In the wake of Boris Johnson’s exit from Number 10, Tory MPs, including former ministers, have created a sea change in the public conversation about U.K. climate policy. For years, perhaps decades, the cross-party Westminster consensus on climate change has been a suffocating orthodoxy that limited debate about energy and other policy agendas, leaving Britain under-resourced and facing the consequences of energy prices that are out of control. But then, just a year and a bit after the U.K.’s hosting of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, and following energy price spikes caused by lockdowns the world over, a small number of MPs began to question green dogma. This new energy and climate realism is a long overdue and welcome development. But if politicians want realistic policies, they are going to have to go much further.
The number of critics of the U.K.’s green agenda in Parliament has until now been very small. In the final Commons vote on the Climate Change Bill in October 2008, just five MPs, including the two Tellers, voted No. Outside, snow lay on the streets of Westminster for the first time in October in 74 years, in an ironic gesture from Nature herself that brought chaos to travel and power networks. The Bill, now an Act, would lock criticism of green ideology out of British politics for the next 12 years because what MPs had agreed to was in effect to hand what decision-making power they had not already transferred to the EU to the Committee on Climate Change that the Act created. In 2019, the Climate Change Act’s 80% emissions reduction by 2050 target was upped to ‘Net Zero’. But our democratic representatives had yet to find their feet. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2022 that a formal presence of the Nez Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) took the form of open letters to the Prime Minister and other briefings to the press.
Between Boris Johnson declaring that the U.K. would soon be the “Saudi Arabia of wind” and the formation of the NZSG, natural gas prices on European markets rose by around 1,000%, that is to say, 10-fold. Britain should lift the ban on fracking, urged the disobedient MPs. But the Government, and nearly the entire British political class, was still glowing from the buzz of Glasgow. The then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, declared at COP26 that financial institutions with $130 trillion in assets under management had been brought into alignment. “Make no mistake,” said former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to the assembled delegates, “the money is here.” The great and the good cheered. The following year, thanks to the lifting of lockdowns increasing demand, gas prices nearly tripled, leaving Britain’s households and industries facing ruin.
The rising prices and inflation were blamed on Russia, which wasn’t where the blame belonged. The real culprits were the lockdowns and various green policies, including a commitment to ESG, which the Bank of England and successive U.K. Governments had used their power to promote. Both lockdowns and many years of green policy failure had created scarcity, with Britain and many other European governments taxing, restricting and even prohibiting oil and gas production. Green ideological utopianism thus rolled on, but this intransigence has finally produced a response, the NZSG. Finally, it was PM Johnson vacating Downing Street and his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat, thereby triggering a by-election, that would be the first test of green ideology and a boost to the significance of this group.
The contest to select the constituency’s MP became something of a referendum on London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) expansion, championed by the Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Labour had signalled its even greater commitment to the green agenda. But it went down badly with voters, who in July last year narrowly returned an anti-Ulez Conservative candidate to Westminster – all the more surprising, given that Ulez was a policy introduced by Johnson when he was Mayor. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel became perhaps the most senior Conservative Party figure, albeit no longer in the Cabinet, to read the political runes. “Pause drive to Net Zero, the public are not ready,” she warned the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Patel was followed by former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Now a regular host on GB News, Rees-Mogg refers to Net Zero as a “fallacy” responsible for the U.K. having the most expensive energy prices in the world. The idea that Net Zero is “affordably achievable”, he argues, is a “fundamental untruth”.
These challenges to Net Zero have surely had a small but significant impact on Number 10’s decisions. The infectious realism has in the last year caused the Government to press pause, but not quite U-turn, on the gas boiler tax and the petrol/diesel car sales ban and to announce the commissioning of new gas-fired power stations. But though these are the first signs of the climate agenda suffering any meaningful setbacks in decades, they are clearly not enough. Worse, the next election is unlikely to be a referendum on Net Zero, and the Conservatives’ unpopularity is likely to bring in a Labour Government with a huge majority by default.
