Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 – driven by rising passenger numbers – even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.
The UK does not have “credible” policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.
Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today – reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.
Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UK’s emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)
With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UK’s climate targets.
The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and “expanding Heathrow would compound the problem”. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:
“The UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.”
The “jet-zero strategy”, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategy’s expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.
The CCC says a “credible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviation” should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.
As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the “aviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissions”. It says policies should be designed based on the “polluter pays” principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.
Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for “engineered removal” technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are currently “not yet available at the scale required”, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.
(“Natural solutions” such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says “engineered removals” would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)
The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around £150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.
In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.
Is net zero pushing up our bills? Ruining British industry? A worthless target? We weighed these claims up against the facts
“This is what climate change looks like, here and now,” Andy Burnham said last month, reflecting on a summer of catastrophic fires, drought and heatwave after heatwave. People were left without water, crops failed and emergency services had their busiest summer ever.
And yet with disaster on our doorsteps – and the government now recommending we stockpile in preparation for future extreme weather – there remains a sustained opposition to the UK’s plan to tackle it all: net zero.
In fact, many have doubled down on “ditching net zero” this summer. And in some fringes this is accompanied by claims that our changing climate has nothing to do with human activity. Let’s be clear: this goes against the overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific study.
We’ve already reported on how this sort of straight-up climate denial is creeping back into UK politics. But what about the softer arguments against net zero, those that appeal to people’s anxieties about the cost of living, job losses and the supposed need for pragmatism?
Many of these are also based on fallacies and falsehoods – some of them warping the scientific concept of net zero into something different altogether. Let’s dig into some of the most common myths out there.
‘Net zero is a made-up term’
The UK became one of the first major economies to bring net zero into national law in 2019, under Theresa May’s Conservative government. In a nutshell it means reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 100%, from 1990 levels, by 2050. The “net” part is that some emissions may still exist but are balanced out by removing emissions through carbon sinks, such as tree planting, or technology.
It’s a legal commitment enshrined in an amendment to the 2008 Climate Change Act, and it is based on rigorous climate science.
And yet one of the more common narratives online is that net zero is some arbitrary idea, a figure plucked out of thin air to make us poorer, colder, and plunder our economy. Reform MPs regularly refer to “net stupid zero” and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called it “political fiction”. Conservative MP Andrew Bowie, who acted as May’s parliamentary private secretary when the target was brought in said in an interview with Politico last year: “What’s quite clear is that the setting of arbitrary targets with no clear plan on how to deliver them does not work for the country.”
Professor Myles Allen from Oxford University is one of the leading scientists on net zero, and has worked on the need for a finite carbon budget for over 20 years. “When I hear politicians saying, ‘I’m not a climate denier, I’m a net zero denier’, that doesn’t make any sense,” he told us. “The implication of that, obviously, is, ‘I’m comfortable with the world warming forever.’”
Key fact: Net zero by 2050 is a legal commitment, rooted in physics and atmospheric science, based on a finite carbon budget to stay within 2 degrees of warming.
‘Net zero is sending our energy bills through the roof’
Energy bills are extremely high, and set to rise further next month when the price cap increases. We are all feeling this. And many – including Reform in its election manifesto and Restore Britain’s energy policy paper – blame net zero for pushing up prices and “crippling our economy”.
But the main culprit has nothing to do with net zero.
Wholesale gas prices – the sums paid by our suppliers when they buy gas in bulk – have skyrocketed since the Iran war. In the last year, they have more than doubled. And our bills, which include a unit cost based on that wholesale price, have risen accordingly. Depending on where you live and the tariff you’re on, you’ll be paying around 7p per kilowatt-hour this September.
But what about electricity – surely that’s unaffected by price shocks in the gas industry?
This is where a concept called “marginal pricing” comes in. It’s a principle of all commodity markets, and it’s where the last available technology sets the price for what all energy suppliers receive. So if all of the UK’s energy demand is met by renewables suppliers (the cheapest option), it’s renewables setting the price. But if renewables aren’t being offered on the markets, or if demand is high, then it’s more expensive options – like gas – that set the wholesale electricity price. (Analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit earlier this year found that wind power had reduced electricity prices by over 30%.)
The last part of the bill is the standing charge. This covers network operating costs, the maintenance of infrastructure, debt recovery and VAT. It also includes costs for some government policies such as social or environmental schemes – but this is a small percentage. So yes, our standing charges are helping pay for net zero. But they are mainly going towards upgrading pipelines and cables or claiming back unpaid bills. And they tend to make up between a fifth and a third of the total bill.
