Kemi Badenoch

Director of Climate Science Denial Group Tony Abbott Reappointed as Board of Trade Adviser

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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Tony Abbott, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tony Abbott, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Government keeps the ex-Australian leader on the high profile advisory body despite previous calls to sack him over anti-green ties.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, a director of the UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been reappointed by the government as an adviser to the prestigious Board of Trade. 

Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has today announced the 13 advisers who will provide counsel to the Board of Trade – one of the government’s most high profile economic advisory bodies.

The Board of Trade provides advice to the government on its trade deals with foreign countries, which often encompass environmental and climate standards. 

The news of Abbott’s reappointment comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to make a speech today setting out several delays to the government’s net zero policies. It is thought that he will announce that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles will be pushed back from 2030 to 2035, while also watering down schemes to phase out gas boilers and scrapping new energy efficiency regulations on homes. 

Abbott, who was originally appointed to the Board of Trade in September 2020, is one of only four advisers reappointed by Badenoch, who has relaunched the board to focus on exports following her appointment as business and trade secretary earlier this year. 

The former Australian leader has been retained despite opposition parties and campaigners calling in February for the government to remove Abbott after he joined the senior ranks of the GWPF.

Abbott has previously said that “climate change is probably doing good” and is a long-standing advocate for coal power, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

Green Party peer Baroness Bennett told DeSmog that, by reappointing Abbott, “Sunak has lined himself up very firmly on the side of Trumpian populism – the direction that the prime minister is clearly increasingly taking as this chaotic Tory government desperately flails its way towards a general election.”

The GWPF was founded by the late Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson with the purpose of combating what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change. 

The GWPF has gained a number of high profile directors over the last year. New trustees include Tory peer Lord David Frost, the UK’s former chief Brexit negotiator, Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns, and Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson. 

The GWPF said in 2015 that “policies to ‘stop climate change’ are based on climate models that completely failed to predict the lack of warming for the past two decades”. It has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. 

In September 2022, Net Zero Watch – the GWPF’s campaigning arm – published a report which stated that “changing atmospheric carbon dioxide has minimal impact on Earth’s temperature and climate”, and “efforts to decarbonise in the hope of affecting global temperatures will be in vain”. 

This year, the world experienced its hottest July on record, with climate change fueling extreme weather events. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has warned of the spread of climate misinformation which “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of cutting emissions. 

Tory MP Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister who led a recent review into net zero by the government, said that Sunak risked making “the greatest mistake of his premiership”.

DeSmog has previously revealed that the Conservative Party received £3.5 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers in 2022, while two-thirds of the directors in charge of the party’s multi-million-pound endowment fund have a financial interest in oil, gas, and highly polluting industries.

Businessman David Meller has also been announced as a new adviser to the Board of Trade. 

Meller is a Conservative Party donor whose company Meller Designs was given £160 million in personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the pandemic via the government’s notorious ‘VIP’ lane.

Meller has donated more than £70,000 to the Conservative Party and its politicians since 2009, including £3,250 to Michael Gove’s short-lived 2016 Conservative leadership bid, with Meller serving as Gove’s finance chair. Meller Designs was referred to the VIP lane by Gove’s office.

Meller has continued to donate to Conservative MPs following the pandemic. Electoral Commission records show that he gave £4,990 to Grant Shapps on 6 July, who was at the time serving as Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary. 

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of David Meller or Meller Designs. 

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We’ve announced a revamped Board of Trade that brings together a wide range of private sector expertise to help boost British exports, identify barriers to trade and represent the best of Brand Britain to the world.

“All advisers to the board serve in personal capacities, do not speak on behalf of government and do not set government policy.”

Tony Abbott and the GWPF have been approached for comment. David Meller has been approached for comment via Meller Designs. 

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Related: Coming soon to Fox? Tony Abbott, the Australian former PM who said climate crisis was ‘absolute crap’

Continue ReadingDirector of Climate Science Denial Group Tony Abbott Reappointed as Board of Trade Adviser

The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Grant Shapps

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Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.

Liz Truss’s short-lived cabinet was very climate sceptic with Jacob Rees-Mogg appointed as as secretary of state for business and energy, Kwasi Kwarteng and Suella Braverman. https://gal-dem.com/conservative-cabinet-members-climate-change-liz-truss/ discussing Liz Truss’s cabinet

…

After examining the climate voting history of the entire new Tory cabinet (via the website TheyWorkForYou), gal-dem can report that every single person has either generally or consistently voted against climate change measures. Surprisingly, while some of the cabinet members had expressed that climate change is man-made and an urgent issue in press interviews or online, they still voted against any mitigation or adaptation policies, and often looked to unviable solutions such as carbon capture.

The most worrying appointment is Jacob Rees-Mogg as business, energy and industrial strategy secretary. The climate denialist will now oversee the government department responsible for energy and climate change. Climate organisers are deeply worried about what this will mean for the UK. 

“Putting someone who recently suggested that ‘every last drop’ of oil should be extracted from the North Sea in charge of energy policy is deeply worrying for anyone concerned about the deepening climate emergency, solving the cost-of-living crisis and keeping our fuel bills down for good,” says Dave Timms, Friends of the Earth’s head of political affairs. Indeed, Rees-Mogg is likely to push the idea that more fossil fuels are a solution to the energy crisis, when it is really our long-term reliance on gas and oil and inaction on energy efficiency that has sent energy bills shooting through the roof. Contrary to popular belief, and the Tory line on the energy crisis, Russia cutting off the gas supply to Europe is only a part of the problem.

