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Category: Climate Crisis

Climate Deniers to Converge on Reform Conference
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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog
Campaigners say Farage is showing “open contempt” for the British public.
A screenshot of Reform’s 2025 party conference agenda. Credit: Reform UK
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is hosting a number of radical anti-climate groups at its conference this weekend, DeSmog can report.
They include the Heartland Institute, a group close to Donald Trump’s administration, which has called human-induced climate change a “delusion”.
The conference will also play host to Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”.
Reform is also giving a platform to a number of groups belonging to the Tufton Street network – an alliance of anti-government campaign outfits that lobby for more fossil fuel extraction and keep their donors a secret.
For the second year in a row, DeSmog has been banned from attending the event, which will be held in Birmingham.
The conference will also feature Together, a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theory group that has launched a campaign against the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
“By giving a platform to climate deniers like Net Zero Watch and the Heartland Institute, Reform is showing open contempt for the British public already living with the realities of climate breakdown,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the research and campaign group Uplift.
“Homes are being flooded again and again, farmers are losing billions to drought, and Scotland’s firefighters are battling wildfires. This is not theory – it’s people’s lives and livelihoods at stake,” Khan said.
“Reform’s deluded energy policy wilfully ignores the fact that the UK has already burnt most of its gas. Official projections show, even with new drilling, the UK will be 94 percent reliant on expensive, dirty imports by 2050. All this while Reform seeks to block the UK from profiting from some of the world’s best resources for offshore wind.
“Our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels is exactly why energy bills are so high and why millions of families across the UK have been driven into fuel poverty. Reform knows this. And it simply does not care.”
Most senior Reform politicians, including Farage, deny basic climate science. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform leader said it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. In the same month, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
Last month, Reform’s Great Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns said in an interview with Times Radio: “Do I believe that climate change exists? No.”
They have expressed these views despite representing areas exposed to the worst effects of extreme heat.
Reform received 92 percent of its donations between the 2019 and 2024 UK elections from polluting sources and climate science deniers, while its treasurer Nick Candy has claimed the party is actively raising money from oil executives.
In Farage’s constituency of Clacton, 68 percent of the public is worried about rising temperatures, according to a YouGov poll published last August – slightly above the national average of 66 percent.
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation found that Reform’s climate policies would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy. The science of climate change is also unequivocal: scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
DeSmog previously revealed that Reform is offering access to Farage during the conference in exchange for hefty donations. A sum of £250,000 buys 10 seats at a champagne breakfast with the Reform leader during the two-day event, as well as “chauffeur-driven travel”, a personal assistant, and the sponsor’s logo on the main conference stage and battle bus.
Reform didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Below is a summary of the key anti-climate groups to be given a platform at Reform’s conference.
Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is a U.S. climate science denial group with close ties to the Trump administration.
It has denied that humans are driving climate change, which it has called a “delusion”. The group claims it is “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”.
Heartland received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, and has received donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel giant and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.
The Heartland Institute previously told DeSmog that it ”stands resolute in its mission to advance sound science, economic prosperity, and individual liberty”. It added that “our support comes from a diverse array of individuals and organisations who share our vision for a freer, more prosperous world.”
Heartland was one of the groups involved in drafting Project 2025, the radical blueprint for Trump’s second term, which proposed reversing climate policies, slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Earlier this month, President Trump hired Roy Spencer, a policy advisor at the Heartland Institute and a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation – the key group behind Project 2025 – as an advisor to the Department of Energy.
Heartland’s UK-EU director Lois Perry has claimed that the institute boasts “very strong affiliations” with “certain big individuals” in Trump’s team.
Nigel Farage attended a fundraising dinner for the institute in September 2024 during which he called for more fossil fuel extraction and the victory of Trump in November’s presidential election, saying: “Let’s get Trump back; let’s drill baby drill”.
He also advocated what he called “a bit of reverse colonialism”.
“Maybe it’s time that Heartland came and set up in Britain and Europe and brought some of the wisdom that you’ve brought to the American debate,” he said – adding: “I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond.”
