Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the party’s 2024 annual conference in Birmingham. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
DeSmog and the New World have been blacklisted by Nigel Farage’s party.
A leading press freedom group has accused Reform UK of drawing from the “authoritarian playbook” by blocking media outlets from attending its annual conference this weekend.
The party informed DeSmog and the New World yesterday that its journalists would not be accredited for this year’s event. It did not offer an explanation.
The New World (formerly the New European) is a weekly newspaper with 35,000 subscribers whose contributors and editors include former New Labour communications chief Alastair Campbell, former global editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism James Ball, and former Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona.
DeSmog is one of the UK’s leading climate investigations platforms. This year alone it has published stories in partnership with the likes of the BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Private Eye, and The Mirror.
“It is shocking to see UK political parties seeking to pick and choose who can report on them,” said Fiona O’Brien, UK director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“For democracy to work, journalists must be free to cover political events like party conferences and hold those in power to account, on behalf of the public.
“Reform UK’s actions in recent weeks – which include banning councillors from speaking to local journalists and falsely accusing journalists of activism – are straight out of the authoritarian playbook and should immediately be reversed.”
Reform’s leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, Mick Barton, has banned his councillors from speaking to local press outlet the Nottinghamshire Post and its online arm Nottinghamshire Live. The ban followed critical coverage of Reform by the publication, whose journalists were accused of acting “as activists” by the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice.
Reform’s leader Nigel Farage is paid more than £300,000 a year as a presenter on the anti-climate media outlet GB News, while Tice was formerly employed by GB News and its Murdoch-owned rival TalkTV.
Farage sported a GB News badge in Congress yesterday as he testified to U.S. lawmakers about supposed “free speech” issues in the UK.
The Reform leader used the session to compare Britain to North Korea, and to urge the U.S. to punish the UK for its alleged free speech infringements.
However, Farage was also held to account for his own questionable free speech record. Democrat Jamie Raskin asked the Reform leader: “Why do you ban journalists who oppose your views from coming to your events?”
“I don’t,” Farage responded. “I can’t think, if I go back over the past 25 years, of banning anybody.”
That statement is contradicted by Reform’s decision to ban DeSmog and the New World from this year’s conference.
Byline Times also announced today that it has been banned from attending this year’s Conservative Party conference. DeSmog and a number of other independent outlets were banned from last year’s Tory conference.
Reform Conference 2025
As reported by DeSmog yesterday, Reform’s conference in Birmingham will feature climate science deniers, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, and dark money campaign groups.
They include the Heartland Institute, a group close to Donald Trump’s administration that has called human-induced climate change a “delusion”, and Net Zero Watch – the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”.
By giving them a platform, Reform is “showing open contempt for the British public already living with the realities of climate breakdown,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the research and campaign group Uplift.
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation found that Reform’s climate policies – which include scrapping clean energy investment and drilling for more fossil fuels – would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy.
DeSmog previously revealed that Reform is offering access to Farage during the conference in exchange for hefty donations. A sum of £250,000 buys 10 seats at a champagne breakfast with the Reform leader during the two-day event, as well as “chauffeur-driven travel”, a personal assistant, and the sponsor’s logo on the main conference stage and battle bus.
DeSmog asked Reform to explain why it had been banned from the event, but did not receive a response.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.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.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Reform is also giving a platform to a number of groups belonging to the Tufton Street network – an alliance of anti-government campaign outfits that lobby for more fossil fuel extraction and keep their donors a secret.
For the second year in a row, DeSmog has been banned from attending the event, which will be held in Birmingham.
The conference will also feature Together, a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theory group that has launched a campaign against the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
“By giving a platform to climate deniers like Net Zero Watch and the Heartland Institute, Reform is showing open contempt for the British public already living with the realities of climate breakdown,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the research and campaign group Uplift.
“Homes are being flooded again and again, farmers are losing billions to drought, and Scotland’s firefighters are battling wildfires. This is not theory – it’s people’s lives and livelihoods at stake,” Khan said.
“Reform’s deluded energy policy wilfully ignores the fact that the UK has already burnt most of its gas. Official projections show, even with new drilling, the UK will be 94 percent reliant on expensive, dirty imports by 2050. All this while Reform seeks to block the UK from profiting from some of the world’s best resources for offshore wind.
