researchers have found the guide to be full of factual inaccuracies. 

“It’s propaganda,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting fact-based science education, including about evolution and climate change. “It’s highly slanted with a clear ideological message, and it’s very unreliable as a guide to climate change for kids.”