Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy in front of an oil extraction site. DeSmog collage. Credit: GB News / YouTube / Damien Goodyear / SOPA Images / Alamy
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is attempting to raise money from the fossil fuel industry, the Financial Times has revealed.
The newspaper reports that Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy – a billionaire property developer – has been launching a drive to raise funds from wealthy offshore donors in low-tax jurisdictions including Monaco, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Switzerland. Expatriates registered to vote in the UK can donate to UK political parties, as can foreign individuals with a business in the country.
Part of this drive has involved soliciting donations from oil and gas executives. Candy told the Financial Times that an energy executive had donated £100,000 to the party last week, and pledged to give up to £1 million. Candy added that Reform was targeting oil and gas donors who are “very disillusioned” with current UK government policies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday said: “homegrown clean energy is in the DNA of my government”, as he pledged to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While the UK’s oil and gas reserves are dwindling, the country’s green economy grew by 10 percent in 2024.
By contrast, Reform advocates for clean energy policies to be scrapped, including cancelling the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
“This is textbook Nigel Farage,” said Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK. “While he may enjoy cosplaying as a ‘man of the people’, in reality, Reform’s agenda is a shopping list of policies that will turbo-drive the profits of the very richest.
“Taking money from fossil fuel execs whilst pushing their misinformation will keep families tied to volatile oil and gas with sky-high energy bills, and further climate breakdown for our children and grandchildren.
“By going cap in hand to fossil fuel firms and millionaires in offshore tax havens, Farage is making it very clear who he’s working for: his elite mates, not us.”
Reform UK and its senior figures have repeatedly questioned basic climate science. Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, while admitting that he knew little about climate science, Farage claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant. He also suggested on the BBC’s Today programme this week that climate change may not be caused by humans.
Farage’s deputy Richard Tice, who has donated substantial sums to the party in recent years, has claimed that “CO2 is not poison; it’s plant food”.
In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “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” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
As revealed by DeSmog, Reform received at least £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers prior to the 2024 general election campaign – equivalent to 92 percent of its funding during the period.
“This is further evidence that Reform is copying Donald Trump and pretending that climate change does not exist,” said Bob Ward, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “But the reality of making the UK more dependent on fossil fuels is that we would be more at the mercy of international markets and so would have energy that is more insecure, more unaffordable and more unsustainable.”
Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy has been attempting to extract cash from fossil fuel executives.
Led by Donkeys poster quotes Nigel Farage “Brexit has failed”Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks to ARC by video. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
In exclusive interviews, they called the Trump administration official “terrific,” “very smart,” and someone who “gets it.”
In mid-February, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright described the global effort to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in dark and conspiratorial terms.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal,” he told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international gathering of conservatives convened by Canadian podcaster, author, and anti-climate powerbroker Jordan Peterson. “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power [and], top-down control, and shrink human freedom.”
Then in March, Wright did a speech at the 43rd annual CERAWeek where he attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as a “quasi-religious” agenda “that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”
Those views put Wright, formerly a CEO with the fracking company Liberty Energy, far outside the Paris Agreement consensus among many world leaders and heads of major corporations that climate change is an urgent issue that requires fundamental changes to our global energy system.
But Wright’s reactionary statements are winning him praise from fossil fuel advocates who acknowledge that human-caused climate change is real but deny that it presents existential threats to civilization – what watchdog nonprofits such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate refers to as “the new denial.”
In exclusive interviews with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer conducted during the ARC conference, three prominent figures who deny there is a climate emergency explained why they’re excited that Wright holds one of the most consequential cabinet posts in the Trump administration, with one referring to the U.S. energy secretary as “a good friend.”
Bjorn Lomborg speaks about his most recent book during a press briefing at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Bjorn Lomborg
One particularly influential climate crisis denier is Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who for decades has been trying to convince policymakers and the public that there are more important global challenges to address than climate change. This is the subject of his most recent book, Best Things First, which Lomborg was promoting at ARC. Last year, Peterson personally presented a copy of the book to Elon Musk.
“We’ll have to wait and see if he actually reads it,” Lomborg said of Musk in an interview with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer at the conference.
Lomborg, who is an advisor to ARC, said during a keynote speech that efforts to transition off fossil fuels are a “green fantasy.” Lomborg acknowledges that climate change is real but claims, contrary to decades of scientific and economic evidence, that it will be relatively easy and painless for humankind to adapt.
Those arguments have resonated with Wright, who during a 2020 podcast referred to Lomborg’s previous book False Alarm as “fantastic,” and earlier this year described him as a “friend” on LinkedIn.