“Our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels is exactly why energy bills are so high and why millions of families across the UK have been driven into fuel poverty. Reform knows this. And it simply does not care.”
Most senior Reform politicians, including Farage, deny basic climate science. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform leader said it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. In the same month, Farage’s deputy Richard Ticetold Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
Last month, Reform’s Great Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkynssaid in an interview with Times Radio: “Do I believe that climate change exists? No.”
They have expressed these views despite representing areas exposed to the worst effects of extreme heat.
Reform received 92 percent of its donations between the 2019 and 2024 UK elections from polluting sources and climate science deniers, while its treasurer Nick Candy has claimed the party is actively raising money from oil executives.
In Farage’s constituency of Clacton, 68 percent of the public is worried about rising temperatures, according to a YouGov poll published last August – slightly above the national average of 66 percent.
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation found that Reform’s climate policies would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy. The science of climate change is also unequivocal: scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 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”.
DeSmog previously revealed that Reform is offering access to Farage during the conference in exchange for hefty donations. A sum of £250,000 buys 10 seats at a champagne breakfast with the Reform leader during the two-day event, as well as “chauffeur-driven travel”, a personal assistant, and the sponsor’s logo on the main conference stage and battle bus.
Reform didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Below is a summary of the key anti-climate groups to be given a platform at Reform’s conference.
Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is a U.S. climate science denial group with close ties to the Trump administration.
It has denied that humans are driving climate change, which it has called a “delusion”. The group claims it is “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”.
Heartland received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, and has received donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel giant and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.
The Heartland Institute previously told DeSmog that it ”stands resolute in its mission to advance sound science, economic prosperity, and individual liberty”. It added that “our support comes from a diverse array of individuals and organisations who share our vision for a freer, more prosperous world.”
Heartland was one of the groups involved in drafting Project 2025, the radical blueprint for Trump’s second term, which proposed reversing climate policies, slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Earlier this month, President Trump hired Roy Spencer, a policy advisor at the Heartland Institute and a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation – the key group behind Project 2025 – as an advisor to the Department of Energy.
Heartland’s UK-EU director Lois Perry has claimed that the institute boasts “very strong affiliations” with “certain big individuals” in Trump’s team.
Nigel Farage attended a fundraising dinner for the institute in September 2024 during which he called for more fossil fuel extraction and the victory of Trump in November’s presidential election, saying: “Let’s get Trump back; let’s drill baby drill”.
He also advocated what he called “a bit of reverse colonialism”.
“Maybe it’s time that Heartland came and set up in Britain and Europe and brought some of the wisdom that you’ve brought to the American debate,” he said – adding: “I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond.”
Farage soon got his wish. In December, Heartland announced it was setting up a UK-EU branch. The Reform leader was the “special guest of honour” at the group’s launch event in London, which also featured disgraced former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss.
Cementing his Heartland links, Farage headlined an invite-only event in June this year entitled “Net Zero: The New Brexit?” held at 55 Tufton Street.
As revealed by DeSmog, Heartland has been working closely with far-right politicians in Europe to undermine the bloc’s green reforms.
Perry, who is speaking at Reform’s conference, has previously said she does not believe climate change is caused by humans. She has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”.
Like Farage, Perry is a former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). She used to run the anti-net zero pressure group CAR26, which has claimed that carbon dioxide is “essential to all life” and that its “welcome growth has greened our planet saving countless human and other lives”.
She recently claimed on a Heartland Institute podcast that she “knows for a fact” Farage credits Heartland with helping to shape Reform’s climate policies.
Heartland Institute president James Taylor told DeSmog: “Climate realism and energy realism are gaining traction throughout the world. The Heartland Institute appreciates that the Reform Party is on board and recognises Heartland as the global leader courageously providing truthful information on these topics. We also appreciate the encouragement and support provided by many policymakers among the UK Conservative Party. A rising tide lifts all boats and we are excited to be prominently leading the charge in the UK and throughout Europe.”
Institute of Economic Affairs
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a radical anti-government campaign group that is part of the Tufton Street network.
The IEA, which has close ties to Liz Truss, advocates for increased fossil fuel production and against state-led climate action.
