Craig Mackinlay

Net Zero Scrutiny Group Chair Urged Not to Resurrect ‘Failed’ Project

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Former Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. Credit: GB News / YouTube

Despite growing public support for climate action, former Tory MP Craig Mackinlay has pledged to continue opposing green policies.

Campaigners and politicians have warned a former Conservative MP against reviving an anti-net zero group which is allied to climate science denial. 

Craig Mackinlay stepped down as MP for South Thanet before the general election after contracting sepsis in September. Tributes were paid in Parliament to Mackinlay’s personal courage in May after the illness required the amputation of his legs and arms.

Mackinlay was nominated to the House of Lords on 4 July (the day of the election) by outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak, and Mackinlay said he would use this position to campaign around sepsis and limb loss, “as well as sensible net zero”.

In an interview last week with GB News – a broadcaster which frequently airs climate science denial and attacks on net zero – Mackinlay announced that he plans to continue to chair the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), which he has led since its launch in 2021.

“The Net Zero Scrutiny Group will continue”, he said. “We had a number of peers in it before. 

“I intend it to continue – and perhaps even stand it up with some external funding – if we can fund it as a proper group, to actually tell the story to new parliamentarians about why the current thinking is so woolly and so wrong and so costly, and there’s a better way of doing this.”

The NZSG has led the opposition to climate action in Parliament in recent years. The group has urged the government to scrap “environmental levies on domestic energy”, “expand North Sea exploration” for oil and gas, and support “shale gas extraction” by lifting the ban on fracking. 

“Just a month on from the worst electoral defeat in its entire history, you’d think the Conservative Party might be reflecting on why policies that will trash the planet went down so badly,” Zack Polanski, deputy leader of the Green Party, told DeSmog.

“If its remaining MPs decide to double down on their hostility to net zero then it will show that they have learnt absolutely nothing, are completely out of touch with the British public, and represent a threat to life on our planet.”

Public Support for Net Zero

The NZSG has extensive ties to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group, sharing research and staff, and promoting each other’s work. 

In March 2022, Mackinlay gave a supportive quote to a report by the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch, which called for “rapid” new North Sea exploration and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

As recently as May of this year, Mackinlay’s parliamentary aide was still Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the GWPF, according to the official register of secretaries. 

The GWPF frequently publishes reports that cast doubt on established climate science, explicitly rejecting the position of the world’s climate scientists. It has also actively campaigned against net zero policies, and in favour of new fossil fuel extraction. 

As reported by DeSmog, two thirds (24 out of 37) of the NZSG’s supporters in the House of Commons lost their seats in the general election. The Conservative campaign adopted some of the language and policies of anti-net zero groups, as the party pushed for more fossil fuel extraction and to delay key net zero reforms. 

Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the Conservatives received at least £8.4 million in donations from fossil fuel interests, climate science deniers, and polluting industries. 

The Conservative Party won its lowest ever number of seats in July’s election, registering only 121 Commons constituencies, with Mackinlay’s former seat (albeit with reformed boundaries) falling to the Labour Party. 

Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, has urged the party’s leadership candidates to learn from Sunak’s mistakes. Writing for CapX on 29 July, he said: “Now in a new Parliament, aspiring Conservative leaders must learn the lessons from the campaign and set out a bold plan to stop climate change and restore nature… 

“Further weakening environmental policies will not shift Reform voters, and will only serve to alienate current Conservative voters and the voters the party needs to win back from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens.”

Polling by More in Common and E3G during the general election period found that a majority of people in every UK constituency are worried about climate change. Some 61 percent of 2024 Conservative voters said they are worried about climate change, matched by 76 percent of Labour voters, and 65 percent of the country overall. 

Voters that switched from the Conservatives to Labour were highly engaged on climate issues, with 72 percent saying prior to the election that net zero would affect how they planned to vote.

It also appears that support for climate action has risen since the election. A new poll by YouGov for Climate Barometer, which tracks public opinion on climate change, found that support for net zero had risen from 69 percent in April to 74 percent in July after the election.

