Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
As the consultation on Jackdaw, a major North sea oil and gas project ends, the Green Party leader calls out Prime Minister Burnham’s ‘weasel words’ on approval of more North Sea drilling and says it is a clear breach of Labour’s manifesto pledge.
Last week, the Green leader called an emergency press conference to urge Andy Burnham to act, and was joined by a firefighter, a GP and an ex soldier, all outlining the devastating impact the climate crisis is having in their areas of public service. Sky News have reported that the Government has rejected his call for COBR to be reconvened, with the Government ‘insisting supply chains are resilient’.
Zack Polanski said,
“We are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions.”
“This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the Second World War and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything is under control is gross negligence, blatantly untrue and misses the severity of the crisis”
“Only days after dedicated public servants talked about the need for urgent action, backed up by indisputable science, to secure our food supplies and the health of the most vulnerable, the Labour government says it’s all in hand, and supply chains are resilient.”
On the ending of the consultation for Jackdaw, Zack Polanski says,
“In the midst of a heatwave fuelled by the climate crisis, the science is clear that more North Sea drilling would be a dereliction of duty by Labour. Whatever weasel words are used on drilling within new or existing licences, one of the new Prime Minister’s first significant decisions would be to break Labour’s manifesto pledge.
“In their own analysis, Jackdaw’s owners have themselves said that only 27 direct full time jobs would be created if given the go ahead.
“This has nothing to do with boosting the economy for the people of this country and far more to do with boosting obscene profits for fossil fuel companies and their shareholders. I made clear in my press conference last week, that’s why this needs to be treated for the serious crisis it is, with financial support for homes to keep cool and for fossil fuel giants to pay the costs of extreme weather adaptation.”
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 and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham will chair a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee on Wednesday to discuss the UK’s response to the extreme heat, as temperatures are set to soar again.
A No 10 spokesperson said the government understood firefighters, farmers and NHS staff were all facing challenges connected to the weather.
This week’s latest heatwave comes as more areas in England were placed under drought status on Monday and firefighters continue to battle a significant wildfire in the New Forest in Hampshire.
The Met Office has issued a rare amber extreme heat warning, external for Thursday, with temperatures peaking in the mid-to-high 30s across the Midlands and south-east of England, and a high of 38C possible
It comes as the record for the number of days reaching 30C in any year in the UK has been broken, according to the Met Office, with Sunday the 35th day of the year so far.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage speaking at a Reform UK press conference on 3 June 2024. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
The Reform UK leader is a vocal opponent of net zero policies, and has questioned the basis of established climate science.
Pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has announced that he will be standing to be an MP at the upcoming general election and will be replacing Richard Tice as leader of the populist party Reform UK.
Farage, who says that he hopes to become “the voice of opposition” in Parliament, has long been a vocal opponent of climate action and a critic of climate science – campaigning for a referendum on the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
When he was the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the party’s 2015 and 2017 election manifestos pledged to rip up green measures, repeal the UK’s Climate Change Act, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement – the flagship deal to tackle global emissions – and support fossil fuel extraction.
These reflected Farage’s personal views on climate action. In 2015, he told the libertarian website Spiked: “I think wind energy is the biggest collective economic insanity I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything more stupid, more illogical, or more irrational.”
Farage is a presenter on GB News, the right-wing broadcaster that has regularly provided a platform to climate science denial and attacks on green reforms since it launched in June 2021.
Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”
The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (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 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”.
Farage has been a vocal critic of net zero. He has claimed that the policy is an “act of self harm” and has called for it to be scrapped.
He has said: “It will not bring economic benefits. It will make everybody a whole lot poorer. And yet the lemmings in Parliament are taking us towards an economic cliff,” adding: “I can’t think of an issue on which the public and politicians are more divided.”
In fact, politicians are markedly less in favour of climate action than the general public. New polling by YouGov for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has shown that almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the public believe the best way to achieve energy security is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and instead expand the use of renewable energy, compared to 48 percent of MPs.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than 1 percent of UK GDP, while the government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility – has 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”.
Farage has also claimed that, “If green technology is going to work, it ought to work without ordinary folk subsidising it” – referring to the government grants and investment dedicated to developing clean energy sources. The UK government has given £20 billion more in support to fossil fuel producers than their renewable energy peers since 2015.
Farage has also spread conspiracy theories about anti-pollution measures being used to control people’s lives.
In a video posted on Twitter, he argued that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s calls to reduce air pollution by cutting car engine use would pave the way to “climate lockdowns”.
He said: “Mark my words this isn’t going to end with 20mph zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods. No no. This is the beginning of climate lockdowns. We will have, in years to come, days where we’re told we can’t drive, we can’t do this, you can’t do that while Sadiq Khan is leading the way. Remember you heard it here first. Climate lockdowns.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has highlighted how climate lockdown claims are part of “a conspiratorial narrative which claims that global elites are using climate change as a pretext to restrict individual freedoms and civil liberties.”
