Image of Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK. BBC Question Time.
‘What makes you think you understand how climate change works better than all of the world’s scientific experts?’
The leader of Reform UK was dealt a humiliating hand on BBC Question Time after facing a backlash against his arguments on climate change and climate denial.
Richard Tice got owned by leader of the Green Party Carla Denyer during a lively exchange about what action needs to be taken to combat the climate crisis.
The leader of the right-wing populist party, who’s been known to make bizarre and inaccurate statements on climate science denial, instigated some eye rolls when he stated, “the climate has changed for millions and millions of years.. way before man-made CO2 emissions”.
He went on to face ridicule when questioned on his understanding of climate science and his lack of scientific background by Green Party leader and engineer by trade, Carla Denyer.
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Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
The Green MP said: “The news has been full of pretty alarming evidence that climate change is not a concern that is going to come down the track sometime in the future, it’s here right now.
“And the best time that we could have brought in the policies to tackle this was of course decades ago. We’ve known about climate change my whole life. Successive governments in the UK and internationally largely failed to do that. So the second best time to do it is right now.”
She added: “I’m an engineer by background. I didn’t want to be a politician, I’m in this because I realised the people in power making the decisions were not making the right ones to tackle this crisis.”
The former prime minister attacks flagship climate deals and makes false claims about electric vehicles, Russia’s influence on energy policies, and net zero.
The new book by former Prime Minister Liz Truss urges the UK, U.S. and EU to drop their landmark climate change laws, spreads falsehoods about green policies, and fondly recalls an attempt to cancel a major climate conference.
Truss, who is the Conservative MP for South West Norfolk, resigned as prime minister in October 2022 after just 49 days in office.
Since leaving 10 Downing Street, Truss has attempted to expose the “deep state” forces that allegedly brought down her premiership, while advocating for “free market” ideas within the Conservative Party, helping to launch the Popular Conservatives group.
In her book, Ten Years to Save the West, which she is promoting widely this week, Truss writes that “the zealous drive to net zero”, the UK’s legally binding 2050 climate target, amounts to “unilateral economic disarmament” and is “a drag on economic growth”. She also claims that, while serving in the Treasury, she attempted to cancel the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Truss writes: “We should abolish the Climate Change Act and instead adopt a new Climate Freedom Act that enables rather than dictates technology”. She adds that “the U.S. should reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, and the EU should abandon its equivalent measures”.
The Climate Change Act legalised the UK’s commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels. The Inflation Reduction Act is a $369 billion package of grants and subsidies by the U.S. government to spur green technology investment.
Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.
Restricting global temperatures to this threshold – the target agreed by the UK as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement – would prevent the worst and most irreversible effects of climate change, including floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires.
In the book, Truss also attacks climate advocates, writing that “the environmental movement is fundamentally driven by the radical left”, adding: “This ‘watermelon’ tendency is green on the outside, red on the inside – a modern rebranding of socialism. It features the same instincts of collectivism and authoritarianism.”
Truss writes that “we should cancel” the United Nations annual COP climate summit, and falsely claims that electric vehicles are worse for the environment than those powered by fossil fuels.
“In recent years, more radical forms of climate misinformation and disinformation have become mainstreamed”, said Jennie King, director of climate research and policy at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue think tank. “Such content continues to grow in virality and engagement online, but its impacts are vastly increased when platformed in the media or by politicians.”
King said “the normalisation of wild and outlandish claims”, with climate action “being framed through a conspiratorial, tribalist and anti-scientific lens”, can lead to “real-world harm”.
“When such ideas are conveyed from the very corridors of power, it sets a dangerous precedent”, she added.
The IPCC warned in 2022 that efforts to tackle climate change were being delayed by “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”.
Truss Claims ‘Couldn’t be Further from the Truth’
Truss’s book is published by Biteback Publishing, a company owned by former Conservative deputy chair and major party donor Michael Ashcroft.