Farage soon got his wish. In December, Heartland announced it was setting up a UK-EU branch. The Reform leader was the “special guest of honour” at the group’s launch event in London, which also featured disgraced former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss.
Cementing his Heartland links, Farage headlined an invite-only event in June this year entitled “Net Zero: The New Brexit?” held at 55 Tufton Street.
As revealed by DeSmog, Heartland has been working closely with far-right politicians in Europe to undermine the bloc’s green reforms.
Perry, who is speaking at Reform’s conference, has previously said she does not believe climate change is caused by humans. She has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”.
Like Farage, Perry is a former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). She used to run the anti-net zero pressure group CAR26, which has claimed that carbon dioxide is “essential to all life” and that its “welcome growth has greened our planet saving countless human and other lives”.
She recently claimed on a Heartland Institute podcast that she “knows for a fact” Farage credits Heartland with helping to shape Reform’s climate policies.
Heartland Institute president James Taylor told DeSmog: “Climate realism and energy realism are gaining traction throughout the world. The Heartland Institute appreciates that the Reform Party is on board and recognises Heartland as the global leader courageously providing truthful information on these topics. We also appreciate the encouragement and support provided by many policymakers among the UK Conservative Party. A rising tide lifts all boats and we are excited to be prominently leading the charge in the UK and throughout Europe.”
Institute of Economic Affairs
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a radical anti-government campaign group that is part of the Tufton Street network.
The IEA, which has close ties to Liz Truss, advocates for increased fossil fuel production and against state-led climate action.
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 the ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences is “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and said that the previous government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves was a “welcome step”.
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 is a member of Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organisation that suppors over 450 “free market” groups around the world. Both the IEA and Atlas were founded by Antony Fisher. Fisher’s daughter, Linda Whetstone, was chair of the Atlas Network as well as a director of the IEA until her death in December 2021.
The IEA does not publicly declare its donors, and it’s not known if the pressure group has received funding from BP or ExxonMobil in more recent years.
The group is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission. The IEA was approached for comment.
TaxPayers’ Alliance
The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), based in 55 Tufton Street, also campaigns in favour of fossil fuel extraction and against climate policies.
The group, which claims to be a grassroots movement while being supported by anonymous private donors, has supported ending the windfall tax on oil companies, scrapping the UK’s 2050 net zero target, and restarting fracking.
The TPA was approached for comment.
Net Zero Watch
Reform’s conference will also feature Net Zero Watch – one of the UK’s most notorious anti-climate campaign groups – on a panel entitled “Drill baby drill: abandoning net zero and restoring energy abundance”.
Net Zero Watch is the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is led by Conservative peer Lord Craig Mackinlay.
Net Zero Watch has urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels”, including “a new fleet of coal fired power stations”, and has called for renewable energy from wind and solar to be “wound down completely”. From May 2023 to 2025, Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns sat on the Net Zero Watch board.
In a report published last March, the GWPF claimed it was “naive and entirely unrealistic” to believe that CO2 is causing climate change, that record global temperatures are “normal”, and that “there is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis”.
The group has previously expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than its current level.
Net Zero Watch campaign director will be speaking alongside Kathryn Porter, a fossil fuel industry consultant who has written several reports for the GWPF and Net Zero Watch.
Net Zero Watch and the GWPF were approached for comment.
Prosperity Institute
The Prosperity Institute – formerly known as the Legatum Institute – is hosting several events at Reform conference.
A pro-Brexit think tank, the Prosperity Institute is run by the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group, which co-owns the anti-climate broadcaster GB News alongside hedge fund mogul Paul Marshall. GB News employs Farage to the tune of more than £300,000 a year.
In May, after Reform’s local election gains, Prosperity published an article entitled “Farage has the power to defund Net Zero” which claimed that “energy bills have skyrocketed, industries have fled and living standards have fallen” due to the UK’s climate policies.
According to the Spectator Australia, at a Prosperity Institute event in July, Farage said he would need the think tank to bring “fresh young talent into current affairs” and provide “policy solutions we can give to the electorate next time round”.