However, there is something that Conservative politicians with genuine concern for the future of this country can do to hasten the end of Net Zero. It may not save their Government or their seats. But it may change the debate far more radically than has so far been possible.
It is not enough merely to argue that Net Zero policies are wrong. What the public needs to hear is an explanation of how such bad policies, from Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and Ulez through to wind farms and car and boiler bans, came to dominate the political agenda, despite there being no clamour for them from the public and no test of the public’s willingness to accept the consequences. Regressive and anti-democratic policies have been imposed on the public through Westminster by what former Environment Secretary Owen Patterson a decade ago called the “green blob”.
Opposite the NZSG, but on the same benches, is a much larger caucus of green-ish Tory MPs, which includes the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho. The Conservative Environment Network (CEN) was founded by Ben Goldsmith, brother of Lord Zac (whom Boris Johnson made a peer when he lost his seat, so he could remain in Government). And it is funded through the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Clean Air Fund (CAF) – both philanthropic foundations controlled by British billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn. Ben Goldsmith is also a trustee of Hohn’s philanthropic outfit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is the major grantor to both the ECF and CAF. The Prime Minister himself was a partner at Hohn’s hedge fund, The Children’s Investment (TCI), where he, along with Hohn, was implicated in the collapse of RBS, with the public footing the bill for the £45 billion bailout.
The resources made available to green campaigning organisations by such billionaires are but a fraction of their net wealth, but well beyond what political parties or any other organisation can hope to raise from the increasingly hard-pressed public. In 2022, for example, CIFF made grants of £174 million to green organisations – a figure that vastly exceeds the total spending by all U.K. political parties each year, bar 2019 (as I point out here). And that’s just one billionaire. Another, Michael Bloomberg, spends about the same amount. Throughout the West each year, billions are pumped by the world’s wealthiest individuals into ersatz civil society organisations as seemingly diverse as Extinction Rebellion and the green-wet Tory caucus, but all in the service of the same agenda. It funds organisations like Carbon Brief – the green news outfit that came up with the lie that “wind power is nine times cheaper than gas“, which has been repeated in Westminster countless times.
Even the London Mayor is Chair of a Bloomberg-Hohn-funded outfit, C40 Cities, from where he and other politicians learn to put green ideology before the public interest and democracy, and no doubt secure future roles for themselves in the green blobocracy. Entire university research departments are funded by rich greens, such as Jeremy Grantham who funds the eponymous ‘institutes’ at LSE and Imperial College London, which enjoy direct working relationships with the Climate Change Committee. The effect of this money has been to make the Westminster parties ideologically indistinct and to align successive governments, state agencies and so-called ‘civil society’ with business agendas. The Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy Shirley Rodrigues came directly from CIFF, where she managed grants. Last year, Rodrigues was caught by the Telegraph instructing scientists at Imperial College – itself the beneficiary of more than £5 million in grants from City Hall – to try to silence critics of the Mayor’s policies.
The scandal is not merely that Net Zero policies are wrong; the scandal is green politics. It is anti-democratic and corrupting. At all levels of government, from the parish council, through Westminster and the European Union, to the United Nations, the limbs of the green blob shape the agenda. ECF grantees organise local lobbying for LTNs and candidly boast that they drafted both the EU’s climate policy roadmap to 2050 and the 2008 Climate Change Act. Once this is explained to the public, the zombie-like persistence of failed green policies is far more easily explained. The fact that even Conservative Cabinet members have been far more interested in meeting Extinction Rebellion for a sit-down than in hearing from the public about green issues, as well as the absurdity of wind farms, boiler bans and wet car prohibitions, would be far more readily understood.