Adam Berman, policy director at Energy UK, the trade body for energy companies, explains that network costs have hugely increased because “successive governments have made the decision to finance our electricity infrastructure entirely through bills”. This is instead of “some balance between bills and general taxation which is what almost everyone else across the OECD does”. And it is this difference which makes our electricity bills more expensive than gas when you compare your two bills side by side.
However, he said: “If we hadn’t invested, in five or 10 years we would be close to the water sector, in that you’d have to be doing massive levels of investment”.
Key fact: Sky-rocketing energy bills are due to extremely high gas prices, which make both gas and electricity more expensive.
‘Net zero is destroying British industry’
Jobs are being lost in the UK’s oil and gas sector in the North Sea, and industries like steel have taken a hammering in recent decades. Reform and the Conservatives have put this down to net zero.
While it is true that the oil and gas industry reports staggering job losses – unions say 1,000 direct and indirect jobs are being lost each month – the reasons are complex. For a start, production in the North Sea has largely been in decline since 1999. Many of the wells and basins are reaching maturity, meaning that the fossil fuels are harder and more costly to extract. And as production has waned, so have jobs. (In fact, new research has shown that even in the small windows when production increased, jobs still declined.)
Losing your job can be a traumatic experience. But there is cause for hope: a recent government analysis found that oil and gas workers’ skills will be in high demand in critical sectors including clean power, construction, defence, advanced manufacturing and life sciences. It found that around 70% of oil and gas workers are already employed in occupations identified as a priority for these sectors. (For more on North Sea oil myths see Carbon Brief’s excellent analysis.)
On the other side, jobs in the UK’s renewable energy sector are growing – and have topped 145,000 for the first time according to a recent report.
Key fact: Oil and gas production in the North Sea has been in decline long before Net Zero, and jobs are declining too. However, renewables jobs are growing, and oil and gas skills are highly sought after in other industries.
‘The UK achieving net zero would make no difference anyway’
The UK’s carbon emissions have been in overall decline for decades and now account for less than 1% of the global total.
There are many variations on this myth: from “How will it make any difference?” to “Why should we make an effort when we aren’t as bad as other countries?” Rishi Sunak said it when he was prime minister in 2023. And Reform MP Lee Anderson last year asked in Parliament: “If the UK went net zero tomorrow, by how much would it reduce the Earth’s temperature by?”
Less than 1% does sound very low. However, we are also the 22nd highest emitter in the world; there are over 160 other countries with lower emissions than us.
And if you add together all the countries accounting for less than 2% of emissions, it comes to just under half the global total. If all of them took the “Why bother?” approach, it would write off our chances of a net zero world.
It’s also important to note that while China, the US and India make up the top three (with 26%, 11% and 8% respectively) this doesn’t tell the full story when it comes to emissions per person. China is the 35th highest country for emissions per capita, way behind the US and all the petrostates. The UK is 83rd, putting us roughly in the middle.
Nor does the 1% figure take into account historic emissions. England was among the first countries to industrialise. Our emissions have risen since the mid-1800s, while other countries’ did not until closer to the end of the century. When you look at historic cumulative emissions from 1750, the UK is the fifth worst offender.
A final caveat: when looking at global emissions the aviation and shipping industries are not included. They are grouped together like a separate country and according to 2024 data count for just over 3% of global emissions. So flights taken by British people don’t count towards the UK’s reported emissions. And British people take a relatively high number of flights.
If anything, the 1% figure is obscuring the fact that the UK is in fact an outsized contributor to global emissions. A net zero UK would make a huge difference to the world.
(None of this is to mention the simple argument that we have a moral duty to clean up after ourselves, regardless of the size of the mess – as summarised by this caller to LBC).
Key fact: The UK is a lower emitting country at less than 1% of global emissions. However there are over 160 low emitting countries and if everyone gave up on net zero that’s around 42% of global emissions.
‘Climate change is happening. Let’s just accept it’
Climate change is certainly happening. Forecasters warn of a “super” El Niño into 2027, with droughts, flash floods and extreme heat likely to get worse.
And yet some instruct us to simply look on the bright side and adapt to the changing world. “When it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it,” said Reform’s Richard Tice last month. “And if it means that English wine and sparkling wine gets better and better, fantastic.” A fortnight earlier, Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath had written a column titled: “Britain can’t stop climate change. Let’s just embrace a Mediterranean lifestyle.”
Pallavi Sethi, a researcher into climate misinformation at the LSE’s Grantham Institute, described the suggestion that we should simply accept climate change and scrap net zero as “dangerous and misleading”.
Reform’s Richard Tice told a press conference that there is ‘no evidence’ net zero would stop climate changeOli Scarff / AFP via Getty
At Jordan Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, and most recently Reform’s party conference in Birmingham, participants have raised the need to adopt more air conditioning, like the US.