He said “the great revolution that took place from 1979” – a reference to the election of Margaret Thatcher – was based on the “hard work and good thinking” of neo-liberal economists like Keith Joseph and Milton Friedman.
“That in many ways is your role today”, he told the Prosperity Institute audience – urging the group to produce “the ammunition” to “those of us on the front lines”.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Prosperity Institute previously donated £50,000 to the New Conservatives – a faction of the Conservative Party.
Centre for a Better Britain
The conference will also feature the Centre for a Better Britain – a new Reform-aligned think tank set to launch this month.
The group is funded by Mark Thompson, an investor with interests in metals, fossil fuels, and renewable energy, and his business associate David Lilley, a senior metals trader and former Conservative donor who has given over £270,000 to Reform.
The Centre for a Better Britain, which is attempting to raise £25 million – including from Trump donors – intends to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal,” according to plans seen by the Financial Times.
The think tank is chaired by James Orr, a Cambridge academic who has been described as the “philosopher king” of U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Orr has expressed radical anti-climate positions, claiming in an interview with the European Conservative last month that the UK’s energy policies are “crazy” and that the pursuit of net zero is “fiscal suicide”.
At an event in Hungary last month hosted by the oil-funded think tank Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Orr also accused the UK of adopting a “naive and dangerous” approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead praised Hungary’s approach, which has seen the country systematically block and delay EU military aid packages, and sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
In the European Conservative interview, Orr suggested the war was a “regional Slavic conflict”.
“It is a conflict happening in the world that I don’t care very much about,” he added.
Farage, who used to appear regularly on state broadcaster Russia Today, has previously said that Putin is the world leader that he most admires, though he has also called him a “bad man”.
Together and Farmers to Action
Established in 2021 to oppose mandatory Covid-19 protection measures, such as lockdowns and vaccines, Together has since launched a “no to net zero” campaign that calls for the UK to scrap climate policies.
In January last year, the group said it was “incredible” that the then prime minister Rishi Sunak should “mindlessly assert ‘Covid vaccines are safe’” in a post on X. It has also backed a report which called for the government to pause its vaccination programme over a number of widely debunked conspiracy theories about its safety, including that the vaccine alters human DNA.
Together has recently partnered with Farmers To Action – a protest group also set to feature at Reform’s conference. The group has used recent anti-inheritance tax campaigns to spread anti-climate views.
The leader of Farmers to Action, Justin Rogers, has claimed that “climate change is one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, propagated by “our governments and their puppet masters.” He has also claimed that oil and gas are renewable, and that carbon dioxide cannot be dangerous because it “feeds plants”.
At an event co-hosted by Together and Farmers to Action in February, Farage endorsed a conspiracy theory popular among the far-right.
Speaking in front of around 50 tractors at Belmont Farm in North London, Farage insinuated that the Labour government had a “sinister agenda” to acquire “lots of land because they’re planning for another five million people to come into the country”.
This claim is borne from the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that progressive immigration policies are a mechanism to replace white people in the West, and has been cited by Donald Trump in recent months.
Farmers to Action and Together were approached for comment.
Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog
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5 September 2025
Politicians now talk of climate ‘pragmatism’ to delay action – new study
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Steve Westlake, University of Bath
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to “maximise extraction” of the UK’s oil and gas from the North Sea as a “common sense” energy policy.
Politicians are using language like this increasingly often – calling themselves “pragmatic” on climate change and invoking “common sense”. It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup – the opposite of “hysterical” campaigners or “unrealistic” targets.
But new research my colleagues and I conducted, calling on a decade of interviews with UK MPs, shows that political “pragmatism” is fast becoming a dangerous form of climate delay. By framing urgent action as “extreme” and steady-as-she-goes policies as “pragmatic”, leaders across the political spectrum are protecting the fossil-fuel status quo at the very moment scientists warn we need rapid, transformative change.