Farage and Reform UK
Farage used his announcement to state his belief that Labour will win the general election, which will be held on 4 July, and that the Conservative Party has “crushed itself”. With the Tories predicted to lose in a landslide, Farage appears to believe that he can lead a new right-wing movement.
The Reform leader was already a key figure in the party prior to today’s announcement, effectively owning the party as well as serving as its president. Reform operates as a private company without a democratic structure, so Farage’s majority shareholding meant that could have appointed himself as leader at any time.
Despite Farage failing to be elected as an MP when he stood in seven previous general elections, and Reform only winning two councillors in May’s local elections, polls indicate that Farage may succeed in becoming the MP for Clacton.
If this is the case, Farage will be advocating in Parliament for the anti-climate policies that have been proposed by his party.
Reform has called for the UK’s net zero emissions target to be scrapped, and has proposed holding a referendum on the policy – a campaign launched by Farage in 2022.
The party’s policy agenda states that: “Westminster’s net zero plans send our jobs and money overseas, making us net poorer and net colder”, adding that net zero policies are “net stupid”.
The party’s former leader Tice, who will now become its chairman, is a prominent climate science denier. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis”, and has also expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Of the £2.5 million that Reform UK has received in donations since the 2019 election, around 92 percent (£2.3 million) of that income has been given by fossil fuel interests, polluting industries, or climate science deniers.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. 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.
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 and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A protestor holds a ‘Polluters Pay Up’ sign outside the Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery Wilmington Plant on November 28, 2022 in Wilmington, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“If this is a genuine change of heart from a president whose budget bill included $18 billion in taxpayer handouts to Big Oil, we welcome it,” said one organizer. “But talk is cheap, here’s the real test.”
After President Donald Trump echoed climate campaigners’ longtime condemnation of fossil fuel giants’ massive profits—uttering “the only thing” the climate-denying president “has said about energy policy since taking office that makes any sense,” according to one advocate, organizers on Tuesday urged him to put his money where his mouth is by backing a windfall profits tax for companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump called on those corporations and others to slash prices and give some of their record-breaking profits—specifically those made since the president joined Israel in waging an unprovoked war against Iran on Feb. 28—“back to the public.”
“They’re making too much money, based on a shortage,” said Trump, while noting that he is a “big free enterprise guy.”
“I don’t like it… Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobil, too much money,” he said. “When you look at one company, they made 12 times what they made the year before? Give some of that back to the public, and they’d better cut the retail price.”
“Too much money.”
“Chevron too much money.”
“Exxon Mobil too much money.”
President Donald Trump attacked oil majors ExxonMobil and Chevron for earning windfall profits from energy shortages created by the U.S.-Iran war, demanding that both companies cut prices and return… pic.twitter.com/I3CfmmQlqv
With oil and consumer gas prices skyrocketing since Trump and Israel started the war, resulting in Iran’s retaliatory measure of effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, which a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily travels through, Exxon reported that its second-quarter profits more than doubled compared with last year. The company took in $14.5 billion, while Chevron reported profits of $12 billion compared with $2.5 billion in 2025—nearly a 400% increase.
BP also reported profits that were $2.35 billion higher than last year.
An analysis by the Guardian published Tuesday showed that eight of the world’s largest oil companies made nearly $93 billion in profits in the three months following the invasion.
Chevron just announced its highest quarterly earnings ever. Shell clocked its second-highest quarterly profits. ExxonMobil doubled its earnings.Combined, the three companies raked in, on average, some $404 million in profits every day for the last three months.
The climate action group 350.orgnoted that the record profits of oil and gas giants come as “communities across the world endure record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires, and rising living costs”—and as governments from around the world prepare to resume negotiations on a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, where a “mandatory surtax on highly polluting industries is gaining support as part of that process.”
“From Bordeaux to Phoenix to Mumbai, families are living through the cost of climate delay, while the companies most responsible bank blockbuster bonanzas,” said Anna Jellema, executive director of 350.org. “That is not a coincidence; it is a business model. Governments meeting in New York this month have a genuine opportunity to change it. Calls are growing across the political spectrum for a proper global profits tax, so the industry that helped cause these disasters pays towards the recovery, the solutions and the protection people need. It’s simple fairness: Those who caused the damage and profited from it should pay to fix it.”
Candice Fortin, US campaign manager for 350.org, emphasized that the latest comments from Trump, whose Interior Department just moved to weaken restrictions on Arctic drilling, must be taken with a grain of salt.
In the same Oval Office statement on Monday, said Fortin, “Trump criticized countries championing wind energy and supported more oil extraction in the North Sea.”
“We don’t just need to tax fossil fuels’ windfall profits now, to be then forget about later,” said Fortin. “We need to end our dependence on oil, gas, and coal—and we need a permanent mechanism to make the fossil fuel industry pay its fair share and redirect those revenues towards protecting people and communities from the climate and cost-of-living crises.”
“If this is a genuine change of heart from a president whose budget bill included $18 billion in taxpayer handouts to Big Oil, we welcome it,” added Fortin. “But talk is cheap, here’s the real test: Will Trump throw his weight behind the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax bill, which his party has been stonewalling in Congress since March?”
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. 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. Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.