“This attempt to deny science and resurrect the failed Net Zero Scrutiny Group is bizarre against a background of the YouGov poll this week which showed that three quarters of the UK public support the drive to net zero,” said Jolyon Maughan, executive director of the Good Law Project. 

The world’s leading climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said that climate action has been delayed by “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”.

Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, last week warned of a “massive mis- and disinformation campaign” to stop climate action. “There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said.  

“It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction.”

Mackinlay said he had “nothing to add” when approached by DeSmog for comment.

Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingNet Zero Scrutiny Group Chair Urged Not to Resurrect ‘Failed’ Project

Two Thirds of Anti-Net Zero Tories Wiped Out in UK Election

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

From left to right, outgoing net zero sceptic MPs Steve Baker, Miriam Cates, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns and Philip Davies. Credit: Official House of Commons portraits. Design: Adam Barnett

The result has “buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all”, said Will McCallum of Greenpeace UK.

Labour’s landslide victory over the Conservatives has left the party’s anti-net zero wing in tatters. 

DeSmog’s analysis of Westminster’s influential Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) found that two thirds of its supporters are no longer represented in parliament following the July 4 general election.

Twenty-four of the 37 MPs supportive of the backbench grouping were voted out – a loss of 65 percent of its backers. Outgoing supporters include former energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, former NZSG co-chair Steve Baker, and Net Zero Watch board member Andrea Jenkyns. 

A further five stood down or resigned before the election, among them veteran climate crisis John Redwood.

The group’s former chair Craig Mackinlay, who contracted sepsis in September, has been appointed to the House of Lords by outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak. Mackinlay has said he would use this platform to campaign for “sensible net zero”. 

The NZSG has actively campaigned against climate action since it was formed in 2021. The group’s joint letters to the Telegraph made front page news, as supporters urged the government to scrap “environmental levies on domestic energy”, “expand North Sea exploration” for oil and gas, and support “shale gas extraction” by lifting the ban on fracking. 

In addition to the NZSG grouping, former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has become an outspoken critic of net zero since leaving Downing Street in 2022, was voted out on Thursday. 

Campaigners have welcomed the departure of MPs opposed to climate action. “This landslide election victory has buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all along with many of its principle architects”, Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog. 

“Most of the former MPs who sought to sow division and disinformation about net zero have lost at the ballot box.”

Meanwhile, 14 anti-net zero MPs were re-elected, including Labour MP Graham Stringer, who is on the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate denial group, and Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories to Reform UK earlier this year.  

Four new Reform MPs were also elected, including party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Richard Tice, both of whom have a record of climate science denial. 

Despite this, campaigners are still positive. McCallum added that “the biggest winners [in the election] – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party – contested this election on strong green policies that will slash emissions, lower bills and deliver hundreds of thousands of new jobs”. 

“There is and has long been a public consensus on climate action in this country”, he said, and “the new government should feel empowered to be bold”. 

Here are some of the most prominent critics of net zero who have lost their seats: 

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his North East Somerset seat by more than 6,000 votes to Labour’s Dan Norris, was secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy under Liz Truss between September and October 2022. 

While in office he reportedly argued for lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas, and told the head of the UAE’s state investment company, in a private meeting revealed by DeSmog, that people need to “stop demonising oil and gas”. 

Since January 2023, Rees-Mogg has presented his own show on GB News, which regularly broadcasts climate science denial. Rees-Mogg has been a harsh critic of the government’s net zero policies, stating that “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.

Steve [“Number two”] Baker

Steve Baker has led the charge against climate policies in parliament. Baker was a trustee of the UK’s main climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), from May 2021 to September 2022, when he stepped down to serve as Northern Ireland minister. He was co-chair of the NZSG, which operated as the GWPF’s caucus in parliament.  

At a 2021 Conservative Party conference event, Baker said that much climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised”, while claiming that some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.

In February 2022, Baker received £5,000, and a further £10,000 in February 2023, from Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF. 

On Thursday Baker lost his Wycombe seat to Labour’s Emma Reynolds by more than 4,000 votes. 

Dame Andrea Jenkyns 

Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her seat of Leeds and South West Morley by more than 7,000 votes to Labour’s Mark Sewards, sits on the board of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF, the UK’s main climate science denial group. 