Badenoch’s latest intervention is a perfect example. She said “common sense” dictates that every drop of oil must be extracted from the North Sea, and that net zero by 2050 was a policy pushed by “bullies”. This came just a day after the UK Met Office declared summer 2025 as the hottest on record.
We found that members of parliament deploy the same language of pragmatism to defend fossil fuel companies and to insist to their constituents that nothing needs to change too fast. The paradox, of course, is that more urgent social and economic change is precisely what the world’s climate scientists say is necessary to avert climate breakdown.
In our recent interviews with politicians, MPs from across the political spectrum tended towards gradual change in order to maintain political and public support. One said:
First and foremost be pragmatic. Accept incremental change, because incremental change often accelerates, but you take people with you. If you didn’t take people with you, you’ll start getting resistance.
Another MP contrasted a pragmatic approach with the calls from some campaign groups for more rapid action:
There are campaigns that say we’ve got to be net zero by 2025, or 2030. [laughing incredulously] … do you realise what the consequences of that will be … you’d have a revolution in Britain if you tried to do that, in terms of destroying people’s quality of life.
Interestingly, despite rejecting more ambitious targets, later in the interview the same MP acknowledged that faster change was needed:
We need to do more, we could do more, we are, you know, I’m sure the government will do more. I’m certainly pushing it to do more. But fundamentally we’ve halved our emissions since 1990.
Here we see the nuance, and the danger, of the language of pragmatism. It allows politicians to hold two positions at once. They can acknowledge the need for rapid change, while promoting a “pragmatic” position against it.
The calls for pragmatism appeared to stem from MPs’ desire to present a reasoned and rational case for climate action that does not impinge on constituents’ lives. They also used pragmatism to distance themselves from arguments they portrayed as “extreme” or “shrill”.
The flawed assumption underlying these calls to pragmatism is that the public will not support ambitious, transformative climate policies. We concluded that whereas a few years ago MPs promoted climate policies “by stealth”, meaning they did it on the quiet, now they turn to ideas of pragmatism in an attempt to maintain a fragile political consensus in favour of net zero – a consensus that is already fracturing.
Top-down pragmatism
This turn to pragmatism can now be seen at the very top of British politics, threatening the UK’s steady ratcheting up of climate ambition to date.
Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair recently wrote in the Blair Institute’s report on climate change: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality.”
Blair then asserted: “Any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.” This is despite the widespread consensus among scientists that both phasing out fossil fuels and reducing consumption of at least some products are essential.
The report goes on to say: “A realistic voice in the climate debate is required, neither ideological nor alarmist but pragmatic.” This language is intended to sound rational, reasonable and even scientific. The problem is that it can be used to justify actions that appear to ignore what the science is telling us.
Former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak warned against treating climate change as an “ideology” . Notably, Sunak referred to “pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic” climate action shortly after his government announced hundreds of new licences for oil and gas fields in the North Sea.
His message coincided with ongoing road-building programmes, plans for airport expansion, and insufficient action to insulate the UK’s housing stock, all of which could jeopardise the UK’s climate targets. Again we see the language of pragmatism working against the rapid societal changes that are necessary.
The pragmatic road ahead
In general, the MPs we spoke to were not using pragmatism in bad faith. Rather it was a way of navigating the complexities of climate politics where the huge changes demanded by climate mitigation are deemed too challenging to sell to constituents. But this political strategy is a very risky one and underestimates the public’s appetite for “strong and clear” climate leadership from government.
The current government is already struggling to reconcile net zero commitments with its economic growth agenda, which includes a new runway at Heathrow airport. Not only is prime minister Keir Starmer facing divisions within the ruling Labour party over net zero ambitions, he is also dealing with increasingly prominent net zero scepticism from the leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties.
The political language of “pragmatism” therefore risks spreading from Badenoch to Starmer, becoming a discourse of delay that promotes non-transformative solutions.