Asked what he thinks about Trump’s pick for energy secretary, Lomborg replied: “Look, Chris Wright is a great guy and he’s very smart. And I’m very happy that we can get a more sense-based approach to how we do energy.”
Part of that, according to Lomborg, is acknowledging — despite low-carbon investment surpassing $2 trillion in 2024 — that a transformative global shift to green energy isn’t happening anytime soon. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “And that, I think, is what Chris Wright can help us to do, which is to say, ‘let’s be realistic now and let’s find smarter ways to have greener energy sources in the future.’”
Scott Tinker does a speech at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Scott Tinker
During his 13-minute presentation at ARC, Scott Tinker outlined his view that energy has to be affordable, reliable, and clean, criteria that in his view disadvantages renewable energy. “If you want 100 percent clean you don’t get much of these other things,” he told the conference. “There are trade-offs in the real world.”
Tinker runs an organization called Switch Energy Alliance that creates videos about energy and climate change for classrooms, museums, and professional training sessions. The organization says that it wants an “energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible.”
But Tinker tends to promote the benefits of fossil fuels while downplaying the urgency of addressing global temperature rise. During a podcast interview in March, Tinker said it was “a very strange form of economic colonialism” to argue against developing world countries burning fossil fuels “because we’ll wreck the climate.” We shouldn’t fear a bit of atmospheric warming, Tinker added, urging listeners to instead consider “all the positive things” countries gain from oil, gas, and coal.
Wright has used similar language, telling a gathering of African leaders in March that it would be “a paternalistic post-colonial attitude” for the U.S. to stand in the way of their fossil fuel resources.
The similarities between Wright’s and Tinker’s views aren’t a coincidence. Tinker told DeSmog in an interview at ARC that he and the U.S. energy secretary have known each other for years. “Chris is a good friend,” Tinker said. “We’ve bounced a lot back and forth.”
One other area they seem to agree on is rejecting carbon dioxide’s legal status as a pollutant in the U.S., which helps provide the basis for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions. That’s been a long-time goal of climate denial organizations such as the CO2 Coalition and Heartland Institute.
“We shouldn’t confuse [CO2] with being a pollutant,” Tinker said.
Robert Bryce speaks at ARC. Credit: ARC / YouTube
Robert Bryce
For years Robert Bryce has been on a mission to convince the world that renewable energy can never replace or out-compete coal, gas, and oil. Previously a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute— a think tank with a long history of accepting fossil fuel money and questioning the scientific consensus on climate change — Bryce now attacks climate solutions as an author, speaker, and filmmaker.
During his speech at ARC, he claimed that “we are inundated with climate catastrophism,” and argued without evidence that the primary motivation for environmentalists to be opposed to fossil fuels is because their organizations have “enormous” budgets, saying “it’s a big business.”
Bryce is a long-time proponent of nuclear energy, something he shares in common with Wright, who stepped down as a member of the board of directors at the nuclear company Oklo after he was confirmed as energy secretary in February.
“Chris gets it,” Bryce said in an interview with DeSmog. “Chris knows what the score is. He’s a natural gas guy, a hydrocarbon guy. He’s promoting nuclear power. Hopefully this administration, now that they’re actually talking about nuclear, can actually move the ball forward, it’s overdue.”
Bryce and Wright also seem to share opposition to carbon capture and storage, a technology widely favored by oil and gas producers, which tout it as key to reducing emissions from their operations despite it being widely used to pull more oil from the ground. Under Wright, the U.S. Department of Energy is considering cutting billions of dollars’ worth of funding for projects utilizing the technology.
“There is only one reason why any of these hydrocarbon companies are doing carbon capture,” Bryce said. “Subsidies, that’s it.”
“It will never work at scale,” he added. “Once you get that CO2 super-compressed and you’re pushing it down underground, there are very few places where you can actually sequester it. So it’s a lot of money wasted.”
This special investigation between Canada’s National Observer and DeSmog was produced in collaboration with the I-SEA and TRACE Foundation.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Badenoch (right) will give a welcome address at the conference, with her party under increasing pressure from Farage (left) and Reform UK. Composite: PA
Event co-founded by Jordan Peterson will bring together global rightwing figures including senior US Republicans
Influential rightwingers from around the world are to gather in London from Monday at a major conference to network and build connections with senior US Republicans linked to the Trump administration.
The UK opposition leader, the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party, her hard-right anti-immigration rival, will compete to present themselves as the torchbearer of British conservatism.
