Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
The multi-millionaire Brexit funder has claimed “CO2 and climate change is the ultimate hoax”.
Arron Banks, who is standing as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK candidate for West of England Mayor, has repeatedly rejected elemental climate facts.
The right-wing populist Reform UK describes itself as an “environmentalist” party. However, its leaders and candidates – including Banks – have frequently attacked the science of human-induced climate change.
In a trail of social media posts on X (formerly Twitter), Banks has attacked the notion of climate change as “rubbish”, “absolute cock”, “a scam”, and “the ultimate hoax”.
Reform is standing in several regional mayoral contests in May and has talked up its chances of gaining large numbers of council seats in the local elections.
Banks, the businessman who helped to fund Farage 2016 Brexit campaign, is standing for West of England Mayor, which encompasses Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath, and North East Somerset.
Reform UK, an anti-immigration party, campaigns to scrap the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target and to expand fossil fuel extraction.
As DeSmog revealed, the party received £2.3 million between the 2019 and 2024 general elections from climate science deniers, fossil fuel interests, and major polluters.
However, the views of Reform UK and Banks don’t appear to match those of voters in the West of England.
Polling from the area in 2022 found that 65 percent of people supported net zero, while only 11 percent opposed the 2050 target. And while Reform UK has pledged to strip renewable companies of state subsidies, an overwhelming 87 percent of people said they supported renewable projects in their local area.
Reform UK and Banks were approached for comment.
Climate Denial Posts
In his social media posts, Banks has publicly attacked the science of human-induced emissions causing climate change.
In January 2024, responding to Conservative MP Chris Skidmore resigning over the government’s support for new oil and gas projects, Banks posted: “CO2 & climate change is the ultimate hoax.”
In December 2023, Banks made the familiar argument that the climate has always changed regardless of human emissions. He posted: “Climate change has been in constant flux since the planet was created. A miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t the likely driver.”
In January 2024, he mocked the notion that carbon emissions were causing climate change and extreme weather. “The climate is in permanent flux”, he posted, “20,000 years ago an Ice sheet covered Scotland & half of England.” Banks added an attack on climate activist Greta Thunberg, writing: “Luckily we didn’t have Greta around to tell us a tiny bit of CO2 was the cause. We’ve always had floods & extreme weather like 1953 floods.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s top climate science body, has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, and has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Climate scientists working for the IPCC have also 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”.
As stated by Dr Philipp Breul, a climate scientist from Imperial College London: “We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has, to the best of our knowledge, in the last million years.”
‘Snow on the Ground’
Banks – who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. President in January – has also suggested that cold weather disproves the rise in global temperatures.
In December 2022, Banks posted: “I’ve got to say global warming is coming on a treat, snow on the ground and shaping up to be the coldest December on record. It would be very funny if they got it all wrong and we entering a new ice age.”
When challenged, he dismissed climate models as “worthless”.
“The climate is in constant flux and always changing”, he posted. “The sheer number of mathematical variables in any climate model render them worthless. Scientists can forecast all they like but guesses remain guesses… enjoy the snow and ice.”
In fact, climate models have accurately predicted global temperature rises, and observed warming has tracked with the forecasts.
In January 2024, Banks responded to reports of cold temperatures in Sweden by posting: “-43c … global warming knocking it out of the park. Let’s hope the windmills can keep us warm.”
Despite cold weather in winter, global average temperatures have been rising over the past century, with some of the hottest years on record taking place in the last decade.
In October 2022, Banks shared a post by Reform UK’s then leader Richard Tice, with a (now deleted) article from the Daily Skeptic, which falsely claimed that “global warming has largely stopped in its tracks”.
Banks commented: “It would be almost amusing to find after bankrupting the western world in pursuit of the net zero cult that the climate is cooling… just like [Covid] lockdown everybody lost their mind.”
Net Zero ‘Scam’
Banks has also attacked efforts to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, which scientists agree is the only way to limit temperatures to 1.5C.
The Reform UK candidate has attacked net zero as a “religion”, a “cult”, and a “scam”.
In July 2021, he posted: “Net zero is the new religion for stupid people” and, in April 2023 he said: “Net zero and climate change have all the hallmarks of a scam.”
When the UK was hosting the COP26 climate summit in November 2021, Banks posted that “protecting the environment is essential but totally different to the absolute cock that is climate change”. He added: “The climate has been changing since the start of time!”
A few weeks earlier, Banks had posted: “I own a country park with tens of thousands of trees and have seen no ill affects of climate change.”
The following summer, Banks once again pitted environmentalism against climate action, posting: “There is a huge difference between global climate change & looking after the natural world. One is complete rubbish the other is an absolute necessity.”
Bankrolling Farage
Banks was a major funder of campaigns for the UK to leave the European Union.
A former Conservative Party donor, he gave £1 million in 2014 to Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), which also campaigned against climate policies.
During the 2016 EU referendum, Banks gave £8.4 million to Leave.EU, the unofficial Brexit campaign, which was led by Farage and chaired by Tice.
In January this year, Farage helped to launch a new UK/Europe branch of the Heartland Institute, a notorious U.S. climate denial think tank.
Interviewed at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform UK leader claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant, while admitting that he is “not a scientist”.
Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
“Vote Banksy for Bristol,” he said, as his candidacy was announced at Reform UK’s local election launch in Birmingham.
He admitted he was “really unpopular in Bristol”, but claimed the city was a “five-way battle” which Reform could win.