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that the ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences is “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and said that the previous government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves was a “welcome step”.
In 2018, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from oil major BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005. The IEA is a member of Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organisation that suppors over 450 “free market” groups around the world. Both the IEA and Atlas were founded by Antony Fisher. Fisher’s daughter, Linda Whetstone, was chair of the Atlas Network as well as a director of the IEA until her death in December 2021.
The IEA does not publicly declare its donors, and it’s not known if the pressure group has received funding from BP or ExxonMobil in more recent years.
The group is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission. The IEA was approached for comment.
TaxPayers’ Alliance
The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), based in 55 Tufton Street, also campaigns in favour of fossil fuel extraction and against climate policies.
The group, which claims to be a grassroots movement while being supported by anonymous private donors, has supported ending the windfall tax on oil companies, scrapping the UK’s 2050 net zero target, and restarting fracking.
The TPA was approached for comment.
Net Zero Watch
Reform’s conference will also feature Net Zero Watch – one of the UK’s most notorious anti-climate campaign groups – on a panel entitled “Drill baby drill: abandoning net zero and restoring energy abundance”.
Net Zero Watch has urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels”, including “a new fleet of coal fired power stations”, and has called for renewable energy from wind and solar to be “wound down completely”. From May 2023 to 2025, Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns sat on the Net Zero Watch board.
In a report published last March, the GWPF claimed it was “naive and entirely unrealistic” to believe that CO2 is causing climate change, that record global temperatures are “normal”, and that “there is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis”.
The group has previously expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than its current level.
Net Zero Watch campaign director will be speaking alongside Kathryn Porter, a fossil fuel industry consultant who has written several reports for the GWPF and Net Zero Watch.
Net Zero Watch and the GWPF were approached for comment.
Prosperity Institute
The Prosperity Institute – formerly known as the Legatum Institute – is hosting several events at Reform conference.
A pro-Brexit think tank, the Prosperity Institute is run by the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group, which co-owns the anti-climate broadcaster GB News alongside hedge fund mogul Paul Marshall. GB News employs Farage to the tune of more than £300,000 a year.
In May, after Reform’s local election gains, Prosperity published an article entitled “Farage has the power to defund Net Zero” which claimed that “energy bills have skyrocketed, industries have fled and living standards have fallen” due to the UK’s climate policies.
According to the Spectator Australia, at a Prosperity Institute event in July, Farage said he would need the think tank to bring “fresh young talent into current affairs” and provide “policy solutions we can give to the electorate next time round”.
He said “the great revolution that took place from 1979” – a reference to the election of Margaret Thatcher – was based on the “hard work and good thinking” of neo-liberal economists like Keith Joseph and Milton Friedman.
“That in many ways is your role today”, he told the Prosperity Institute audience – urging the group to produce “the ammunition” to “those of us on the front lines”.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Prosperity Institute previously donated £50,000 to the New Conservatives – a faction of the Conservative Party.
Centre for a Better Britain
The conference will also feature the Centre for a Better Britain – a new Reform-aligned think tank set to launch this month.
The group is funded by Mark Thompson, an investor with interests in metals, fossil fuels, and renewable energy, and his business associate David Lilley, a senior metals trader and former Conservative donor who has given over £270,000 to Reform.
The Centre for a Better Britain, which is attempting to raise £25 million – including from Trump donors – intends to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal,” according to plans seen by the Financial Times.
The think tank is chaired by James Orr, a Cambridge academic who has been described as the “philosopher king” of U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Orr has expressed radical anti-climate positions, claiming in an interview with the European Conservative last month that the UK’s energy policies are “crazy” and that the pursuit of net zero is “fiscal suicide”.
At an event in Hungary last month hosted by the oil-funded think tank Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Orr also accused the UK of adopting a “naive and dangerous” approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead praised Hungary’s approach, which has seen the country systematically block and delay EU military aid packages, and sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
In the European Conservative interview, Orr suggested the war was a “regional Slavic conflict”.
“It is a conflict happening in the world that I don’t care very much about,” he added.
Farage, who used to appear regularly on state broadcaster Russia Today, has previously said that Putin is the world leader that he most admires, though he has also called him a “bad man”.