It is true that we need more money to be spent on adaptation. The Climate Change Committee estimates that we need investments of around £11bn per year of both public and private investment to adapt homes, hospitals, infrastructure and many industries for a changing climate. A recent report states that “the UK was built for a climate that no longer exists today”.
Sethi told us: “Accepting that climate change is happening while giving up on efforts to limit further warming means accepting greater risks, more damage, as well as higher costs in the years ahead.”
However this is not an “either/or” scenario, and increasing temperatures lay bare the increased inequality in the UK. Some people can afford to adapt where they live, installing air con or heat pumps, or planting trees in their garden. Others cannot: they do not have the money, or the agency over Council property or a landlord’s private home. Enjoying England’s vineyards is not for the many.
Key fact: The fact that the climate crisis is already here doesn’t mean we can’t still mitigate it.
Reporter: Grace Murray Deputy Editor: Chrissie Giles Editor: Franz Wild Production Editor: Alex Hess Fact checker: Lydia Morrish
The Bureau has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and 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.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says that he’s going to permit the Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea fossil fuel projects. He urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. The proof is in the pudding.
Heathrow airport wants to build a third runway and new terminals. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Climate Change Committee says government cannot expand airport without requiring aviation industry to clean up its emissions
Heathrow airport should be allowed to expand only if airlines pay for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the government’s climate advisers have said.
…
Nigel Topping, the chair of the CCC, said: “The government cannot expand Heathrow airport without requiring the aviation industry to clean up its emissions. Therefore, the government should legislate policies that require the aviation industry to fully address all of their emissions by 2050, either directly or by purchasing engineered removals. The polluter-pays principle must apply.”
…
But campaigners rejected the CCC’s plan of relying on nascent technologies to wipe out the impact of an expansion that would commit the UK to much higher emissions for decades, and called on ministers to halt all airport expansion.
Tony Bosworth, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, accused the CCC of “pulling its punches”, pointing to recent research by the Tyndall Centre that found SAF and carbon removals were unproven and unlikely to ramp up in time to the extent needed to justify airport expansion.
“The CCC should have made it crystal clear: there is no plausible way to expand Heathrow without wrecking the UK’s climate targets,” he said.
Frequent flying is overwhelming skewed towards the wealthy. In any year, only about half of people in England take a flight abroad, while about 80% of all flights abroad were taken by people who took two or more flights – about a quarter of the population. Frequent flyers – those who took five or more return flights abroad in 2024 – made up only 5% of the population, but accounted for a third of all flights.
Those in the highest income group took 38% of all flights abroad – four times as many flights as those in the lowest income group, according to the National Travel Survey of England in 2024.
A photo of an empty classroom. Credit: Unsplash(CC0)
Thousands of schools closed their doors, and a third of all pupils were recorded absent in Wales as temperatures hit 37°C.
School pupils in England and Wales lost more than 15 million teaching hours during June’s heatwave, which caused a spike in absences and forced many schools to close their doors or reduce hours over safety concerns.
According to DeSmog’s analysis, at least 760,000 students in the two countries missed lesson time due to school closures. Temperatures broke previous records and parts of the UK reached over 37°C between 23 and 26 June.
Where schools remained open, absences spiked, with absence rates reaching 36.5 percent in Wales on 25 June, the hottest day ever recorded in the country during the month of June.
The heatwave – one of five to batter the UK this summer – lasted for eight days and triggered a red health alert across many parts of the UK, with hospitals forced to cancel operations, workplaces shortening hours, and people warned not to travel. There were nearly 2,900 excess deaths caused by the May and June heatwaves.
The government recommends schools close only as a last resort, when conditions are unsafe. At least 1,730 schools shut their doors or closed early, far more than previously thought, DeSmog’s new analysis showed.
In an email to parents announcing closures, one Oxford school stated: “It reached 30 degrees at 11:30 in some classrooms without children in them”. Other schools reported classroom temperatures over 40°C.
Many other parents opted to remove their children from schools over safety concerns. One parent told DeSmog that she took her five-year-old child out of school after pupils returned home with severe heat rashes.
Where schools remained open, nearly 12 percent of students were absent in England, almost 50 percent higher than the same period in the previous year.
A version of this article was published by The Guardian.
In May, the Climate Change Committee, an independent government advisory body, warned that students would lose an estimated 14 days of learning to extreme heat every year without action to avoid 4°C global warming by the end of the century.
School children in southern England could experience “severe cognitive performance loss for over 80 percent of the spring and summer months,” it said.
Experts told DeSmog that missed school days could come at high costs for school students – from lower exam results to poorer mental health.