The former prime minister dedicates a chapter to green policies, titled ‘A Hostile Environment’, apparently a play on the term used by the Conservative government about its anti-immigration policies.
Truss writes that current environmental policies should be scrapped in favour of a “free market” approach. On energy, she calls for more fossil fuel extraction, advocating a mix of “oil and gas as well as nuclear and renewables”, adding: “The use of North Sea oil and gas is crucial, so there needs to be investment in that too. There also should be fracking in the UK.”
Fracking for shale gas is a controversial practice that risks causing air, water, and noise pollution.
She fails to mention that oil and gas firms receive major subsidies and tax breaks from the government, which would logically be removed in a “free market” energy system. The UK government has given £20 billion more in support to fossil fuel producers than renewables companies since 2015.
Truss’s book also attacks the multilateral UN COP process, which has seen agreements on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and financial support for poorer countries suffering the worst effects of climate change.
Truss writes that “we should cancel the COP gravy train”. She claims that, in 2018, when she was chief secretary to the Treasury, she made “11th-hour attempts to ditch COP26”, the UN climate summit hosted by the UK in 2021, arguing that it was not a spending priority.
At COP26, nearly 200 countries agreed to ramp up efforts to cut emissions, also calling on wealthy countries to double their funding to poorer nations that have contributed the least to climate change. More than 40 countries also pledged to quit coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel and the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions.
The book also spreads false claims about climate policies. Truss writes that “in the UK and Europe, Russia has funded anti-fracking campaigns”, a claim which is not supported by any evidence.
Truss claims that policies like “the switch from petrol to diesel in cars or the use of electric vehicles, have either harmed the environment in other ways or empowered our polluting adversaries elsewhere in the world”.
Colin Walker, head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think tank, told DeSmog: “The notion that the switch to electric vehicles will have little discernible environmental impact, and make us dependent on imported gas and coal, couldn’t be further from the truth.
“The total lifetime CO2 emissions of an electric vehicle, from being built to being driven, are three times lower than a petrol vehicle – a figure that will only get higher as our grid becomes cleaner. And while older technologies like petrol cars and gas boilers rely on fossil fuels imported from abroad, EVs and heat pumps can be powered by electricity generated by British wind and solar farms.”
Truss also writes of “ludicrous claims that pursuing a net zero agenda … will boost the economy and drive growth”.
Walker added: “The UK’s net zero economy is now worth £74 billion, and grew by nine percent in 2023. The wider economy grew just 0.1 percent. Talking down the economic opportunities net zero has to offer the UK is at odds with a growth agenda when the U.S., EU and China are all competing for clean industries.”
Truss’s Climate Denial Ties
Truss has a long history of opposing climate policies. In the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest, she attacked solar farms on agricultural land and, during her brief time in 10 Downing Street, she overturned the UK’s ban on fracking. (A policy reversed by her successor, Rishi Sunak.)
As DeSmog reported at the time, Truss’s leadership campaign received £30,000 from a pro-fracking lobby group, £10,000 from a climate denial activist, and £100,000 from the wife of a former BP oil executive. Truss received a further £5,000 from Lord Vinson, a Tory peer who has provided funding to the UK’s leading climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Since leaving office, Truss has received £250,000 in speaking fees, including £7,600 last April from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think tank that has long promoted climate science denial. Heritage President Kevin Roberts provides a long and glowing blurb for Truss’s book.
Earlier this year, Truss helped to launch the Popular Conservatives (PopCon), a new initiative run by Truss-ally Mark Littlewood, the former director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank which received funding from oil major BP for at least 50 years.
At the PopCon launch, Truss attacked “net zero zealotry”, claiming voters “don’t like the net zero policies which are making energy more expensive”
The Institute of Economic Affairs has its headquarters on Lord North Street, Westminster. Credit: Des Blenkinsopp (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A senior figure at the influential Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank contributed to a new documentary that spread numerous myths about climate change.