Together and Farmers to Action
Established in 2021 to oppose mandatory Covid-19 protection measures, such as lockdowns and vaccines, Together has since launched a “no to net zero” campaign that calls for the UK to scrap climate policies.
In January last year, the group said it was “incredible” that the then prime minister Rishi Sunak should “mindlessly assert ‘Covid vaccines are safe’” in a post on X. It has also backed a report which called for the government to pause its vaccination programme over a number of widely debunked conspiracy theories about its safety, including that the vaccine alters human DNA.
Together has recently partnered with Farmers To Action – a protest group also set to feature at Reform’s conference. The group has used recent anti-inheritance tax campaigns to spread anti-climate views.
The leader of Farmers to Action, Justin Rogers, has claimed that “climate change is one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, propagated by “our governments and their puppet masters.” He has also claimed that oil and gas are renewable, and that carbon dioxide cannot be dangerous because it “feeds plants”.
At an event co-hosted by Together and Farmers to Action in February, Farage endorsed a conspiracy theory popular among the far-right.
Speaking in front of around 50 tractors at Belmont Farm in North London, Farage insinuated that the Labour government had a “sinister agenda” to acquire “lots of land because they’re planning for another five million people to come into the country”.
This claim is borne from the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that progressive immigration policies are a mechanism to replace white people in the West, and has been cited by Donald Trump in recent months.
Farmers to Action and Together were approached for comment.
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.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraiser in September 2024. Credit: Heartland Institute / YouTube
The Heartland Institute, which questions human-made climate change, has established a new branch in London.
The Heartland Institute – one of the organisations involved in the radical Project 2025 agenda for a second Donald Trump term – has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change, and received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil.
Heartland is known “for its persistent questioning of climate science”, according to Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, and it has received tens of thousands in donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel behemoth and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.
A Union of Concerned Scientists report in 2007 alleged that nearly 40 percent of the total funds received by Heartland Institute from ExxonMobil since 1998 were designated for climate change projects.
In a press release announcing its new UK-EU branch, based in London, Heartland boasted that it is “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change”.
Heartland Institute president James Taylor added that, “During recent years, a growing number of policymakers in the UK and continental Europe have requested Heartland establish a satellite office to provide resources to conservative policymakers throughout Europe”.
This has included Farage, who spoke at the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraising event in September and called for the group to open an offshoot in Europe. “Give us your wisdom, give us your guidance, give us your discipline. I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond,” he said.
Reform UK has called for the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target to be scrapped, and Farage’s Heartland speech urged the U.S. to re-elect Trump and “drill baby drill” for more oil and gas.
DeSmog revealed in June that – between the 2019 election and the beginning of the 2024 campaign – Reform UK received 92 percent of its funding (£2.3 million) from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers.
Heartland’s European branch will be run by Lois Perry, a climate science denier who has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”. Perry followed in Farage’s footsteps earlier this year by becoming the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), though stood down after just 34 days.
Perry formerly ran the anti-net zero pressure group CAR26, which has claimed that carbon dioxide is “essential to all life” and that its “welcome growth has greened our planet saving countless human and other lives”.
She told DeSmog that Heartland is “advocating for a balanced, evidence-based approach to climate policy, not the one-size-fits-all alarmism that seems to make headlines.”
Perry added: “As for my past with UKIP and CAR26, I wear those roles with pride. I’ve always been upfront about my views: climate change happens, but the hysteria around human causation is, frankly, a bit of a stretch. CO2 is indeed vital for life, turning our planet into a blooming, green paradise rather than a barren wasteland.”
In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
Farage and Project 2025
Farage’s views on climate change appear to reflect those of Perry and the Heartland Institute.
Although two thirds of his constituents are concerned about climate change, Farage stated in an interview with climate science denier Jordan Peterson in July that: “I do find it extraordinary that people call carbon dioxide a pollutant, because as I understand it, plants don’t grow without carbon dioxide.”
In his speech to the Heartland Institute in September, Farage also claimed that the UK’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t “make any bloody difference at all”, due to the emissions produced by larger countries like China.
He also repeated the misleading claim that “man-made carbon dioxide is only about 3 percent of global, annual production of carbon dioxide”. In fact, human activity has raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 percent in less than 200 years, according to NASA.
Farage has been attempting to cultivate ties between Reform UK and senior figures associated with Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and is expected to once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement.
