UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.
The jury is now deliberating the verdict in a case involving Just Stop Oil supporters Daniel Shaw, Cressie Gethin, Lucia De-Abreu-Whittaker, Louise Lancaster, and Roger Hallam. The five are currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court. They are charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in connection with the M25 gantry actions in November 2022.
They were first arrested in 2022 either pre-emptively in police raids at their homes after attending a Zoom call (in which a Sun journalist was present), or travelling near the M25. The Sun alleged it had ‘infiltrated’ the meeting, tipping off the police and enabling National Highways to secure a public injunction. Some of the five defendants were imprisoned for up to 113 days without trial. They were released subject to stringent conditions including a 10pm to 7am house curfew, stipulations not to be within a one-mile radius of the M25, no contact with other defendants, and not to participate in any climate change demonstration.
The trial began on 24th June, presided over by Crown Court Judge Hehir.
At the start of the trial, the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders released a statement expressing its views on the criminal prosecution of Daniel Shaw. Due to his “grave concerns” about the criminalisation of UK environmental defenders, Special Rapporteur Michel Forst attended the trial in person on 4th and 5th July. [1]
During the trial so far, Judge Hehir has ordered nine separate arrests from the courtroom: three times each for Roger Hallam and Daniel Shaw, twice for Louise Lancaster, and once for Cressie Gethin. Additionally, the defendants have collectively spent seven nights in remand since the trial began, with Daniel, Roger, and Louise each spending two nights, and Cressie spending one night.
On the 4th of July, the prosecution made a historic concession by admitting to the following, in the list of agreed facts to be presented for the jury’s consideration:
“1. On 17 December 2020, Her Majesty’s Treasury published the New Zero Interim Report which states, ‘Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Without global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will change catastrophically with almost unimaginable consequences for societies across the world.’ In recognition of the risks, the UK became, in 2019, the first major economy to implement a legally binding net zero target.
2. Scientific consensus is that beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels risks catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity, which will be irreversible.
3. Over the past five years, the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times has averaged just under 1.3 degrees Celsius. For the 12 months to June 2024, it averaged 1.63 degrees Celsius and is estimated to top 1.5 degrees Celsius permanently before 2030.
4. In October 2022, the UK Government opened the 33rd licensing round to allow oil and gas companies to explore for more fossil fuels in the North Sea.”
Despite the presence of these agreed facts and the explicit provision for the defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ under section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, Judge Hehir ruled that the defendants would not be allowed any defence under law, repeating at various points in the trial as well as in his written directions to the jury that any facts pertaining to “man-made climate change” were “entirely irrelevant” to the defendants’ charges.
From left to right, outgoing net zero sceptic MPs Steve Baker, Miriam Cates, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns and Philip Davies. Credit: Official House of Commons portraits. Design: Adam Barnett
The result has “buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all”, said Will McCallum of Greenpeace UK.
Labour’s landslide victory over the Conservatives has left the party’s anti-net zero wing in tatters.
DeSmog’s analysis of Westminster’s influential Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) found that two thirds of its supporters are no longer represented in parliament following the July 4 general election.
Twenty-four of the 37 MPs supportive of the backbench grouping were voted out – a loss of 65 percent of its backers. Outgoing supporters include former energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, former NZSG co-chair Steve Baker, and Net Zero Watch board member Andrea Jenkyns.
A further five stood down or resigned before the election, among them veteran climate crisis John Redwood.
The group’s former chair Craig Mackinlay, who contracted sepsis in September, has been appointed to the House of Lords by outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak. Mackinlay has said he would use this platform to campaign for “sensible net zero”.
The NZSG has actively campaigned against climate action since it was formed in 2021. The group’s joint letters to the Telegraph made front page news, as supporters urged the government to scrap “environmental levies on domestic energy”, “expand North Sea exploration” for oil and gas, and support “shale gas extraction” by lifting the ban on fracking.
