He is calling for the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap and restoring the winter fuel payment to all pensioner
Nigel Farage’s tax and spend plans were slammed as “fantasy economics” as Reform UK claimed it could save a massive £225 billion over five years by scrapping net zero projects.
Mr Farage’s party also wants the threshold for paying the basic rate of income tax to be dramatically increased from £12,570 to £20,000.
…
Reform sources said the £225 billion figure of savings from ditching net zero projects was based on a report by the Institute for Government.
But the IfG stressed that the bulk of this green investment, highlighted in the paper called “Paying for Net Zero” was due to come from the private sector, not public funds.
Jill Rutter, senior fellow at the IfG, told The Standard: “Cancelling private investment does not save the Government money.”
…
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.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.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. Credit: ARC / YouTube
The Reform UK leader reiterated false climate claims at Jordan Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event in London.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has admitted that he doesn’t know about climate science, despite claiming that politicians shouldn’t worry about man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Farage was speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London today. ARC claims that it wants to help “save civilisation”, yet several of the event’s speakers have spread climate science denial.
In an interview with Canadian psychologist and ARC co-founder Jordan Peterson, Farage said claimed that sunspots and volcanoes have more impact on the climate than human-caused CO2 emissions – an opinion longdebunked by climate experts.
He added: “I’m not a scientist. I can’t tell you whether CO2 is leading to warming or not, but there are so many other massive factors.”
Despite admitting that he is not a climate expert, Farage claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant.
Reform UK campaigns to entirely scrap the UK’s policies to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It also proposes increased fossil fuel extraction, including the opening of new coal mines, and received at least £2.3 million (92 percent of its funding) from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers prior to the 2024 general election campaign.
As DeSmog revealed on Monday, a leaked guest list for the ARC event includes executives from oil and gas giants including BP, Koch Inc., Valero Energy, and Energy Transfer.
ARC received £1 million in 2023 from its director Paul Marshall, a hedge fund manager who owns GB News and recently bought The Spectator magazine. As revealed by DeSmog, Marshall’s hedge fund had £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels – including in oil and gas giants Chevron, Shell, and Equinor – as of June 2023.
On 17 February, during the first day of the ARC conference, Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the UK’s 2050 net zero target “sinister”, and suggested climate action was a plot to “shrink human freedom”.
Nigel Farage and Climate Denial
Farage was a star speaker on the second day of the ARC conference at the ExCel centre in east London, during which he took part in a one-on-one interview with ARC frontman Peterson, who is a major promoter of climate science denial.
After declaring that “net zero is a complete disaster”, Farage called for dozens of “small modular nuclear reactors” across the UK. Peterson responded with a question about the science of climate change, suggesting: “Maybe it’s time to stop our obsession with carbon altogether.”
Peterson said: “I also think conceivably that the environmentalist climate scam was an offshoot of the Club of Rome Malthusian stupidity that is predicated on the presumption that resources are finite and that there’s far too many people on the planet, and there’s a terrible anti-human motivation lurking underneath all of that’s pessimistic and brutal and genocidal in its fundamental ethos.”
Farage replied: “The one thing I hear that drives me absolutely potty is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant! That’s what they tell us! That clearly is absolutely nuts. Now, there are times in our past when CO2 in the atmosphere has been much, much higher than it is today, and that’s before people drove 4×4 Chelsea tractors.”
In fact, 2024 was the hottest year on record, according to experts at the World Health Organization.
As climate scientist Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London has stated: “We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has, to the best of our knowledge, in the last million years.
“This incredibly fast rate of change is the real problem, as it leaves neither society nor the ecosystem time to adapt.”
Farage went on to say that Sir Patrick Moore, a TV astronomer, told him 20 years ago that “when it comes to carbon dioxide levels, and when it comes to warming and cooling, let me assure you that sunspot activity and underwater volcanic activity will always have a bigger impact on the environment than man himself ever can”.
“I’ve very much stuck to that view,” Farage added.
Climate scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, 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”.
Farage went on to repeat the misleading claim that only three percent of CO2 emissions are produced by humans. In fact, human activity has raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 percent in less than 200 years, according to NASA.