In March 2023 Jenkyns told parliament: “Personally, net zero, I think we need to ditch these targets, especially at the moment, and use whatever resources we’ve got under our feet.” She has described herself on Twitter as holding “no-to-net-zero views”.

Miriam Cates

Miriam Cates lost her Penistone and Stocksbridge seat by more than 9,000 votes to Labour’s Marie Tidball in Thursday’s general election. 

Cates was tipped as a rising star of the Conservative party, a “darling” of the Tory right. She is the co-chair of the New Conservatives, a socially conservative faction of the Tory party which received £50,000 in January from GB News investors the Legatum Group.

Cates also sits on the advisory board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a right-wing group fronted by prominent climate denier Jordan Peterson. 

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in London last year, Cates suggested that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” are being caused by teaching children that “humanity is killing the Earth”. 

Philip Davies  

Philip Davies, who lost his Shipley seat by more than 8,000 votes to Labour’s Anna Dixon, has a long record of opposing climate policies. Davies was one of only five MPs to vote against the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008. 

He currently works as a presenter for GB News, as does his wife and fellow Conservative politician Esther McVey, who was re-elected on Thursday. 

Liz Truss

A number of net zero sceptic MPs existed outside the NZSG grouping, among them former prime minister Liz Truss, who resigned in October 2022 after just 49 days in the job. As well as appointing Rees-Mogg energy secretary, Truss overturned the UK’s moratorium on fracking for shale gas – a key demand from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.

Since leaving Downing Street – and in between giving paid speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups like CPAC and the Heritage Foundation – Truss has become an open opponent of net zero policies. 

In her 2024 book “Ten Years to Save the West”, Truss called for the independent Climate Change Committee to be abolished, and attacked the UN COP process, which coordinates international action on climate change. Truss also claimed that while in cabinet she argued against the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit.

On Thursday, Truss lost her South West Norfolk seat by 630 votes to Labour’s Terry Jermy.

‘Watching Closely’

“It’s obviously fantastic news that 30 Tory MPs who’ve lobbied against climate policies are no longer in parliament”, said Jessica Townsend, founder of the MP Watch campaign group, which used DeSmog research in a recent event on “top ten climate denial MPs”.

Townsend noted that seven of the campaign’s list have won seats, including Reform’s Farage and GWPF director Graham Stringer.

“MP Watch will be watching these MPs closely in coming months as well as the influence fossil fuel companies and their think tanks may have on Labour in Westminster now that the power base has shifted,” she added.

Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

What does it mean to be a climate denier?

Continue ReadingTwo Thirds of Anti-Net Zero Tories Wiped Out in UK Election

High-Profile Allies of Anti-Net Zero Parliamentary Group Revealed in Telegraph Letter

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog according to their republishing guidelines.

Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. Credit: Simon Dawson / 10 Downing Street, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

New allies of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of MPs and Lords have today been revealed in a letter published by the Telegraph. 

The NZSG campaigns against the UK’s legally binding net zero commitments. The letter reveals new supporters among influential Conservative MPs and peers not previously known to back the group including former Business and Energy Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord Frost, Iain Duncan Smith, Andrea Jenkyns, Jonathan Gullis, and Miriam Cates. 

The chair of the NZSG, Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, coordinated the letter – which called for the suspension of a UK scheme that imposes costs on energy-intensive industries for their carbon emissions. The letter was signed by 29 Conservative MPs and peers.

The revelation comes as the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on climate change, today stated that the UK is missing its climate targets on nearly every front. 

The government has been criticised for supporting the continued exploration of North Sea oil and gas sites, in the face of warnings from international climate and energy bodies. Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, has said that political leadership was “missing” in the pursuit of net zero. 

“The CCC’s report could hardly have been more damning – tearing the government to shreds over its abysmal progress on tackling the climate emergency, and its utterly misleading arguments that fossil fuel expansion is somehow necessary before reaching net zero,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told DeSmog.

“Yet this letter from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group proves that Rishi Sunak has clearly been spending more time listening to a group of climate delayers and deniers in his own party, rather than scientists and independent experts … It’s time for the prime minister to slam the door in the face of fossil fuel interests once and for all.”