In addition to the NZSG grouping, former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has become an outspoken critic of net zero since leaving Downing Street in 2022, was voted out on Thursday.
Campaigners have welcomed the departure of MPs opposed to climate action. “This landslide election victory has buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all along with many of its principle architects”, Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog.
“Most of the former MPs who sought to sow division and disinformation about net zero have lost at the ballot box.”
Four new Reform MPs were also elected, including party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Richard Tice, both of whom have a record of climate science denial.
Despite this, campaigners are still positive. McCallum added that “the biggest winners [in the election] – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party – contested this election on strong green policies that will slash emissions, lower bills and deliver hundreds of thousands of new jobs”.
“There is and has long been a public consensus on climate action in this country”, he said, and “the new government should feel empowered to be bold”.
Here are some of the most prominent critics of net zero who have lost their seats:
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his North East Somerset seat by more than 6,000 votes to Labour’s Dan Norris, was secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy under Liz Truss between September and October 2022.
While in office he reportedly argued for lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas, and told the head of the UAE’s state investment company, in a private meeting revealed by DeSmog, that people need to “stop demonising oil and gas”.
Since January 2023, Rees-Mogg has presented his own show on GB News, which regularly broadcasts climate science denial. Rees-Mogg has been a harsh critic of the government’s net zero policies, stating that “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.
Steve Baker has led the charge against climate policies in parliament. Baker was a trustee of the UK’s main climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), from May 2021 to September 2022, when he stepped down to serve as Northern Ireland minister. He was co-chair of the NZSG, which operated as the GWPF’s caucus in parliament.
At a 2021 Conservative Party conference event, Baker said that much climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised”, while claiming that some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.
In February 2022, Baker received £5,000, and a further £10,000 in February 2023, from Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF.
On Thursday Baker lost his Wycombe seat to Labour’s Emma Reynolds by more than 4,000 votes.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns
Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her seat of Leeds and South West Morley by more than 7,000 votes to Labour’s Mark Sewards, sits on the board of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF, the UK’s main climate science denial group.
In March 2023 Jenkyns told parliament: “Personally, net zero, I think we need to ditch these targets, especially at the moment, and use whatever resources we’ve got under our feet.” She has described herself on Twitter as holding “no-to-net-zero views”.
Miriam Cates
Miriam Cates lost her Penistone and Stocksbridge seat by more than 9,000 votes to Labour’s Marie Tidball in Thursday’s general election.
Cates was tipped as a rising star of the Conservative party, a “darling” of the Tory right. She is the co-chair of the New Conservatives, a socially conservative faction of the Tory party which received £50,000 in January from GB News investors the Legatum Group.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in London last year, Cates suggested that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” are being caused by teaching children that “humanity is killing the Earth”.
Philip Davies
Philip Davies, who lost his Shipley seat by more than 8,000 votes to Labour’s Anna Dixon, has a long record of opposing climate policies. Davies was one of only five MPs to vote against the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008.
He currently works as a presenter for GB News, as does his wife and fellow Conservative politician Esther McVey, who was re-elected on Thursday.
Liz Truss
A number of net zero sceptic MPs existed outside the NZSG grouping, among them former prime minister Liz Truss, who resigned in October 2022 after just 49 days in the job. As well as appointing Rees-Mogg energy secretary, Truss overturned the UK’s moratorium on fracking for shale gas – a key demand from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.
Since leaving Downing Street – and in between giving paid speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups like CPAC and the Heritage Foundation – Truss has become an open opponent of net zero policies.
In her 2024 book “Ten Years to Save the West”, Truss called for the independent Climate Change Committee to be abolished, and attacked the UN COP process, which coordinates international action on climate change. Truss also claimed that while in cabinet she argued against the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit.
On Thursday, Truss lost her South West Norfolk seat by 630 votes to Labour’s Terry Jermy.
‘Watching Closely’
“It’s obviously fantastic news that 30 Tory MPs who’ve lobbied against climate policies are no longer in parliament”, said Jessica Townsend, founder of the MP Watch campaign group, which used DeSmog research in a recent event on “top ten climate denial MPs”.