The Reform UK described himself as an “environmentalist in the old school sense and definition of that term”, complaining that “climate hysteria has blinded us to other environmental disasters such as the rape of our oceans”.
Later in the interview, Farage agreed with Peterson that “family” is of central importance for a happy society. He also said he believed in “Judeo-Christen values”, and asserted that the Conservative Party is “not remotely right-wing”.
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.
“I think you really are the best hope for Germany,” Elon Musk told the thousands attending the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s rally on January 25. France 24 English/YouTube
The tech billionaire is invigorating groups in the U.S. and Europe aiming to sabotage climate action, a DeSmog media analysis shows.
In December, a Chicago-based organization called the Heartland Institute, which for decades has attempted to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, devoted an episode of its daily podcast to Elon Musk.
As recently as 2022, Heartland figures had ridiculed the Tesla CEO as a member of the “billionaire climate elite” based on Musk’s claim that as a top manufacturer of electric vehicles, his company was “doing the most to solve climate change.”
But perhaps, the podcast guests speculated, Musk was finally “abandoning the climate cult.”
The episode was recorded after Musk had given upwards of $277 million to get Donald Trump elected president, argued that “we don’t need to rush” on addressing climate change, and vowed to cut $2 trillion of federal government spending. One guest on the show was cautiously optimistic, saying: “I’m coming around on Musk.”
Heartland, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, isn’t the only anti-climate group embracing Musk these days.
DeSmog journalists in the European Union, the UK and the United States reviewed public materials from prominent climate deniers referencing Musk over recent months. Taken as a whole, these podcasts, opinion pieces, social media posts, newsletters, YouTube videos, and interviews with legacy media reveal an unmistakable trend: Musk’s public embrace of right-wing populists is invigorating a transatlantic movement aiming to spread doubt about the reality of climate change and sabotage action on the crisis.
His interventions ahead of Germany’s elections on Sunday have energized the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which says that climate policy “threatens our freedom,” a January poll suggests.
His courtship, along with Trump, of hardline leaders in Europe threatens to torpedo hopes of progressive climate action by the EU, think tanks warn.
And in the U.S., Musk’s ongoing war against the federal bureaucracy “erodes our collective ability to adapt to climate impacts,” Amanda Fencl, director of climate science for the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, has warned.
Some longtime climate deniers are thrilled, however, recognising that even a brief endorsement from Musk to his 217.9 million followers on X — the social media platform formerly called Twitter, which he bought in 2022 — can confer instant visibility and excitement.
“We welcome Elon Musk into the climate red pill group,” Climate Depot executive director Marc Moranostated in December, using a phrase popular among Trump supporters that refers to rejecting liberal viewpoints.
Musk, contacted via Tesla, did not respond to a detailed list of questions about his shifting climate views.
‘Windmills of Shame’
When Germans vote for a new government on Sunday, the EU’s most populous country is widely predicted to shift to the right. Leading the polls at about 29 percent of voters is the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, which intends to prioritise economic growth over accelerated climate measures endorsed by the ruling Greens and Social Democrats, or SPD.
Less certain is the influence that the surging far-right AfD will have on the next German government. On X, Musk has openly endorsed and platformed the party, which wants to ditch Germany’s climate commitments.
As migration and economic stagnation dominate German politics, the AfD is now polling close to 21 percent — potentially doubling the 10 percent of votes it won in the last national elections in 2021. The party states that the level of human contribution to global warming is “not scientifically proven,” and opposes state support for renewable energy and electrification of heat and transport, while advocating for Germany’s gas and coal power sectors.
The CDU says that it will not form a coalition government involving the AfD, and maintains its commitment to Germany’s 2045 net-zero emissions target. But despite its opposition status, the AfD is already shaping national political discourse — and even decision-making.
While the CDU and Germany’s other mainstream parties have traditionally refused to vote with the AfD due to its extreme stances on immigration and Germany’s Nazi past, the CDU broke this so-called “firewall” last month by voting with the AfD on a resolution to restrict migration.
Musk has sided with the AfD on its hard-line immigration stance and nationalist messaging. In December, Musk openly endorsed the party, shocking liberal Germans by writing on X that “only AfD can save Germany.” He went on to join a 9 January livestream with the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, who has attracted controversy for Islamaphobic remarks, such as in a 2018 Bundestag speech when she said “burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knifemen, and other ‘good-for-nothings’ will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state.”