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Steve Westlake, Lecturer, Environmental Psychology, University of Bath
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
5 September 2025
FEMA Employees Warn Trump Cuts Amount to ‘Abandonment of the American People’
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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
A tow truck driver tries to attach a cable to a car submerged in flood waters on the bank of the Guadalupe River during a search and recovery mission on July 13, 2025 in Ingram, Texas. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
“Hurricane season has begun, yet FEMA continues to lack an appointed administrator with the mandated qualifications to fulfill this role,” the employees wrote in a letter to Congress.
More than 180 federal emergency relief workers have signed a letter warning that US President Donald Trump’s administration is severely harming their ability to respond to future disasters.
The letter, which was sent to members of Congress on Monday, painted a dire picture of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Trump’s watch.
“Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA administrator,” the employees stated. “Decisions made by FEMA’s Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator (SOPDA) David Richardson, former SOPDA Cameron Hamilton, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem erode the capacity of FEMA… hinder the swift execution of our mission, and dismiss experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management.”
The employees then detailed several specific ways that the Trump administration has hamstrung the agency, which they said would be tantamount to “the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people” if not corrected.
First, they faulted Noem for requiring personal review for all contracts, grants, and mission assignments costing more than $100,000, which they described as an improper impoundment of agency funds that “reduces FEMA’s authorities and capabilities to swiftly deliver our mission.”
They then took aim at Richardson, whom they lambasted as wholly unqualified for his position.
“Hurricane season has begun, yet FEMA continues to lack an appointed administrator with the mandated qualifications to fulfill this role,” they warned. “The dangers of unqualified leadership were a significant lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina.”
The FEMA workers noted that the Trump administration has flouted federal requirements demanding that FEMA administrators demonstrate “ability in and knowledge of emergency management.” According to The New York Times, Richardson told employees in June that he hadn’t been aware the US had a hurricane season.
“They’re breaking the law so they can hire mediocre people,” said US Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). “And Americans will die as a result.”
The employees also slammed the administration for its “censorship of climate science, environmental protection, and efforts to ensure all communities have access to information, resources, and support.”
They also noted that the administration removed the Future Risk Index from FEMA’s website this past February, which they said would harm “the nation’s ability to properly prepare for and mitigate against the risks of tomorrow.”
Finally, the employees called attention to the massive workforce drain FEMA has experienced under Trump’s administration.
“FEMA’s current capacities have been significantly limited due to a loss of personnel through programs designed to incentivize our workforce to leave federal service, ongoing hiring freezes, and the cancellation of critical support contracts,” they wrote. “One-third of FEMA’s full-time staff have departed the agency this year, leading to the loss of irreplaceable institutional knowledge and long-built relationships.”
The employees also said that the damage done to FEMA was already visible this past summer during the agency’s response to deadly floods in central Texas that claimed the lives of more than 130 people.
“As that disaster unfolded, FEMA’s mission to provide critical support was obstructed by leadership who not only question the agency’s existence but place uninformed cost-cutting above serving the American people and the communities our oath compels us to serve,” they said.
A total of 181 FEMA employees signed the letter, although only 35 of them made their signatures a matter of public record.
Trump earlier this year said he’d like to see FEMA dismantled so that more responsibility for handling the aftermath of natural disasters would be pushed off to individual states. Meanwhile, the president has denied some states’ requests for disaster declarations, including Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.
Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a U.S. government agency under the Department of Homeland Security responsible for coordinating federal responses to disasters and emergencies.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
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Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
29 August 2025
Farage to Share Stage with Architects of Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda
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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels. Credit: Belga News Agency / Alamy
The Reform leader will be skipping Parliament again in favour of a conference in Washington DC.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will speak next week alongside the authors of Donald Trump’s plans to “dismantle the administrative state” and scrap climate policies.
Farage is a featured speaker at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference in Washington DC – at least his tenth visit to the U.S. since being elected as an MP.
As reported in The Mirror, Farage’s trip – during which he will also reportedly speak to Congress about free speech in the UK – means he will miss Parliament’s return from summer recess.
A version of this article was published by The Mirror
DeSmog’s analysis reveals that more than a fifth of the speakers at the NatCon event have roles at groups which contributed to Project 2025, the radical blueprint for Trump’s second term convened by the Heritage Foundation.