Tory MPs have helped to shift the debate. The last year or so has seen conversations in the public square that were almost inconceivable in the late 2000s or early 2010s. But in order to bring realism and democracy back to policymaking, MPs must take an even bigger risk. They must explain how democracy, civil society and institutional science have been captured by the ‘green blob’ – in reality, a handful of billionaires. They were there. They saw the lobbying. They saw constituents, businesses and industries’ needs being ignored. And they saw their colleagues being brow-beaten into green utopianism. They saw billionaires’ cronies use state agencies – such as the Bank of England – to further their ideological and commercial interests. Now, if they mean what they say, it is time for them to explain what they have seen.
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Excellent round-up of history behind the madness of Net Zero, and how it now represses the wretched lives of the powerless electorate. The web of connections behind the CCC is mind-boggling.
In the “old days” philanthropic wealth (think Wellcome, Barnardo, Booth) was used mostly for the good of the people, nowadays it seems that it is being used to oppress us and make a fat profit on the side for the wealthy.
I suppose it’s the Rockefeller model of philanthropathy – being super-rich gives me the right to re-formulate society according to my vision, and my vision is hard to distinguish from my bottom line. It’s “Doing well by doing good,” like the old Dope Peddler.
Net Zero and all the policies associated with it, like getting rid of coal and gas, getting rid of petrol and diesel and coercing us all into electric cars, erecting thousands of turbines and solar panels, and all of the other absurdity are not policies that are in place to be of benefit to the citizens of this country. Infact they will impoverish us all. They are policies that pander to the World Government in waiting at the UN who seek to control all of the world’s wealth and resources using fear of a climate crisis for which no evidence exists as the excuse. Even Tony Blair whose government gave us the Climate Change Act (Miliband 2008) has said what we do here in the UK with all of this green posturing that is collectively costing us Trillions, will make no difference at all to global climate. So if it will make no difference to the climate, what is the mad rush to do all of this stuff at break neck speed as if there was no tomorrow? Why does the UK have to save the planet harder and faster than every other country? ——–Our political class no longer work for us. They work for the WEF and UN and are prepared to drastically lower our living standards so they get a little gold star on their lapels for pretending to save the planet. This nonsense that they spout about being “World Leaders” in every Green fantasy technology that cannot provide base load and the energy the country requires is surely gong to bring about their demise. They cannot continue to indulge in this nonsense and live in cloud cuckoo land forever. Something has to give. That something is called REALITY
Green Fascism enriches the political and institutional elite. It is a part of the path to world governance. Climate-Net Zero are platforms to deconstruct the modern nation and its industrial-energy foundation. There is zero science for any of it. Plant food does not cause weather and ‘green tech’ is not green. Bird choppers, lithium batteries, solar farms are disastrous for the environment and will never replace renewable clean burning hydrocarbon energy.
Yep. ——I know.———— I have been passing comment on this issue since about 2007, and on the DS for over the past year.
I have been rubbishing global warming, climate change and every other moniker they have used for over thirty years. Until recently I was ignored at best but usually laughed at and spoken down to. Some among the sheep still try this. However, even amongst the “pandemic” fraternity there is a growing realisation that eco nuttery is a scam. People are waking up and getting angry.
I am glad to hear you have been criticising the Green scam all this time. I always get the same response when this issue is discussed, even if it isn’t me that brings the subject up. People look at you like you are from Mars even when you point out FACTS. eg “Polar Bear Numbers have increased five fold in the last 60 years”——–You are met with this suspicious stare. It is that blank expression that you might be familiar with that is really saying “So what makes you think you know more than the scientists”. ——I have actually had that question put to me and my response is always quick and is this “What scientists are you talking about, can you name any of them”? They never can. So what is really happening with these people is that an idea has been firmly planted in their minds and they are oblivious to how that idea got there. They think it is common knowledge and never for a second question it. ————-The difference between you and I and them is we question everything. If you don’t you are simply cannon fodder.
At the same time TPTB are also pushing Europe into WW3. But to wage war you need a functioning steel industry. this is where they’re shooting themselves in the foot through desperation. As Smedley Butler said….War is a racket and a good way to carve up land, assets etc. But their green globalist agenda will compromise any industry needed for war like steel etc.
think they want to even things up a bit. Drag us into a war but make sure we haven’t got the guns and ammo to fight it.