In terms of climate policy, Weidel has suggested that if the AfD takes power in Germany, it could dismantle wind turbines, recently calling them “windmills of shame,” The wind sector produced a third of the country’s electricity last year.
During their conversation, both Musk and Weidel expressed support for nuclear power — with Musk also saying he was a “big fan” of solar energy — and Weidel stating that Germany’s CO2 footprint was “obnoxiously very very high.” Both steered clear of the AfD’s official climate-denialist party platform.
Then, less than two weeks later, Musk sparked a global furore by raising his arm to the crowd at Trump’s January 20 inauguration in a gesture that many likened to a Nazi salute. The Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, a German organisation which advocates against right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism, saw no ambivalence in Musk’s move, describing it as a “Hitler salute.” Musk responded to the outpouring of criticism by posting on X: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Five days after Trump was sworn-in, Musk ramped up his support for the AfD by addressing a party rally via videolink. He urged supporters to “take pride” in being German over “some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything”, and told them that there’s “too much of a focus on past guilt” — remarks condemned by Polish prime minister Donald Tusk.
YouTube Influencer
Musk had previously enjoyed support from Germany’s centrist parties. When Tesla opened a multi-billion dollar electric car factory in the State of Brandenburg in 2022, the move was billed as a boost to both the country’s manufacturing sector and climate credentials. But during his January livestream with Weidel, Musk expressed his disdain for the bureaucratic procedures needed to build the Tesla factory, which he said amounted to “25,000 pages”.
Musk’s public support for the AfD can be traced back to his interactions with Naomi Seibt, a 24-year-old German influencer who built a sizeable social media following attacking “climate alarmism” and cultivating a brand as the anti-green doppelganger of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Her rise to prominence was aided by the Heartland Institute, which featured her in a YouTube video it published in February 2020. Seibt has since told Reuters that the organisation had paid her $4,000 a month for three months as a “scholarship.” (Seibt no longer appears to be affiliated with the group).
German influencer Naomi Seibt appears on the Heartland Institute’s YouTube channel on February 11, 2020. Credit: Heartland Institute/YouTube
When Seibt posted on X last June that she’d voted for the AfD in the EU elections, which saw the formerly fringe party rise to 16 percent of the total vote — its best-ever result — Musk began sending her private messages asking for more information, according to Seibt. “And then he started following me,” Seibt told the BBC, noting that “it took him many months to decide to support the AfD.”
Musk’s backing could boost a party that’s heavily critical of the country’s decarbonization efforts. A January poll of German voters from the U.S.-based Democracy Institute think tank suggested that 28 percent of respondents say they are “more likely” to vote AfD due to Musk’s support, while 23 percent said it made their support “less likely.”
Germany’s center-right and center-left leadership have condemned Musks’s interventions. Friedrich Merz, head of the CDU, told The Wall Street Journal last week that Musk would face consequences for boosting the AfD. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a member of the centre-left SPD, last month called Musk’s support for European far-right parties “disgusting.”
The new Trump administration is already mirroring the billionaire’s embrace of the AfD. Last week, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance met with Weidel, the AfD co-chief, on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, while snubbing Scholz.
With the U.S. playing a major role in German trade and security, this budding transatlantic alliance could bode poorly for climate action in Europe’s biggest economy.
Neither Seibt nor the AfD responded to questions.
Courting the European Far-Right
Musk’s electrifying impact on the AfD builds on his years of dabbling in far-right politics in other European countries.
In December 2023, Musk appeared as a guest of honour at an annual convention in Rome hosted by the Brothers of Italy, the right-wing populist party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had said earlier that year that “ultra-ecological fanaticism” was an economic threat.
Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, also attended the 2023 convention. He had recently predicted that Spanish citizens would hang their current Socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, by his feet, remarks that were so controversial that some Brothers of Italy members asked for his invitation to be withdrawn, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.
But whereas Abascal’s presence threatened to create divisions at the event, “Elon Musk’s case is somewhat different, arousing only enthusiasm and selfie fervor,” noted El País. “The tycoon is nowadays the darling of almost all those on the ultra-right who seek media and economic backing, and a cutting-edge image.”