Stephen Davies, an academic who has worked in educational outreach roles at the IEA since 2010, appeared several times in Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth – a new film directed by climate science denier Martin Durkin.
In the documentary, Davies claims that climate activists want to impose an “austere” life on ordinary people. “Behind all the talk about a climate emergency, climate crisis” is “an animus and hostility towards” working-class people, “their lifestyle, their beliefs and a desire to change it by force if necessary,” he says.
According to the website Skeptical Science, which debunks climate misinformation, Climate The Movie contains more than two dozen myths about climate change. The film suggests that we shouldn’t be worried about greenhouse gas emissions, because plants need carbon dioxide. “We’re in a CO2 famine,” one interviewee claims.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Climate The Movie producer Thomas Nelson told DeSmog that “I see the misguided fight against carbon dioxide as being as crazy as fighting against oxygen or water vapour, and I think scaring innocent children about this is deeply evil”.
The IEA said that “Steve firmly believes that climate change is happening and carbon emissions are having an impact. His view that climate policy imposes costs, particularly on working-class communities, is entirely mainstream. IEA publications and spokespeople have supported action on climate change, including carbon pricing.”
A screenshot of Stephen Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth. Credit: Climate The Movie / YouTube
In 2018, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from oil major BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005.
The IEA has extensive influence in politics and the media. It was pivotal to Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership as prime minister, and has boasted of its access to Conservative ministers and MPs. During the year ending March 2023, the IEA appeared in the media on 5,265 occasions, a figure 43 percent higher than its previous peak in 2019.
The group has also received donations from a number of philanthropic trusts accused of channelling funds from the fossil fuel industry and helping to support climate science denial groups. The IEA is a member of the Atlas Network – an international collaboration of “extreme” free market groups that have been accused of promoting the interests of fossil fuel companies and other large corporations.
It’s not known if the IEA has received funding from BP since 2018.
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas would be “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed on North Sea oil and gas firms, and said that the government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves is a “welcome step”.
The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian think tanks and pressure groups that are in favour of more fossil fuel extraction and are opposed to state-led climate action. These groups are characterised by a lack of transparency over their sources of funding. The IEA does not publicly declare the names of its donors.
“From Brexit to Trussonomics, the IEA has consistently peddled and promoted destructive and damaging policies,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told DeSmog. “Yet perhaps nothing will prove more dangerous long term than the stream of climate denialism and calls to delay action that have been pouring out of Tufton Street for many years.
“Clearly the IEA is now ramping up its climate culture war and the Conservative Party has been following suit. The cross-party consensus on climate action we used to have in Parliament is under strain like never before.”
The IEA and Stephen Davies were approached for comment.
Climate The Movie
During the documentary, Davies suggests that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is being used to limit the freedom of individuals. He claims that climate activists want to impose “a much more austere simple kind of lifestyle” on people “in which the consumption choices of the great bulk of the population are controlled or even prohibited.”
Davies adds that: “What you have here is a classic example of class hypocrisy and self-interest masquerading as public spirited concern. You could take these kinds of green socialist more seriously if they lived off grid, they cut their own consumption down to the minimum, they never flew. Instead you get constant talk about how human consumption is destroying the planet but the people making all this talk show absolutely no signs of reducing their own.”
The documentary also features an interview with Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group. Peiser has previously claimed that it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis”, while the GWPF has expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.
The film was favourably reviewed by commentator Toby Young in The Spectator magazine, who described it as “a phenomenon”. Young has previously said that he’s sceptical about the idea of human-caused climate change.
The IPCC has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, while scientists at NASA have found that the last 10 years were the hottest on record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest since records began in 1880.
The IPCC has also warned that false and misleading information “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of climate action.
The documentary also features Claire Fox, a member of the House of Lords who was nominated for a peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020.
Fox used the documentary to claim that, by tackling climate change, people will be forced to pay more “to simply live the lives that they were leading”.
She suggests that supporters of climate action are trying to “take away what we consider to be not luxuries but necessities.”