I think it’s plausible that many MPs actually believe that the Earth has a “temperature” which can be adjusted by us, because lots of “scientists” say that this is so and MPs can’t be bothered to look into it. But I doubt many of them think that plans for “net zero” are at all practical – you can work this out on the back of a postage stamp. The reasons for the “pausing” could be (1) they know that implementing these policies will screw everything up royally and they don’t want to be the ones holding the baby or (2) they are just tweaking the rhetoric for the benefit of the public.
Group Think is a powerful thing.—– Even if some politicians may think something different to the climate crisis narrative privately, they still have to keep in line and keep their mouths shut. Because to open their mouths would undermine government policy. You see this as well all the time in Academia where Universities receive huge amounts of government funding for their so called “climate research”. The last thing they want is for individual scientists to be questioning the polemic and putting that funding at risk. This is why it is often older and often retired scientists no longer under pressure to stay silent who are now free to be more truthful and give a more unbiased view no longer having to adhere to the “officicial science”. —–In science you question everything. Not being able to question it means it isn’t about science.
With reference to these Net Zero fanatics and the delusion they have created I would highly recommend watching ‘climate the movie’ by Martin Durkin/Tom Nelson. It really does expose so many Net Zero myths. It was on YouTube but prob been taken down by now!!
That film, like Martin Durkins first film “The Great Global Warming Swindle” 2007 is a good starting point for anyone not already familiar with the tyranny of climate change and its policies and who maybe thought this issue was all about science. But I doubt if there are too many of those subscribing to the Daily Sceptic. You tend not to subscribe to sites like this if you just blindly accept officialdoms world view on just about everything.
Still available:
https://www.climatethemovie.net/home
Still available on Ivor Cummin’s YouTube site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4vSMj4R5Rg&t=477s
The fact that ‘Baron Deben’ (aka Selwyn Gummer) was the chief honcho of the CCC for 11years up until his stepping down last year speaks volumes for the degree of scientific rigour (or lack of) with which they run the show. Who can forget the image of Gummer, at the height of the BSE scare in 1990 offering a beefburger to his then four year old daughter in an attempt to assuage fears over the safety of beef. She declined to eat it!
The man is a dim chancer who was tainted by the MP’s expenses scandal in 2009 and who has been involved for decades with ‘Friends of the Earth,’
Yes, yes, that’s’ all very well.
But you can’t fight any of those policies unless you confront the idea that humans are causing the planet to heat up dangerously.
And that’s the problem. That idea has been cast so firmly in the minds of the masses and especially the intelligentsia, that it has become impossible to argue against it without being labelled a lunatic. Well, it doesn’t really matter actually. The entire system of communication – press, social media, internet – is now firmly censored so that almost no one will be able to hear that humans aren’t in fact warming the planet up dangerously.
And so arguing against climate policies is framed as irresponsible and heartless. You look like you want to save money when other are trying to save us from destruction.
Politicians will only be able to turn this around when they confront the fundamental lie and start saying the truth: there is no catastrophic impact from humans on the climate and we’ve all been taken for a massive ride.
Well it isn’t censored quite to the point where you cannot say “”Humans aren’t dangerously warming the planet”, but you are correct that is the direction of travel. There are some in the Climate Industrial Complex who think that people should be arrested and locked up for saying what you just said. —-Which reveals only one thing. This issue isn’t about science and never was from the start.
i think there are various types of censorship.
One is things getting blocked outright.
Another is shadow banning, which is a way of making sure that few people see something or just people who already agree with the idea.
Then there is the constant threat of repercussions – cancellation, job loss, ostracism.
This last one leads to the most insidious form of censorship which is self-censorship,
Saying humans don’t cause dangerous climate change will actually get you censored in all of the above ways to some degree.
