In a symbolic reversal, the town of Cochrane, Ab., has voted to stay in a national net-zero initiative, despite being targeted by an AI-powered misinformation campaign.
“I don’t like the precedent this sets,” said the town’s mayor, Jeff Genung, at a council meeting Monday night. Genung was concerned that if Cochrane exited the program, it could be used as an example to reverse environmental policies in other communities.
The net-zero initiative, Partners for Climate Protection, is Canada’s flagship municipal environmental framework with over 500 members. It advises local governments on conducting emissions inventories, target-setting, action planning, implementation and monitoring.
The motion to withdraw from it was introduced in June 2025 by Coun. Patrick Wilson, who quoted extensively from the website of KICLEI (Kicking International Council out of Local Environmental Initiatives) — an organization that Canada’s National Observer revealed used an AI chatbot to generate persuasive reports and emails for thousands of municipal councillors. The group is deliberately named to resemble the environmental organization ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives).
Speaking to council in June, Wilson said that KICLEI’s AI-powered website expressed his thoughts “much better and more eloquently than I could.”
However, it contained misinformation. Scientists at NASA, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Melbourne told CNO that their climate research was misrepresented in KICLEI’s reports. When informed of this, the group’s founder, former Freedom Convoy participant Maggie Hope Braun, dismissed the concerns of the scientists as a “disagreement over interpretation.”
In summer 2024, KICLEI convinced Thorold, Ont., to leave Partners for Climate Protection, which it frequently uses as an example to persuade other towns to roll back their climate policies.
In June 2025, Cochrane came within a whisker of joining Thorold. A majority of its councillors were convinced by Wilson’s recital from KICLEI’s website and signalled their intention to vote to leave. However, a last-minute intervention by Genung postponed the decision until September, pending a review by the town’s Natural Environment Protection Task Force.
On Monday night, that task force reported back. It recommended that Cochrane stay in the program to “preserve access to planning tools, data and potential future funding opportunities,” such as from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund.
Despite the task force’s recommendations, Wilson doubled down on leaving the program, warning of the influence of “externally-driven” initiatives — an allusion to KICLEI’s materials which claim that United Nations-inspired net-zero policies undermine local autonomy. He was quickly supported by Coun. Alex Reed, who had introduced Wilson to KICLEI’s website.
However, Genung spoke out against KICLEI’s campaign. “The one thing that bothers me the most about this was when this came forward, I started getting lobbied fairly hard by an external body utilizing Cochrane as an example,” he said.
In the run-up to the initial vote in Cochrane, KICLEI sent a Substack post about it to thousands of municipal councillors across Canada.
Genung expressed concern about Cochrane’s image, which was impacted by Canada’s National Observer’s story, ‘Misinformation-laden website almost convinces Alberta town to abandon climate program.’
“It took us on the national stage for a while there. I thought in a fairly negative manner,” said Genung.
He urged the council to vote to stay in Partners for Climate Protection. Two councillors changed their opinions in response to the discussion. The final vote was 4 to 2 to stay.
The impact of the decision is likely to be minor, as Cochrane currently has no active projects under Partners for Climate Protection, despite joining it over 20 years ago and reaching Milestone 3 of the framework — creating a local climate action plan.
However, it sends a message of support for environmental programs, which are coming under pressure in some municipalities across Canada. On September 3, North Cowichan voted to downgrade its Zero Carbon Step Code requirements for new buildings, effectively re-opening the door to high-carbon gas systems. Just five days later, on September 8, Calgary’s executive committee voted to recommend rescinding the city’s 2021 declaration of a climate emergency.
It is unclear whether Cochrane’s decision to stay in the program reflects a wider resilience of municipal governments against AI-powered campaigns. According to Shane Gunster, a professor of environmental communication at Simon Fraser University, “pre-bunking” can help in counteracting misinformation.
“Making people aware that this is what’s going on: This is the playbook, this is what the information is going to look like, this is what they’re trying to do. That sort of thing is extremely important,” he said.
Comments
Another essential piece in exposing KICLEI as the right-wing extremist group it is. Thank you Rory White and CNO.
As a municipal councillor, I receive KICLEI’s missives, the latest one about “ill-informed Councillors” I believe, implying Councillors who don’t buy KICLEI’s messaging and disinformation are somehow not informed adequately. Climate science is daunting to many, leading them to gravitate to handy, ideologically-aligned (misleading) arguments claiming it’s all a hoax. That is easier apparently than going to legitimate sources to confirm the bad news about the science.
Thanks CNO and keep it coming. The money is on their side but fortunately the facts are on ours.
KICLEI should be targeted and shutdown or at least flagged by browsers as climate misinformation site.
Excellent job by CNO to expose a site/organization that promotes climate misinformation. All governments at all levels should be made aware to not ingest any of their misinformation. After all, should they be listening to scientists than some ad hoc website?
When they say "disagreement over interpretation", journalists' jobs are to say "Don't insult us. My readers trust science; you're insulting their intelligence to claim that."