Almost half the Conservative Party’s backbench MPs in the British Parliament belong to a Caucus promoting extreme Net Zero ideas that is funded by a small group of green billionaire foundations. The Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which acts mostly as a lobby group, receives over 80% of its funding from the European Climate Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, Oak Foundation, WWF-UK and Clean Air Fund. As regular readers will recall, these paymasters crop up regularly whenever anyone of influence, be they journalists, academics or politicians, requires help and guidance in promoting the insanity of removing hydrocarbon energy from industrial societies within less than 30 years.
The CEN relies on ‘peer reviewed’ research to lobby for Net Zero policies at both Parliamentary and local council levels. It counts over 150 MPs and Peers in its Parliamentary caucus, over 500 local councillors, along with “international declaration signatories” numbering 300 legislators from 45 countries. The billionaire-funded operation is said to support a network of ‘Net Zero champions’ inside Parliament “to make the positive case that Net Zero is an economic opportunity as well as moral responsibility”.
It is noted by CEN that when Russia invaded Ukraine “we helped promote the narrative that reducing dependency on fossil fuels through renewable energy and insulation would help defeat Putin”. Quite how fossil fuel dependency is reduced by intermittent renewables that rely on back-up hydrocarbons is not immediately clear. It’s unlikely that Putin quaked in his boots at the thought of the widespread mobilisation of loft insulators in the U.K.
The biggest CEN paymaster seems to be the European Climate Foundation, which is heavily supported by the Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn. The CEN is run by Ben Goldsmith who is one of five trustees of Hohn’s fund, The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. He is the brother of Lord Goldsmith, the former Conservative Environment Minister who served under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Interestingly, Johnson’s father, Stanley, a long-time green activist, is listed as a member of the CEN steering committee.
The Clean Air Fund is also funded by Hohn along with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the green vehicle used to promote the political agenda of Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York. Bloomberg has a track record of funding the activities of politicians, again as regular readers will recall. He is one of the main backers of C40, a group of local civic leaders around the world, chaired by London Mayor and fireworks impresario Sadiq Khan. Removing cars from cites – and a form of rationing, whereby city dwellers are limited to a daily food quote of 2,500 calories with just 44g of meat – are just some of the proposals suggested in internal reports.
Of course targeting politicians is not a new game and lobbying legislators has long been a massive international enterprise. But the new breed of green promoters is particularly aggressive and the sums of money on offer are eye-watering. It has been reported that Hohn gave £46 million to C40. Jeremy Grantham, like Hohn a hedge fund billionaire, funds British academic institutions and journalists, but he also seems to have politicians in his sights. Speaking in 2019 to a group of business people in Copenhagen about the approaching apocalypse, he asked rhetorically, “What should I do, you say“? His suggestion: “You should lobby your Government officials – invest in an election and buy some politicians. I am happy to say we do quite a bit of that at the Grantham Foundation… any candidate as long as they are green.”
All of this, it might be argued, has led to the British Parliament donkey-nodding through some of the most restrictive and potentially most disastrous Net Zero legislation in the world. The actual target of 2050 Net Zero was rushed through in 2019 via secondary legislation by a Prime Minister without any considered debate. A green activist legal unit within Government called the Climate Change Committee keeps feet to the fire with demands for industry-destroying cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Over £12 billion a year is lifted from the pockets of electricity users to pay for hopelessly inefficient power from the breezes and sunbeams that accounts for barely 5% of total energy use. In the cities, the cars of the less well off are penalised, while empty cycle lanes, road closures, 20 mph speed limits and sky-rocketing parking charges proliferate. Meanwhile, there are not enough children in the Congo to mine all the cobalt needed for spontaneously combusting electric cars, while heat pumps spell catastrophe for the life chances of old and frail people in the depths of a cold British winter.
“We’re very grateful to all those who have supported CEN financially and made our work possible,” says the Conservative Environment Network.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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