All signatories of the letter were asked by DeSmog to confirm whether they were members of NZSG. Only two of the 29 parliamentarians – Conservative MPs Holly Mumby-Croft and Jack Brereton – denied being formally part of the group, while a third, Kelly Tolhurst, said that she was in favour of net zero but that “there is not just one way to meet net zero and it is right to raise concerns over policy that could impact the competitiveness of the UK.”

Founded in 2021, the NZSG has never released a full list of its members, meaning that the parliamentarians linked to the group can only be discerned from the individuals who sign its public letters. 

The New Allies

The list of NZSG allies released today includes individuals associated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s principal climate science denial group, which has extensive ties with the parliamentary caucus.

The letter in the Telegraph was signed by Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns and Lord Frost, both of whom are directors at the GWPF, which regularly questions the scientific basis of human-caused climate change. 

The majority (54 percent) of Conservative MPs who signed the NZSG letter are either current or former members of the European Research Group (ERG) – a faction of the Conservative Party that supported a ‘hard’ Brexit and was reportedly the model for the NZSG.

This includes Rees-Mogg, a former chair of the ERG who served as Business and Energy Secretary from September to October 2022. As revealed by DeSmog, Rees-Mogg spoke of his desire for people to “stop demonising oil and gas” in a private meeting with the head of the United Arab Emirates’s state investment company while serving in the cabinet. 

Rees-Mogg has a long record of opposing climate action. In 2014 he claimed that efforts to limit global warming “would have no effect for hundreds or possibly a thousand years” and in 2013 he blamed high energy prices on “climate alarmism.”

Rees-Mogg currently hosts a show on climate sceptic broadcaster GB News, as do fellow NZSG signatories Esther McVey and Philip Davies. 

New MPs not previously associated with the NZSG include Miriam Cates, Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who at the National Conservatism Conference in May claimed that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” among young people are being caused by teaching, among other things, that “humanity is killing the Earth”.

The NZSG allies also include several parliamentarians embroiled in controversies. For example, Reclaim Party MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the Conservative Party in April for comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust. 

The Reclaim Party itself has a history of opposing climate action. Its website says that “net zero climate policies punish the poorest in society” and the party’s leader Laurence Fox has argued for scrapping “those woke billions” that “we are spending each year to appease the sun monster with offerings of net zero”.

Another signatory of the NZSG letter was Scott Benton, who had the Conservative whip suspended in April after a newspaper sting caught him offering to lobby on behalf of the gambling industry and leak confidential documents.

The full list of signatories was as follows: Craig Mackinlay, Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord Frost, Esther McVey, Sir John Redwood, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Sir Robert Syms, Mark Francois, David Jones, Kelly Tolhurst, Sammy Wilson, Andrew Lewer, Jack Brereton, Miriam Cates, Chris Green, Jonathan Gullis, Philip Hollobone, Adam Holloway, Julian Knight, Marco Longhi, Karl McCartney, Holly Mumby-Croft, Philip Davies, Bob Seely, Greg Smith, Andrew Bridgen, Scott Benton, Baroness Foster of Oxton, Baroness Lea of Lymm, Lord Lilley, Lord Moylan, Lord Strathcarron.

Greg Smith told DeSmog that he is “committed to challenging assumptions on the best way to end our reliance on fossil fuels and decarbonisation.”

He added: “There is a lot of groupthink in this space that just doesn’t stack up when challenged and it is better to work out the better solutions now than wait for them to go wrong and mess up people’s lives.”

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group was set up in 2021 and campaigns against climate action and for more fossil fuel extraction. The group has publicly pushed for more North Sea oil and gas exploration, the removal of green levies from energy bills, and lifting the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas.  

As DeSmog has reported, the group has extensive ties to the GWPF and its campaign arm Net Zero Watch (NZW) – sharing personnel, resources, and campaign goals. 

NZSG chair Craig Mackinlay’s has employed GWPF and NZW head of policy Harry Wilkinson, a former researcher for GWPF founder Nigel Lawson, as a parliamentary aide. At the time of its launch, NZSG’s deputy chair Steve Baker MP was a director of the GWPF, and received £5,000 from GWPF chair Neil Record while in that role. 