Townsend noted that seven of the campaign’s list have won seats, including Reform’s Farage and GWPF director Graham Stringer.
“MP Watch will be watching these MPs closely in coming months as well as the influence fossil fuel companies and their think tanks may have on Labour in Westminster now that the power base has shifted,” she added.
Rishi Sunak boards an RAF plane to travel from London to Leeds. Photograph: No 10’s Flickr account
Last week, Rishi Sunak flew from London to Blackpool – his third private jet trip in 10 days. He’s far from the only one using air travel for short journeys. Just how much damage is this doing?
It was a Labour spokesperson who said the prime minister was behaving “like an A-list celeb”, after Rishi Sunak made his third trip by private jet in 10 days. Last week, he flew from London to Blackpool in a 14-seat RAF jet – a 230-mile journey that would have taken about three hours by train. The week before, he did the same to Leeds, which he could have done in two and a half hours by train, but which wouldn’t have looked nearly so glamorous – to go by the ludicrous photograph of him looking important and being saluted as he boarded the aircraft.
Private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per passenger, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a report by Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign organisation. “It goes against the fact that the government has committed to net zero by 2050,” says Alice Ridley, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Better Transport. “They have said they want to see more journeys by public transport, walking and cycling. Taking a private jet is extremely damaging for the environment, especially when there are other alternatives that would be far less polluting and would also be cheaper.”
Private planes carry far fewer passengers, while about 40% of flights are empty, simply getting the aircraft to the right location. Flying short distances also means planes are less fuel-efficient.
“A private jet is the most polluting form of transport you can take,” says Matt Finch, the UK policy manager for Transport & Environment. “The average private jet emits two tonnes of carbon an hour. The average European is responsible for [emitting] eight tonnes of carbon a year. You fly to the south of France and back, that’s half a year in one trip.”
Green Party’s Carla Denyer arrives at the count (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC) [Ani Stafford-Townsend is immediately to the right of Carla Denyer.]
As well as Bristol’s first-ever MP, the party finished second everywhere else
A Green surge right across Bristol not only saw the party’s first-ever MP in the city, but also saw voters put them in second place in every single other constituency.
The Green Party are now officially the main challengers to Labour in all five of Bristol’s constituencies – after Carla Denyer’s victory in Bristol Central was followed by strong support right across the city. A total of 65,762 people voted Green in the five Bristol constituencies.
In Bristol East, the Green Party candidate Ani Stafford-Townsend won more than 30 per cent of the vote to cut Labour’s majority down to just 6,606, while in Bristol South and Bristol North West, the Greens leapt from fourth place last time around to second.
Victorious Green MP Carla Denyer, the party’s co-leader, showed that her success – which was matched by Green wins in three other constituencies around the country – meant that people could vote Green and potentially get a Green MP.
The article is from a Bristol newspaper. The “the party finished second everywhere else” refers to everywhere else in Bristol.
Comments by dizzy: These comments may get extended and elaborated.
This article highlights a recurring theme in many analyses of the 2024 General Election: That the Green Party are the ruling Labour Party’s main threat.
The Green Party were mistaken in restricting their ambitions i.e. targetting only 4 seats. This article suggests that another 4 were within reach and to succeed in your goals suggests that those goals were too lax.
The rest of these comments is difficult because there are so many unknowns.
I would expect the Greens to do extremely well at the next General election. That’s assuming that general elections in the same way will be held in 4 or 5 years time.
The World is warming at a seriously alarming rate. Climate change is now and needs immediate action. The action needed is to stop burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy that doesn’t damage the climate. There are also other necessary measures: basically stop the rich trashing the planet with their ridiculously climate expensive lifestyles.
People are going to get very angry when they realise how their climate and future has been destroyed by a few rich cnuts.
later: The next few years are going to be extremely demanding, certainly beyond the capabilities of prospective presidential candidates.