Nicola Gray from the University of Huddersfield, who led research into the impact of closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, told DeSmog: “School provides basic social services, social connection, and nutrition [through free school meals]. It provides the qualifications needed for decent housing, a decent job. So much is rooted in the school system.
“We do not want the education and training of our students to dip precisely at the time when they’re gonna need new skills and the best possible futures in a changing climate.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) told DeSmog: “Hot weather can be a struggle, but schools did a fantastic job keeping children learning safely during this summer’s heatwave. Schools put measures in place, so they remained the best place for children to be, even during a heatwave – because every day in school counts.”
The DfE said that it was “investing to make schools more resilient to a changing climate – including through a £710 million Renewal and Retrofit Programme and almost £20 billion to rebuild over 750 schools.”
Spiking Absence Rates
This summer was the UK’s hottest on record, according to provisional data by the Met Office. Extreme heat across Europe and many other parts of the world caused deaths, wildfires, and widespread disruption.
DeSmog collected information on more than 1,700 affected schools based on dozens of national and local news reports, and analysed it using census data to calculate the total number of students impacted by closures.
Neither the government nor local councils currently publish official data on school closures due to extreme weather events. UK councils told DeSmog that schools made individual decisions based on their safeguarding plans.
DeSmog also analysed government data on pupil absences during the heatwave at schools that remained open, which showed a major spike in students missing school time in both England and Wales.
While closures led to over 5.9 million lost learning hours, pupils missed an estimated 9.5 million additional hours due to heat-related absence.
On the hottest day (25 June) in Wales, absence rates were four times the year’s average – and the highest recorded during the year so far – with over a third of all pupils out of school.
Total figures are likely to be a conservative estimate, due to the lack of official data on closures and given government data on absences only covers pupils at state-funded schools up to the age of 15.
Georgia Price*, a mother of two in Sussex, told DeSmog that she decided to keep her son at home rather than sending him to school.
“He spent Tuesday with 30 five-year-olds in one class, with no fan and no ventilation. On Tuesday night, parents on the WhatsApp group were saying that their kids came home with horrendous heat rashes that were remaining overnight,” she said. “He’s not going to be able to learn in an environment like that.”
Deprivation
Closures affected at least 465,000 families, with many more impacted by absences.
Nicola Gray told DeSmog that those on lower incomes would likely be the hardest hit.
“Do students have the internet connection needed for remote learning? Do they have devices? Do they have a private space to work? With the best will in the world, some people may face difficult situations for learning.”
Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Bristol were among the counties worst affected, with 65,000, 48,000, and 46,000 pupils impacted respectively.
Among schools that remained open in England, the highest rate of student absence was seen in the South East, South West, and West Midlands. All three regions saw absence rates reach above 13 percent (double the yearly average).
“School closures can put students in the most deprived areas at a disadvantage,” said Charlotte O’Regan, schools engagement lead at the Sutton Trust, a charity focused on social mobility. “While some schools or parent organisations are able to pay to ensure that their environments are suitable for study, we know that state school leaders are already having to face difficult decisions when it comes to funding.
“We saw a significant widening of the attainment gap during the pandemic, and we have to make sure that the weather doesn’t become yet another barrier holding back those worst off.”
Adaptation
Parents, academics, and campaigners all said that rapid adaptations are needed in schools to keep children safe and able to study in increasing temperatures.
“We should learn from what happened in June,” Georgia Price said. “There are quite simple changes you should make to make it more comfortable. Stagger classes, teach in smaller groups, have portable air-con units.”
Nicola Gray likewise stressed that adaptations were vital for keeping kids in school.
“The best way to have the best life outcomes for our children and young people is for them to be in school. The government could and should have a proactive approach to providing short- and medium-term support,” she said.
Solutions could include changes to school buildings like fitting shutters to keep out the heat, installation of solar panels to power air conditioning and fans, and short-term adaptations like changing school uniform rules and learning in smaller groups, she suggested.
Recent polling commissioned by Global Witness revealed widespread support for such measures. Seventy-five percent of people support the installation of solar-powered air conditioning in schools and hospitals, the polling found.
Unions are also calling for a maximum temperature limit for classrooms such as the one introduced in New York state, which has set a limit of 31°C.
“If you’re not kitted out to make a comfortable environment then you should close,” Price said.
Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson, who was England’s education secretary during the June heatwave, told Parliament at the time: “We do recognise the need to make sure that as we refurbish and rebuild schools across our country, we make sure that they are well placed to cope with some of the fluctuations in temperature that we’re seeing.”
Phillipson said, however, that in the meantime it was “for school leaders as to how they manage that best”.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and 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.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.