Conservatives from Britain, continental Europe and Australia attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference will seize on the opportunity to meet and hear counterparts from the US, including those with links to the new Trump administration. The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, had been due to attend in person but will now give a keynote address remotely on Monday.
Other Republicans due to speak include the US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Vivek Ramaswamy – who has worked with Elon Musk on moves to radically reshape the US government – and Kevin Roberts, the president of the US Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind the controversial “Project 2025” blueprint for Trump’s second term.
The conference, which is intended to be a gathering of influential intellectuals shaping global rightwing thinking, has a distinctly anti-environmental and socially conservative theme. It pledges to build on “our growing movement and continue the vital work of relaying the foundations of our civilisation”.
Philippa Stroud, chair of the government’s Low Pay Commission, and CEO of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Credit: ARC(CC0 1.0 DEED)
Tory peer Philippa Stroud, who has close ties to the funders of GB News, has been elevated to a senior advisory role by the government.
A new government advisor on the minimum wage is the head of an international network of climate crisis deniers funded by the owners of GB News, DeSmog can reveal.
Philippa Stroud was appointed chair of the Low Pay Commission, a body reporting to Kemi Badenoch’s Department of Business and Trade, on 30 January. The government-appointed role pays £530 per day for three days of work per month (£19,114 per year).
The Conservative peer is the CEO of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new pressure group that shares its funders with GB News and is linked to some of the world’s most prominent climate crisis deniers, including psychologist Jordan Peterson. Stroud has been described by The Telegraph as “the most powerful right-winger you’ve never heard of”.
The appointment comes as senior Conservative Party figures continue to embrace anti-climate politics. On 6 February, former prime minister Liz Truss attacked “net zero zealots” at the launch of her new Popular Conservatism faction.
Last month, Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Clare Coutinho met with and praised fuel pricing lobbyist Howard Cox, a Reform UK candidate who wants to “scrap net zero” and claims that “man is not responsible for global warming”.
The government is also pushing ahead with legislation that would require the awarding of annual North Sea oil and gas licences. The Climate Change Committee, the independent body that advises the government on its net zero policies, warned on 30 January that mixed messages, including new fossil fuel projects, have damaged the UK’s international climate standing.
Last year was the first on record to see consistent global warming of 1.5C, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
DeSmog has previously revealed that the Conservative Party received £3.5 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers in 2022.
Stroud’s appointment also cements the relationship between the Conservative Party and GB News. On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took part in an hour-long town hall event on GB News, following the example of several Conservative MPs who are regular guests and presenters on the right-wing broadcaster.
Stroud’s ARC project is run by hedge fund manager Paul Marshall and the UAE-based Legatum Group, GB News’s principal backers. The Legatum Institute, a think tank funded by the Legatum Group, gave £50,000 to a faction of the Conservative Party in December. Before taking up her post at ARC, Stroud was CEO of the Legatum Institute.
“Anti-science climate change denialism has become the secret handshake that ushers in the faithful and bars the door to unbelievers,” Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project, told DeSmog. “This is an appalling betrayal of the principles of sound government – and of our children who need us to be led by science and not by the financial interests of wealthy Tory donors.”
ARC, Stroud, the Legatum Group, and the Low Pay Commission were approached for comment.
ARC and Legatum
Philippa Stroud was made a life peer by then prime minister David Cameron (now foreign secretary) in 2015, after failing to win a parliamentary seat in 2010.
The Legatum Group, which has employed Stroud both directly and indirectly since 2016, is one of the largest shareholders in GB News, which frequently attacks climate science and policies. A DeSmog investigation found that one in three GB News hosts spread climate denial on air in 2022.
GB News’s other major owner is British billionaire Paul Marshall, chairman and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Marshall Wace. DeSmog revealed that, as of June 2023, Marshall Wace owned shares worth $2.2 billion (£1.8 billion) in fossil fuel firms. This included a $213 million (£175.6 million) shareholding in the oil and gas supermajor Chevron, as well as stakes in Shell, Equinor, and 109 other fossil fuel companies.
In her statement announcing the launch of ARC, Stroud took aim at climate policies, writing that “we risk driving policy interventions to address environmental concerns without having an honest conversation about the trade-offs for the poor at home or in developing and emerging nations”.
Poor and indigenous groups in developing countries will be hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, while those suffering from poverty at home have seen their energy bills soar as successive governments have failed to implement green reforms.