The UK’s Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on measures to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, estimates that the combined policies will cost less than one percent of the country’s national output.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s independent economic forecaster, has also said that “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Claire Fox and the GWPF were approached for comment.
A Charitable Cause?
The IEA is a registered charity, meaning that it receives generous tax breaks.
The group justifies this charitable status partly on the basis of its educational outreach programme, which aims to “equip tomorrow’s leaders with a deep understanding of free market economics”.
The IEA claims that: “Our aim is to change the climate of opinion in the long term and our work with students is a key part of this.”
In the year ending March 2023, the group claimed to have engaged with 3,500 students and 1,200 teachers via its seminars, internships and summer schools.
Formerly the IEA’s head of education and now a senior education fellow, Davies is a senior member of the group’s outreach programme. He is the first person listed in the IEA’s student speakers brochure, which advertises the IEA staff members who are available to speak at schools or universities.
The brochure also lists the IEA’s chief operating officer Andy Mayer, who has said that the government should “get rid of” its target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model”.
The non-profit Good Law Project recently made a complaint to the Charity Commission about the IEA, claiming that the libertarian group had breached charity rules. Namely, the Good Law Project claims that the IEA is in breach of rules stating that charities must avoid presenting “biased and selective information in support of a preconceived point of view”.
The Charity Commission rejected this complaint, stating that: “We have assessed the concerns raised and have not identified concerns that the charity is acting outside of its objects or the Commission’s published guidance.”
Good Law Project campaigns manager Hannah Greer told DeSmog: “It won’t be a surprise to anyone that the IEA is cementing its role as a major mouthpiece for climate change scepticism. It’s a huge scandal that the IEA is still allowed to peddle fringe views under the guise of being an ‘educational charity’ while benefiting from taxpayer subsidies.
“This has been allowed to happen because we have seen alarming and unambiguous regulatory failure from the Charity Commission – who have been presented with evidence of how the IEA is flouting charity law, but have chosen to look the other way.”
Al Gore, former vice president of the United States, speaks onstage at The New York Times Climate Forward Summit 2023 at The Times Center on September 21, 2023, in New York City. (Photo: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for The New York Times)
“They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people’s eyes just in the name of greed,” the former vice president said.
In reflecting on nearly 50 years of climate advocacy, former Vice President Al Gore said that he had “underestimated” the greed of the fossil fuel industry.
The remarks came in an interview published in USA Today on Sunday. When asked if he had any regrets, Gore responded that he had “put every ounce of energy” he had into climate advocacy, but added:
“I was pretty slow to recognize how important the massive funding of anti-climate messaging was going on. I underestimated the power of greed in the fossil fuel industry, the shamelessness in putting out the lies.”
“They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people’s eyes just in the name of greed,” Gore continued.
“What’s at stake is so incredible.”
Gore, who tried to raise awareness about the climate crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as 1981 and brought the issue to national attention in 2006’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has taken a harsher tone against oil, gas, and coal companies in recent months. In August 2023, he said that the “climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis,” and in September, he implored the industry to “get out of the way.” In December, he lamented that the industry had “captured the COP process,” referring to the appointment of the United Arab Emirates national oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to preside over the United Nations’ COP28 climate conference in that country.
In the USA Today interview, Gore also named the fossil fuel industry when asked about his greatest frustration.
“Well, that we haven’t made more progress,” Gore answered, “and that some of the fossil fuel companies have been shameless in providing, continuing to provide lavish funding for disinformation and misinformation.”
“What’s at stake is so incredible,” he added.
However, Gore told USA Today that he tried not to focus on his anger, but instead on continuing to raise awareness about the crisis and what can be done about it. And he remained hopeful that his grandchildren would live in a world in which people had come together and acted in time.
“We’ve got all the solutions we need right now to cut emissions in half before the end of this decade,” he said. “We’ve got a clear line of sight to how we can cut the other 50% of emissions by mid century.”
He also encouraged more people to get involved with the climate movement.