I tend to not make statements of certainty. ——I never say things like “There is no such thing as global warming”. Because all that does is make me as dumb as the people who say there is. ——–If I make a statement of certainty I will be asked to “prove it”. –But you cannot prove a negative. So I attack their claims instead. The tactic is to let them make all the claims and then scrutinise those. —-I don’t have to know what the climate is going to do or isn’t going to do. But in reality there are no experts or scientists who know that. It is impossible to KNOW what the climate is going to do in 50 years time. Claiming you know is NOT science it is politics.
We are supposed to trust the governing classes who brought us the stupidity below. Sadly we are also supposed to regard the public who bought into it as intelligent folk getting ready to vote in the next general election as if it had anything to do with democracy:
Be has provided a useful summary but I do not buy his central hypothesis about Westminster politicians (“the elite”) being hoodwinked ionto green destruction. I am satisfied that they all wanted to go down the route of de-industrialisation and cuddly furry poverty. Who could doubt the active pursuit of it by the Cameron-Clegg administration and all Conservative led ones since.
The Tories must bear the greatest responsibility for a number of reasons. The main one is they have been on office through the worst of the roll-out and they have given political cover all the time.
I do not doubt they have used the “nudge unit” to promote green nonesence but all in secrecy from the public and voters.
Of course it was Labour who brought in the origional act but there was no Tory objection then or since.
In office we all remember the grinning Tories, led by Cameron, who gleefully watched as decades wotth of power station investment was reduced to rubble. Not so in the EU which they all admire so much and generally want to ape – the Germans kept their coal and lignite stations mothballed and they are back in production.
The public has been systematically lied to about so-called climate change and the green agenda for several decades. It’s going to take a massive effort to turn public opinion around.
Getting information about the Green Blob into the wider public consciousness won’t be easy with all the MSM pushing the green agenda and I doubt if it will make a great deal of difference to the way they’ll vote.
It will eventually be the unaffordability, inconvenience and the environmental blight of “green” infrastructure which will eventually do it. People can’t afford EVs, heat pumps or the extortionate energy bills so-called renewable energy will lead to. Once their heels dig in, they will be difficult to shift
When you consider the level of intelligence, corruptability and lack of any kind of ability which is displayed by MPs (latest evidence, William Wragg, and two other unnamed MPs) it’s hardly surprising that the country is going to hell in a handcart.
We have to stop voting for the Uni-Party and its moronic candidates.
It’s all about emotive language and appeals to altruism, and utterly facile statements you hear from the TV non-personalities greenwashing their audience with “Climate is real” or “Climate is happening”, about as meaningful as stating water or grass are real. No-one doubts its real, our issue is in the why or how.
An oft repeated trope is about “saving the planet”. Clearly, no-one wants to destroy the planet, that would be just absurd, but I do seriously question any of the measures these nutjobs are pushing will do anything to save the planet, but a tremendous amount to swell the coffers of billionaires, shills and grifters.
In an ideal world we would have no pollution, of land, sea, water or air, most reasonable people would agree, at least in principle. Measures to reduce pollution and to reduce our impact on the environment are laudable and to be encouraged.
James Delingpole (a top sceptic on most matters) came up with the best name for the Green movement – Watermelons – Green on the outside, red on the inside, the book of the same name is well worth a read.
Watermelons is nigh on impossible to get hold of unless you want to pay silly prices.
I enjoyed reading this and it gives me hope that there a frisson of light emerging in the dark, bleak climate tunnel of lies.
You haven’t explained quite why it is in the billionaires’ interests to fund all this stuff.
Revealing article. This huge funding going to climate organisations is increasingly at the expenses of other environmental issues. I chair the UK Noise Association. On energy issues we back nuclear and are very critical of wind farms. Climate activists seem to expect us to be the noise arm of the climate movement.It is, in their view, OK to oppose noise from the likes of cars and planes but we are expected to stay silent about wind turbine noise. The fact we are not prepared to play that game means that climate funders won’t touch us with a barge pole. And climate funding is the only game in town.