ARC is fronted by Canadian author Jordan Peterson, who regularly posts about “climate apocalypse insanity” and “eco fascists” to his millions of online followers. Peterson has promoted fringe climate crisis deniers on his YouTube channel and, as revealed by DeSmog, plans to open a new online school also featuring several climate crisis deniers.
ARC’s advisory board includes writers Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, both of whom have written books downplaying the threats posed by climate change, as well as Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia and a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s principal climate science denial group.
Late last year, speaking on the outskirts of ARC’s launch conference in London, Abbott claimed climate change has “nothing to do with mankind’s emissions”. ARC advisor Vivek Ramaswamy, who also spoke at the conference, has called climate change a “hoax” and has said that “real emergency isn’t climate change, it’s the man-made disaster of climate change policies that threaten US prosperity.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, states it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming.
Kemi Badenoch, whose department appointed Stroud to her new advisory role, also spoke at the ARC conference alongside Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove. The pair were joined by a number of Conservative MPs.
Stroud’s appointment to the government’s Low Pay Commission was first trailed by The Telegraph in December. A “Whitehall source” told the paper that Stroud was selected for the three-year post to block a possible left-wing appointment by a Labour government.
Carla Denyer, Green Party co-leader and its parliamentary candidate for Bristol Central said that Stroud’s appointment was “hardly the most appropriate” and that “the Conservatives seem set on placing their people across the quango world before the general election.”
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
‘Climate change is the idiot socialist get-out-of-jail-free card,’ Peterson recently tweeted. Image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC.
Fringe climate crisis deniers who claim that the earth is “cooling” and greenhouse emissions are good for “biological productivity” are getting exposed to millions more people than they normally would on YouTube thanks to conservative influencer Jordan Peterson.
That’s according to viewership data newly reviewed by DeSmog, which reveals a massive visibility boost for public figures who’ve been active in the climate denial movement for years but whose ideas — such as the claim that plants are growing much better due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — are now rarely taken seriously by most legacy media outlets.
They include climate crisis deniers like Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Richard Lindzen, Alex Epstein and Bjorn Lomborg. Despite having either a modest YouTube presence or none at all, these figures have collectively garnered nearly five million views after being interviewed on Peterson’s channel, which has 7.31 million subscribers. The New York Times, by comparison, has 4.33 million YouTube subscribers.
This is especially worrying to climate scientists and disinformation experts because Peterson for years has been actively courting alienated males in their 20s and younger. Traditionally, people who are “doubtful” or “dismissive” of climate change have tended to skew older. Peterson is now planting doubt via his podcast and social media posts about the severity and urgency of global warming in the minds of younger generations.
“‘Climate change,’” he tweeted in June, is “the idiot socialist get-out-of-jail-free card.”
And he is now in the process of putting real political power behind the climate crisis denial movement. In late October and early November, a new group Peterson founded called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) will hold in London, England, its first ever meetings. It has on its advisory board Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who during GOP debates in August said that “the climate change agenda is a hoax.”
ARC advisor Ramaswamy: ‘the climate change agenda is a hoax.’ Image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC.
Advisors to the group include Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who earlier this year argued on Peterson’s podcast that “climate change is a real problem, but it’s not this catastrophic end of the world.” Lomborg didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog. Other advisors are Texas Republican congressmember Dan Crenshaw; Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee; former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott; and dozens of conservative policymakers, financiers, activists and journalists from the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is being supported by founders and leaders of the Legatum Group, a Dubai-based investment firm behind The Legatum Institute, a pro-Brexit think tank in London with close ties to the U.K. Conservative Party. The Legatum Group is a leading investor in the rightwing British television network GB News. Read DeSmog’s in-depth report on ARC’s U.K. links here.
Experts argue this makes Peterson a key organizer at the global level for efforts to oppose and delay action on climate change. “I would say that Jordan Peterson has become a central cog in the denial machine,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told DeSmog.
“It’s concerning that he’s poisoning the minds of so many influenceable people with his pseudo-intellectual and pseudoscientific drivel, drivel that is being weaponized in the right-wing assault on science and reason,” Mann added, referring to Peterson’s frequent downplaying of climate risks, including the conservative influencer’s insistence that rising levels of carbon dioxide are good for the planet.
Spreading Denial, Making Money
Peterson’s influence depends to a significant degree on his gigantic YouTube following, which is larger than that of the liberal-leaning news network MSNBC. It also surpasses the following of The Daily Wire, a digital conservative outlet co-founded by Ben Shapiro that has a partnership with Peterson, which last year claimed a yearly revenue of $100 million.