Farage this week met with key Trump ally and donor Elon Musk, who invested at least $277 million in the Republican’s re-election campaign, and said that he would seek to “negotiate” a donation from Musk to Reform UK.
“The threat of U.S. interference in our democracy isn’t just contained to Elon Musk’s touted $100 million donation to Reform,” said Hannah Greer, Good Law Project campaigns manager. “Farage has now helped a fossil-fuel-funded American climate science denial think tank to set up shop in the UK.
During the recent presidential campaign, Democrats highlighted that Trump’s second term agenda was being drafted by another radical right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, under the banner Project 2025.
The document proposes a range of radical anti-climate policies, including slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency.
Project 2025 – heavily funded by just six family fortunes – has been accused of being “extreme” and “authoritarian” for setting out a plan to rapidly “reform” the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies of Trump. The agenda also proposes radical tax cuts, and a crackdown on reproductive rights.
Farage has been heavily criticised for venturing regularly to the U.S. since his election in July, rather than spending time in his constituency of Clacton. The Reform UK leader has made six trips to the U.S. as an MP, often meeting with avowed climate deniers, despite his coastal constituency being at risk of flooding due to global warming.
Reform UK and the Heartland Institute were approached for comment.
Vice president elect JD Vance and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Credit: JD Vance / X
The Conservative leader, who attacked “radical green absolutism” in a Washington DC speech, recently met with a host of influential anti-climate figures.
Speaking to an audience in Washington DC last week, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch declared that the conservative desire to “protect the natural world” had been “hacked, replaced by a radical green absolutism”.
“Looking after our planet became an exclusive discussion about net zero and reducing emissions, and alongside it the growth of activist government to regulate it,” she said.
Badenoch was giving the keynote speech at the centre-right International Democracy Union (IDU) Forum on 5 December. According to her team, she was in the U.S. to build ties with the Republican Party following the election of Donald Trump as the next president.
In keeping with her speech, the new friends that Badenoch spent time with during the trip – vice president elect JD Vance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre – have spread climate science denial and received funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Badenoch describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has suggested that the UK’s 2050 target for achieving net zero emissions would “bankrupt the country”. As DeSmog has reported, her political advisors have attacked the UK’s climate goals, and her campaign for Tory leader was backed by Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, an arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation climate denial group.
Her ministers Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick have ties to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, which proposes the rollback of climate policies and environmental protections.
Here’s what you need to know about Badenoch’s new anti-green allies.
JD Vance
Badenoch reportedly had an hour-long dinner with vice president elect JD Vance, during which they “renewed their friendship”.
Vance has a history of dismissing human-caused climate change. In 2021, he told the American Leadership Forum, a U.S. Christian group: “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man”. He added: “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia.”
During this year’s U.S. presidential election, Vance repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as “the Green new scam”.
Former venture capitalist Vance received a total of $352,000 (around £276,000) from the fossil fuel industry between 2019 and 2024, according to campaign finance database OpenSecrets.
Ron DeSantis
The Tory leader also met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who ran to be the Republican nominee for president this year.
DeSantis, who endorsed Badenoch to be Conservative leader, has described climate change as a “religion” and has passed laws to curb action to tackle it.
In October, when asked about the role of climate change in two hurricanes off the Florida Gulf Coast, DeSantis said: “I don’t subscribe to your religion.”
Hurricanes are fuelled by warmer waters, meaning that more devastating hurricanes are directly linked to rising temperatures. Consequently, as the Florida Climate Center has pointed out: “A larger proportion of storms have reached major hurricane strength in recent years, along with an increase in rapid intensification events.”
DeSantis went on to defend the continued extraction of fossil fuels, saying climate action would involve: “Taxing [people] to smithereens, stopping oil and gas, making people pay dramatically more for energy; we would collapse as a country.”
Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill into law that would delete references to climate change from all state legislation. In May he posted on X in support of the bill: “Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid [and] pursue a radical climate agenda”.
Mike Johnson
Badenoch also reportedly met with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
In 2017, Johnson told a public meeting with constituents: “I am not a big proponent of the climate change data because I have seen data on the other side.”