A month later, in January 2024, Musk again signalled his interest in European politics.
With German farmers protesting the end of government diesel fuel subsidies and a new tax on agricultural vehicles, Anthony Lee, who had stood for the European Parliament as a candidate for Free Voters, a German conservative populist party, gave an interview to right-wing Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek. Lee told Vlaardingerbroek that politicians “want our land to build industry, houses. Houses for refugees, whoever, I don’t care what for.”
After Musk reacted to the video on X, writing “Support the farmers!” Lee said in a video message that “I think it’s just awesome that Elon Musk himself tweeted this…This is only possible because we stand together.” The video was viewed over 200,000 times. Lee did not respond to a request for comment.
A year later, Musk was rubbing shoulders at Trump’s inauguration with a who’s-who of right-wing European politicians, including Spain’s Abascal, France’s Éric Zemmour and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, all of whom have questioned the science and urgency of climate change.
Analysts with the independent European Policy Center think tank in Brussels sees the inauguration guestlist as a worrying sign that Trump and Musk are helping strengthen “ideological ties between significant radical forces on both sides of the Atlantic.” They are concerned about the impact a second Trump administration may have on a host of EU-wide initiatives, including a raft of climate reforms known as the European Green Deal.
“The most concerning possibility,” the analysts argue, is “Trump’s probable exploitation of far-right leaders or governments to block EU policies or advance his agenda.”
Musk’s Shift to ‘Climate Skeptic’
For years, Musk enjoyed a reputation as a crusading green energy entrepreneur on a mission to render the internal combustion engine obsolete, celebrated by climate activists and cleantech investors alike — despite growing signs of his right-ward political leanings. As recently as last August, the online news outlet E&E News ran a story speculating that “Musk might be the only person Trump listens to on climate.”
But Musk’s politics and business interests seemed to decisively converge during a 2024 meeting of Tesla executives in Palo Alto, California, where he shelved plans to develop a more budget-friendly compact car that could be marketed to lower-income customers around the world, according to a report in the Washington Post. This had previously been a key part of Tesla’s plan to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
Instead, Musk approved a plan worth billions of dollars to purchase computer chips that could improve Tesla’s luxury vehicles, the Washington Post report said. Musk had shifted from calling for “a popular uprising” against the fossil fuel industry in 2016 to stating that there were more important global problems to address.
In a livestream with Trump last year, Musk stated that “we don’t need to rush” in fixing climate change.
This also happens to be the message of Bjørn Lomborg, a longtime Danish climate crisis denier (and apparent “friend” of Trump administration energy secretary Chris Wright) whose 2023 book Best Things First argued that there were more important global priorities to address than climate change. According to a recent edition of Lomborg’s newsletter, the Canadian conservative influencer Jordan Peterson shared a copy of Lomborg’s book with Musk in 2024.
Within U.S. denial networks, some leaders link Musk’s shift to the flourishing of anti-climate messages on Twitter after the billionaire purchased the platform, and renamed it X. “I mean, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of climate skeptics on X/Twitter, and they’re constantly posting content that we put out here,” the Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts argued on the group’s podcast. “Musk has had to have seen some of this stuff.”
Musk’s former critics in climate denial circles now see him as the best bet for implementing their most extreme ideas. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been attempting to shut down key climate-related agencies like the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.
On the website of the conservative group CFACT, prominent denier Paul Dreissen — who previously accused Musk of holding “sanctimonious” views on “the alleged climate crisis” — has offered policy suggestions to the billionaire as he wages war on the federal bureaucracy: End subsidies for renewable energy; terminate funding for environmental and climate justice programs; and require applicants for climate research funding to “provide computer codes and analyses so that reviewers can view and evaluate their work.”
Parts of Musk’s plan seem to rely on two recent, pro-industry Supreme Court decisions to unwind regulatory authority long held by federal agencies — an overarching goal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 initiative, retooled with Musk’s Silicon Valley spin.