Google, which owns YouTube, announced a policy in October 2021 prohibiting advertisements on content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.” Elaborating on the policy in an email to DeSmog, a Google spokesperson wrote that “Debate or discussion of climate change topics is allowed, but when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.”
Yet a Peterson interview from this year entitled “The Great Climate Con,” during which he framed rising greenhouse gas emissions as a positive for making the planet “green in the driest areas,” was accompanied by ads for Birch Gold and Masterworks. Climate scientists say that is a misleading argument because it doesn’t take into account the massively negative effects that intensified droughts, wildfires and heatwaves due to global warming have on plants and ecosystems.
“Debate or discussion of climate change topics is allowed, but when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.”— Google spokesperson
“We’ve reviewed the videos,” the Google spokesperson wrote, “and did not take action on them.”
“What’s the point of having policies if you’re not going to enforce them?” Claire Atkin, co-founder of the anti-disinformation watchdog group Check My Ads, told DeSmog. “YouTube and its ecosystem of marketing tools allow Jordan Peterson to not only spread [misleading statements], but to make money off them.”
Peterson didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog about his current income nor his recent shift towards promoting climate crisis denial online.
‘Twisted Symbiotic Relationship’
One example of Peterson’s amplifying effect is his interview with Judith Curry, a former Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist who now does consulting work for clients including petroleum companies and natural gas traders. In testimony to Congress in 2015 she claimed incorrectly that recent data “calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change.”
While appearing on Peterson’s podcast earlier this year she argued that due to “natural variability” the planet could grow cooler over the next three decades rather than warmer, a position with no credible scientific basis, especially considering that July was the hottest month in recorded human history. Posted to YouTube, where Curry has no official channel, the interview garnered more than 960,000 views. She didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog.
Conservative author and fossil fuel activist Alex Epstein had a modest YouTube following of 15.2 thousand subscribers when he was interviewed by Peterson. “It’s out!” he tweeted after the video was posted. It now has over 1.04 million views, a significant boost considering that the vast majority of videos on his page have under 500 views.
“I think Jordan Peterson has become more interested in humanistic thinking about fossil fuels,” Epstein wrote in an email to DeSmog. “He has become even more convinced, thanks to my work and others, that the popular movement to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use is based on invalid thinking methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values.”
During his interview with Peterson, Epstein claimed that “It’s kind of obvious if you have a warmer world with more CO2, it’s a more tropical world with more life. It’s a more green world in the life sense of green. And yet the green movement hates it.”
Peterson has echoed that statement frequently in his podcast, despite actual scientists saying that greening caused by rising greenhouse gases shouldn’t be celebrated. He claimed during his interview with Steven Koonin, author of a book on climate change science called Unsettled, that “since the year 2000 the world has greened by 15 percent … why the hell isn’t that good news?” That interview has since been viewed more than 1.1 million times. Koonin didn’t respond to a media request.
“Peterson—who doesn’t appear to know much at all about the science or politics of global warming—has become an influential promoter of illogical ideas,” Benjamin Franta, a senior research fellow in climate litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, told DeSmog.
During an interview in 2022 on Joe Rogan’s podcast, for instance, Peterson argued that the climate is too complex a system to be modeled accurately, “and that’s a huge problem when you’re trying to model over 100 years because the errors compound just like interest.” “He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong,” one climate scientist told the Guardian.
Though Peterson is among the most visible promoters of climate crisis denial, he’s also part of a wider digital network. Researchers with Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Center for Countering Digital Hate earlier this year found 200 videos on YouTube promoting delay or skepticism around measures to address the climate emergency, garnering nearly 74 million views altogether.
“[There’s] a twisted symbiotic relationship between these platforms and climate denial content,” Erika Seiber, a climate disinformation spokesperson at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth who is part of the disinfo coalition, told DeSmog. “YouTube runs ads on the content, incentivizing the creation of yet more misleading content, which allows deniers like Peterson to flourish and for their networks to grow.”
Enabled by Google and YouTube, climate crisis denial could be having real-world influence, disinformation experts say. A poll this summer suggested that 72 percent of U.S. Republican supporters think that the economy should be prioritized over addressing climate change, a 13 point increase from 2018, even as cities sweltered under record heat waves. Conservatives are opposing coastal wind turbines under the pretense of protecting whales. Republican Congressmembers in June passed bills protecting gas stoves in people’s homes.
“You can see how climate denial content from Peterson and others has informed policy discussions,” Seiber said. “It’s incredibly concerning.”