He added: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is climate changing because of natural cycles in the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”
In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
Johnson has repeatedly voted against action to tackle rising temperatures, including laws that would require oil and gas companies to disclose the climate risks of their activities, while supporting cuts to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
He has also received around $240,000 (more than £118,000) in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, according to OpenSecrets.
Pierre Poilievre
Badenoch’s North American trip also saw her visit Toronto, where she met with Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Canadian Conservative Party.
Declaring that conservative leaders in Canada and the UK were “uniting over shared values”, Badenoch posted on X calling Poilievre “an impressive and thoughtful figure” and “a new friend and ally”.
As DeSmog reported in March, Poilievre has voted against climate and environmental legislation nearly 400 times during his parliamentary career.
Poilievre has also campaigned against a carbon tax in Canada, and has supported Canadian oil and gas extraction, calling it “the most ethical and environmentally sound in the world”.
The Free Press
Badenoch also recorded a podcast with The Free Press, a conservative platform which has published attacks on climate science and action.
In 2022, it ran an article by climate crisis denier Michael Shellenberger arguing that the West’s “green delusions”, and its attempts to transition away from fossil fuels, had “empowered” Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
In September 2023, the platform published an article by U.S. scientist Patrick Brown, who heads a climate unit at Shellenberger’s Breakthrough Institute, claiming he had been pressured by Nature magazine to make a paper on wildfires fit a climate change “narrative” – claims rejected by the magazine and other scientists.
The new leader of the opposition has regularly criticised the UK’s green ambitions.
The Conservative Party has elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader, who describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has received funding from the head of a climate science denial campaign.
Badenoch was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership contest on Saturday, beating her rival Robert Jenrick by 56 percent to 44 percent.
The former business and trade secretary campaigned for leader as a straight-talking conservative who would tackle the “woke” left.
But as DeSmog has reported, Badenoch has also repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero targets would “bankrupt the country”, has boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”.
Badenoch has also received money and office space from Neil Record, the chair of the climate denial group Net Zero Watch (NZW), and produced a leadership manifesto which attacked the “radical environmental policies” previously introduced by the Conservative Party.
Net Zero Sceptic
Making her pitch to Conservative MPs at the party’s annual conference on 2 October, Badenoch described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic”.
Badenoch said in 2022 that the UK’s 2050 legally-binding target for achieving net zero emissions was “arbitrary” and last year suggested she would support delaying it.
In her Conservative conference speech, Badenoch said that net zero is “making energy more expensive and hurting our economy”, a claim which the International Energy Agency, a leading authority on energy policy, says is false.
Badenoch did not confirm in her speech that she would delay or scrap the UK’s net zero targets but said, “I did not become an MP to deliver an agenda set by Ed Miliband”, who currently serves as the secretary of state for energy security and net zero.
She has repeatedly said that she wants to reduce emissions but not in a way that would “bankrupt” the country.
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 one percent of UK GDP.
The government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – 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”.
Badenoch claimed during the Tory leadership campaign that, while serving as business secretary, she “had to work hard to push back against the green lobby”, and condemned Labour’s “foolish decision to ban new licences for North Sea oil production” as part of its “fanatical approach to net zero”.
As DeSmog revealed, during the leadership contest Badenoch published a 40-page manifesto which cited the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a U.S. group led by former advisors to Donald Trump, which has likened climate science to believing the earth is flat.
Badenoch used evidence produced by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity to claim that net zero policies are only supported by high-earning graduates living in cities.
Badenoch’s document, titled ‘Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class’, attacked what it called “radical environmental politics” – such as the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars introduced by the previous Tory government – and praised fracking, the controversial method adopted in the U.S. to extract more oil and gas.
Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.
Restricting global temperatures to this target, which was agreed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, would prevent the worst and most irreversible impacts of climate change.
Climate Denial Ally
In August, DeSmog revealed that Badenoch had received £10,000 towards her leadership campaign from Neil Record, a millionaire Tory donor and chair of Net Zero Watch (NZW), the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group.
Bloomberg further revealed that Badenoch was running her leadership campaign out of Record’s London home.
NZW has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”.
Record – who is also lifetime president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018 – in July wrote that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”. Record has donated to both the IEA and GWPF.
The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. The group has been accused of spreading “daft conspiracy yarns” about net zero.