Baker, who is not on today’s list, stepped down from GWPF in September to become a government minister, and in October said he was still administrator of the NZSG’s WhatsApp group but was no longer lobbying the government on climate policies. He received another £10,000 from Record in February.

NZSG’s policy demands track those of NZW, and Mackinlay has helped promote NZW reports. In March 2022, Mackinlay gave a supportive quote to a NZW report calling for “rapid” new North Sea exploration and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

The GWPF continues to deny climate science. A recent paper called the UK’s record temperatures in 2022, which saw a 40C heatwave, “a warm year, but unalarming”. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost body of climate scientists, says that “Climate change has already increased the magnitude and frequency of extreme hot events” and that “future extreme events will also occur with unprecedented frequency”.

The GWPF’s influence also appears to be growing. In May, Allison Pearson, the Daily Telegraph’s chief interviewer and a columnist at the newspaper, joined the GWPF board, where she sits with former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Lord Frost, and Andrea Jenkyns. 

Craig Mackinlay was approached for comment. 

Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog according to their republishing guidelines.

Continue ReadingHigh-Profile Allies of Anti-Net Zero Parliamentary Group Revealed in Telegraph Letter

Should climate activists get involved in electoral politics?

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This is one suggestion from thinking about effective climate campaigning, the post about effective campaigning is yet to be published.

Should climate activists get involved in electoral politics?

We definitely should attempt to get rid of MPs who are enemies to climate action – there are many e.g. Steve Baker, Kwasi Kwarteng and DUP’s Sammy Wilson. Even the threat of such action may prevent MPs taking bribes from the oil industry.

I suggest that we would need to endorse certain candidates and campaign to promote them over others. I would expect climate campaigners to have the level of support to ‘throw’ or ‘flip’ elections. It’s worth bearing in mind that by the general election of 2024 we will have had more climate events since they seem to be happening continuously. If we were to follow this route, it would be wise to avoid actions that frustrate or alienate the public.

This is a suggestion for climate campaigning groups to discuss and decide for themselves. It’s a complex topic – should we campaign against the Conservative party? That’s an easy one but what about the Labour Party? Red Tories who’s leader has called for injunctions against climate protestors. If we’re going to get involved in electoral politics should we campaign for the best possible outcome for the climate and what is that, is it achievable, will it work? “Endorsed by XR”?

28/7/22 Suggestions if you have an MP who opposes climate action.

Let their local party know that you are opposed to them e.g. by writing to them from individuals or your group and telling them, a physical letter may be considered more seriously than an email.

Start an organisation and associated website that opposes them like Steve Baker Watch. later: or Craig Mackinlay Watch. [12/8/22 Robert Courts Watch].

Deliver leaflets, write letters to local papers, participate in radio phone-in discussions documenting their climate-opposing actions.

Continue ReadingShould climate activists get involved in electoral politics?

Protesters continue to block UK oil terminals despite arrests

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Environmental protesters have continued to block UK oil terminals as part of a campaign to disrupt the fossil fuel industry despite dozens of arrests across the country.

Supporters of Just Stop Oil began the action in the early hours of Friday morning at refineries near London, Birmingham and Southampton by climbing on to tankers and gluing themselves to roads.

Despite at least 34 arrests, the activists continued to disrupt oil terminals on Saturday morning and said they had gained access to further sites.

The group announced on social media that they had blocked Navigator terminals in Essex, posting photos of protesters in hi-vis jackets on top of a tanker and others blocking a road with a banner reading “Just Stop Oil”.

They said protesters had blocked access to the Titan Truck Park and revealed a secret underground network of tunnels leading to the site. The development means the main and emergency access roads to the critical oil terminals are closed.

“We need the government to stop funding new oil projects and we need it now! Our only means of highlighting this issue is mass civil resistance,” they said in a post on Instagram.

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Conservative MP for South Thanet Craig Mackinlay calls for renewable sources of energy to be abandoned!

Continue ReadingProtesters continue to block UK oil terminals despite arrests