They include Russell Vought, Trump’s budget chief. Before entering office, Vought was a key author of Project 2025 and the vice president of Heritage Action, the campaign arm of the Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts will be speaking at NatCon.
The listed speakers also include senior members of the Trump administration, including his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched her book For Love of Country at a Heritage Foundation event with Roberts last year; and Tom Homan, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who is a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025.
NatCon is organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington DC. Its UK chairman James Orr runs the pro-Reform think tank the Centre for a Better Britain, is a close friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and recently told BBC Radio 4 that he admires the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. Farage spoke at a NatCon event in Brussels last year.
The lengthy Project 2025 policy document, titled ‘The Mandate for Leadership’, proposed reversing climate policies, unleashing fossil fuel extraction, scrapping investment in clean energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – policies imposed by the Trump administration.
As DeSmog has reported, 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet has ties to Project 2025, which also seeks to “dismantle the administrative state”, further restrict abortion, and access to contraception.
A Liberal Democrat source told DeSmog: “Nigel Farage is far more interested in pleasing Trump and jostling for his affections than he is in turning up to Parliament on time or standing up for British values.”
Farage in DC
Farage will speak on a panel alongside Larry Arnn, who sits on the Heritage Foundation’s board of directors.
It will be the second time Farage has shared a stage with Arnn following a fundraiser in September 2024 for the Heartland Institute, which also contributed to Project 2025 and has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”.
At the fundraiser, Farage claimed that the UK’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions don’t “make any bloody difference at all” – and reiterated Trump’s call to “drill baby drill” for fossil fuels.
Farage and Trump have both denied basic climate science. The Reform leader has claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant, while Trump has called climate change a “giant hoax”.
Next week’s event in Washington lists at least 22 speakers with current or recent roles at the Heritage Foundation and other Project 2025 member groups.
Other UK speakers at the event include Rupert Darwall, who has claimed there is “strong evidence for the non-existence of a climate crisis,” and former GB News presenter Calvin Robinson.
Senior members of the Conservative Party including shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick and shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel have met with Heritage Foundation leaders or spoken at their events in recent years.
Reform UK did not reply to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Project 2025 speakers at NatCon Washington DC
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Kevin Roberts – president of the Heritage Foundation
Russell Vought – director of the Office for Budget Management, and former vice president of Heritage Action
Tom Homan – director of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE), and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation
Christopher DeMuth – Heritage Foundation Fellow
John Backiel – visiting fellow for the Capital Markets Initiative at the Heritage Foundation
Robert Greenway – director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation
Rob Bluey – executive editor of the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal
Victoria Coates – vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy
Tom Klingenstein – chairman of the board of directors at the Claremont Institute
Spencer Klavan – associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books
Ryan Williams – president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books
John Eastman – senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a contributor to the Heritage Guide to the Constitution
Will Thibeau – director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, and previously a policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center
Kristen Waggoner – CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom
Gene Hamilton – president and co-founder of America First Legal
Curt Mills — executive director of the American Conservative
Mark DiPlacido — policy advisor at American Compass, and a former Heritage Action staffer
Rachel Bovard — vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute
Rupert Darwall — strategy consultant and policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Mark Krikorian — executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies
Alex Petkas — a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America
Clare Morell — fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
28 August 2025
Summer 2025 ‘almost certainly’ UK’s hottest on record
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https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro
Victoria Jones/PA Wire
The United Kingdom has “almost certainly” had its hottest summer on record, according to provisional statistics from the Met Office.
The mean temperature across the country – which includes overnight lows as well as daytime highs – currently stands at 16.13C (61.03F) with less than a week of the season left to run.
This is well ahead of 2018, the previous warmest summer, which had a mean temperature of 15.76C (60.37F).
Temperatures during the rest of August would need to be four degrees below normal to prevent the record being broken – and this does not seem likely.
This is in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter and drier because of climate change.
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Article continues at https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
27 August 2025