If successful, these cuts will dismantle decades of clean air and water protections, and hamstring the country’s ability to respond proactively to the worsening climate crisis, said Fencl, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida in October 2024, but caused deadly and destructive flooding hundreds of miles from the coast due to extreme rain. At least 219 people died, and the damages are estimated at $78.7 billion. Credit: PBS NewsHour/YouTube.
“Our infrastructure systems are not going to withstand the climate impacts we’re expecting, and taking away the government’s spending in these spaces really erodes our collective ability to adapt to climate impacts,” Fencl said.
Raising the UK’s Political Temperature
Since throwing his fortune and social media influence behind Trump, Musk has teased the possibility of attempting a similar campaign in the UK.
In December, Musk met with Reform UK leader Farage, who also co-founded and formerly led the Brexit Party, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The two were in talks about Musk offering a £100 million (over $125 million) donation to Reform, The Times of London reported. Farage has said he finds it “extraordinary that people call carbon dioxide a pollutant, and Reform UK’s latest party manifesto recycles a long-debunked claim that “scientists disagree as to how much” human activity is causing climate change. So such a donation would have been a major investment by Musk in transatlantic climate denial.
Then, in January, Musk used X to call for the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right British influencer serving an 18-month contempt of court sentence for making false accusations about a Syrian schoolboy. When Farage rejected his calls to join forces with Robinson, Musk tweeted that, “the Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”
Farage was not sufficiently swayed by Musk’s comments to support Robinson’s return, although he struck a conciliatory note by saying the tech mogul didn’t know “the full story” about the provocateur’s criminal past. By the end of January, Farage was signalling to the press that his rift with Musk was over, telling The New York Times that the billionaire was still open to donating to Reform UK. “We’ve got very similar goals on some areas, slightly different emphases in others,” Farage said, adding that Musk was sharing valuable information about how Trump won over swing voters during the U.S. election.
Farage is also collaborating with the Heartland Institute, which has claimed credit for working with hard-right parties in Austria and Hungary to attempt to stall the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, which sets targets for restoring damaged ecosystems, as well as other green policies. Farage helped launch the pro-Trump institute’s new UK-Europe branch in December.
Farage’s newly formed Reform UK won just five of the 650 seats in the lower house of parliament in last year’s elections, and was unsuccessful in generating a backlash against the country’s net-zero emissions goal. Nevertheless, the party appears to be pushing the historically weakened Tories to the right on climate change — echoing Farage’s previous strategy to rally support for the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Regardless of how much tangible backing Musk might provide to right-wing figures in the UK, his winning bet on Trump, and assault on federal government spending, has inspired Farage and his allies with a sense of the possible. “There’s a heck of a lot we’ve learned from that we will implement over the next few years,” Farage told The New York Times.
Some European leaders are looking for ways to neutralize Musk’s efforts to sway voters.
In January, as Musk posted false allegations that UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer had let child sex abusers escape justice, France called on the European Commission to take action against Musk and X for election interference. According to The Financial Times, Musk was also investigating how to get Starmer out of office before the country’s next election, and replace his center-left government with right-wingers.
Members of the European Parliament, who are elected representatives of their respective nations, are also criticizing the Commission for failing to use its authority under the EU’s Digital Services Act to investigate and fine Musk and X, as well as other major social media platforms, for spreading disinformation.
Asked about Musk’s tirade during a public event in January, Starmer did not name the billionaire directly in his response. “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they’re not interested in victims,” said Starmer. “They’re interested in themselves.”
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.
Warren Stephens. Credit: The Golfer’s Journal / YouTube
Campaigners warn that the UK will face “pressure from American fossil fuel interests” to slow its energy transition.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be UK ambassador runs a firm with investments in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal.
Billionaire Warren Stephens, a major Trump donor who was nominated on Monday to be the next UK ambassador, is chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc., one of the largest privately-owned investment banks in the U.S..
The firm’s portfolio includes at least five companies that make their money from oil and gas exploration and production, including one, Stephens Natural Resources, which is “solely owned” by the Stephens family business.
“President-elect Trump’s promise to boost U.S. fossil fuel production is reflected in his choice of UK ambassador, raising concerns about the potential impact on the UK’s own climate leadership”, said Fossil Free Parliament campaigner Carys Boughton.