“I would say the greatest need is for more grassroots advocates because the most persuasive advocates are those in your own community,” he said.
Lee Anderson MP has defected to Reform UK. Credit: Official House of Commons portrait
The Ashfield MP, who left the Conservatives today for Reform, shares his new party’s trenchant opposition to net zero.
The UK’s main climate science denial party has gained its first member of parliament with the defection of suspended Conservative MP Lee Anderson.
Anderson announced today that he was joining Reform UK, a right-wing, anti-green and anti-immigration party which is currently polling at 12 percent.
Reform campaigns to “scrap all of net zero” and last year received £135,000 from donors who deny climate science or have business links to fossil fuels.
Anderson has repeatedly attacked the government’s net zero policies, arguing in February 2024 that a net zero UK “wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”.
He is also a vocal backer of new oil, gas and coal extraction in the UK. He has suggested that coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, is environmentally sustainable because “coal 100 million years ago was trees and plants”.
In 2022 he supported the decision to open a new coal mine in Cumbria, which he described as “part of the net zero journey”.
Since June 2023 Anderson has worked as a presenter on right-wing broadcaster GB News alongside Reform’s leader Richard Tice and its honourary president Nigel Farage.
While Anderson has contradicted the scientific consensus on net zero and fossil fuels, Reform’s leadership has gone further, explicitly rejecting the climate science on global warming.
Tice has said “CO2 isn’t poison, it’s plant food”, while the party’s London mayoral candidate Howard Cox has said “man is not responsible for global warming”.
Reform’s manifesto falsely claims that “scientists disagree as to how much” humans have had an impact on global warming. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.
When approached for comment, a Reform UK spokesperson told DeSmog: “You know what our policies are towards net zero and the climate agenda” adding that it should come as no surprise when Reform is “supported by others that agree with us”.
Lee Anderson and the Conservative Party had not responded at time of publication.
Anderson was suspended from the Conservative Party last month after saying “Islamists” had “got control” of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is a Muslim, adding that the Mayor had “given our capital city away to his mates”.
The MP had resigned as the Conservative Party’s deputy chair in January to protest the government’s bill on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, which he considered too weak.
Anderson and Climate Denial
Anderson has repeatedly attacked net zero policies, arguing last month that if the UK “became net zero tomorrow” it wouldn’t affect global warming due to higher volumes of emissions produced by other countries.
In September 2022, Anderson signed an open letter written by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of backbench MPs that was published in The Telegraph. It called on the UK government to green-light fracking for shale gas, and argued that gas projects should be “fast-tracked” in light of the energy crisis.
At last month’s launch of Popular Conservatives – a new Tory faction run by Mark Littlewood, the former director of the BP-funded Institute of Economic Affairs think tank – Anderson said net zero “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from “the odd weirdo”.
Last July, Anderson called the climate activist group Just Stop Oil “the biggest menace in our society” in a post on X (formerly Twitter) where he celebrated the approval of hundreds more oil and gas licences in the North Sea.
GB News and Fossil Fuels
In June 2023, Anderson joined right-wing outlet GB News as a presenter, a role which pays him £100,000 per year – around £20,000 more than his MPs’ salary.
A DeSmog investigation last year found one in three GB News presenters broadcast climate science denial, while half attacked net zero policies.
GB News is co-owned by British millionaire Paul Marshall, who in October DeSmog revealed has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuel interests through his hedge fund Marshall Wace in the year to June 2023.
The channel’s other biggest shareholder, the United Arab Emirates-based investment firm Legatum Group, runs the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a conservative project fronted by Canadian climate denier Jordan Peterson.
ARC’s advisors include some of the world’s most prominent climate crisis deniers, including Danish writer Bjorn Lomborg, US activist Michael Shellenberger, and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is also a GWPF trustee.
GB News is the subject of several ongoing probes by broadcast regulator Ofcom, and earlier this month reported losses of £42 million in the year to May 2023, and £76 million since its launch in 2021.