Tessa Khan, executive director of the environmental campaign group Uplift, told DeSmog the appointment was a sign that “the UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas”.
Trump has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas in the U.S. while his presidential campaign received the backing of major fossil fuel interests. The president-elect has called climate change a “hoax” and is expected to once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which established a global ambition to limit warming to 1.5C above industrial levels.
The Stephens hire comes just weeks after the UK Labour government unveiled an ambitious new climate target to cut emissions by 81 percent by 2035. The move was criticised by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who this week flew to Washington DC reportedly to build ties with senior Republicans ahead of a second Trump presidency.
As DeSmog revealed last week, Badenoch has hired advisors who have criticised climate action and have links to fossil fuel-funded think tanks. Badenoch, who describes herself a “net zero sceptic” has also received donations from the head of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial group.
Oil and Gas Investments
Stephens Inc.’s investments in oil and gas include Stephens Natural Resources, a company run by Warren’s uncle Witt Stephens.
The company, which trades as Stephens Production, “has a rich history of drilling and producing both oil and natural gas”, according to its website, and “continues to expand its production and reserves in the continental U.S. and offshore Gulf of Mexico”.
The company is “solely owned” by the Stephens family, whose investment stretches back to 1953, according to the website.
Stephens Inc.’s other current investments, which date back to the mid-2010s, include Four Corners Petroleum, an oil exploration and production company based in Colorado.
Stephens Inc. lists RK Supply in its portfolio, a “leading distributor of piping, oil and gas valves, fittings, and other oilfield service equipment” based in Texas. It also lists Dakota Midstream, a company that “provides infrastructure support to oil and gas exploration and production”, based in Colorado.
Another company in the Stephen Inc. portfolio, Texas-based Basin Oil & Gas, buys “non-operating oil and gas interests”, and is developing carbon capture and sequestration projects. Carbon capture is a favoured climate solution of the oil and gas industry, and is often used simply to extract more fossil fuels.
Stephens Inc. lists a firm called Capture Point in its portfolio, which specialises in enhanced oil recovery – a method for extracting hard-to-get oil. Capture Point told DeSmog that Stephens Inc. was not an investor in the company, though did not respond when asked if Stephens Inc. was previously an investor.
All the companies cited were approached for comment.
Trump Tensions
Stephens’s appointment comes at a critical time for the UK’s energy transition, and highlights the differences between the new Labour government and the incoming Trump administration.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month attended the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, pledging that the UK would restore its role “as a climate leader on the world stage”. In its 2024 election manifesto, Starmer’s Labour Party pledged to ban all new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. However, after five months in office, the government has yet to implement that promise.
“While the UK government has pledged to turn the UK into a ‘clean energy superpower’, it has not enacted its manifesto commitment to ban new licenses, nor provided a plan for a just transition away from fossil fuels”, Carys Boughton told DeSmog.
“Trump’s choice of ambassador will gift the fossil fuel industry yet more influence within UK politics, which is particularly concerning while the government is still wavering on the future of fossil fuels.
“It is therefore yet more important that the government take action to restrict fossil fuel industry influence – to protect its developing climate and energy policy from the industry’s polluting interests.”
As DeSmog has reported, Trump’s would-be energy secretary Chris Wright, chief executive of fracking company Liberty Energy, has praised Danish climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg as a friend. Wright’s nomination was welcomed by the CO2 Coalition, a climate science denial group which has received funding from the Koch Industries oil dynasty.
Analysis by the climate outlet Heated found that all of Trump’s cabinet picks have made misleading statements about climate change.
Science denial and an enthusiasm for fossil fuels are also views shared by Trump’s UK supporters. In September, DeSmog reported that Trump ally Nigel Farage, the Clacton MP and leader of Reform UK, was a keynote speaker at an event in Chicago run by the Heartland Institute, where he called on the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels.
“It’s no surprise that this appointment – like the rest of Trump’s administration – is shot through with oil and gas interests”, Uplift’s Tessa Khan, told DeSmog.
“Fossil fuel companies will prove extremely influential in the incoming U.S. government, and they want nations across the world to remain hooked on oil and gas for years to come just so they can keep profiting.
“The UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas. To succumb would be against the UK’s national interest”.