…

Surviving from Truss’s cabinet into Sunak’s you have the climate action hostile Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.

https://gal-dem.com/conservative-cabinet-members-climate-change-liz-truss/

Suella Braverman – Home Secretary

The new home secretary, who ran for leader this summer, accepted £10,000 from a leading climate sceptic to support her campaign. She also argued that the UK should suspend its legally binding commitment to net zero by 2050 and blamed the energy crisis on our green commitments. This is, of course, false. The current energy crisis is due to the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels, the wholesale prices of which have surged. 

Unsurprisingly, Braverman almost always voted against measures to prevent climate change.

https://socialistworker.co.uk/the-troublemaker/climate-change-denial-lobbyists-access-cabinet/

Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch met secretly with a US think tank that has taken millions of dollars from climate denial groups. She also claimed it would be “irresponsible” for Britain to follow climate science. Badenoch met ­representatives of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which campaigners say has a long track record of “distorting” climate science.

Yet Badenoch dined with lobbyists in November while on an official visit to the US. The  AEI has received more than £265 million in donations from climate denial groups since 2008, including almost £4 million from US oil giant ExxonMobil mScant details of the meeting were published by Badenoch’s department last week, as her Indo‑Pacific trade deal faced criticism for “making a ­mockery” of British pledges to tackle deforestation.

The AEI, which also met with Liz Truss in 2018 when she was trade secretary, has sown doubt over climate change science. It described  the landmark 2021 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as ­“alarmist” and “deeply dubious”.Benjamin Zycher and Peter J Wallison, senior fellows at the AEI, played down its findings by claiming that “we don’t understand all the elements in the complex climate system—the effects of clouds alone are understood poorly”.

The think tank also ­separately criticised Cop 26, the annual UN climate conference hosted by Britain in 2021. One of its authors claimed that delegates spread a “false narrative” that urgent action is required. Badenoch also gave a speech at another US think tank, the Cato Institute, during her official visit.It was founded by ­billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, one of the top funders of climate denial in the US. Cato is “focused on ­disputing the science behind global warming,” according to Greenpeace US. The minister gave a speech promoting free trade at the institute’s headquarters in Washington DC in which she hinted that some climate change policies could “impoverish” Britain.“We can and should solve it by using free trade and investment to accelerate the technological progress that will protect the planet. We must protect the planet in a way that does not impoverish the UK, the US or, let’s be honest, any other country,” she said.

Grant Shapps appointed by Sunak as Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is a regrettable move.

Outgoing climate chief ‘disappointed’ by Tory and Labour net zero plan

The outgoing chair of the UK Government’s statutory climate advisers has been left “extremely disappointed and increasingly concerned” that neither the Tories nor Labour are prioritising a move to net zero.

…

Lord Deben was asked on Times Radio, whether he was “surprised” by the lack of enthusiasm for the climate crisis by both major parties at Westminster, giving the scale of the challenge to tackle it.

In response, Lord Deben said: “Well, I don’t think I’m surprised, I’m just extremely disappointed and increasingly concerned because it seems to me that it is the priority.

“There is nothing more important than securing the world for our children.

“And indeed, I may be quite old now, but it’s securing it for me, because this is changing so fast that we are going to make the world an impossible place for us to live in the way in which we have lived up to now.”

…

Continue ReadingThe climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Grant Shapps

Starmer, Reeves, Streeting, Khan, Sarwar party with Murdoch

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use.

Contempt for ordinary people paraded again

Image of Rupert Murdoch, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves, participants at Murdoch's summer party.
Keir Starmer, his mini-me Wes Streeting, the dire Rachel Reeves have partied with S*n owner Rupert Murdoch and a string of Tories at his ‘summer party’, including Rishi Sunak, Suella ‘ship them all to Rwanda’ Braverman, disgraced former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and ‘Scum’ hacks:

The contempt of Starmeroids for ordinary people has long been on show, with Starmer writing repeatedly, and Reeves and Streeting at least once, for Murdoch’s ‘Scum’ rag despite its lies, racism and its decades-long smear campaign against the victims and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster.

So great is the arrogance of the Labour right that they no longer even bother to try to hide their billionaire fetish and barely even try to pretend that they have the needs of ordinary people remotely at heart. No doubt the apologists for the ghoulish regime will roll out their tired excuse that the party needs to appeal to the hard-right readers of the S*n, but appealing to the millions who need real change is clearly an idea that has been passed through the shredder repeatedly to make sure the interests of the rich and powerful are not threatened.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use.

Continue ReadingStarmer, Reeves, Streeting, Khan, Sarwar party with Murdoch

Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch dined with anti-climate lobbyists in US

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Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Minister had secret meeting with oil-backed think tank that warned UK government not to listen to climate scientists

Badenoch has previously said she would delay the UK’s net zero goals. 06/09/2022. London, United Kingdom. Official Cabinet Portrait; Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade – Kemi Badenoch.
 

Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch met secretly with a US think tank that has taken millions of dollars from climate denial groups and claimed it would be “irresponsible” for the UK to follow climate science, openDemocracy can reveal.

Badenoch met representatives of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which campaigners say has a long track record of “distorting” climate science, for dinner in November while on an official visit to the US.

Scant details of the meeting were published by Badenoch’s department last week, as the minister’s Indo-Pacific trade deal faced criticism for “making a mockery” of UK pledges to tackle deforestation.

The AEI, which also met with Liz Truss in 2018 when she was trade secretary, has sown doubt over climate change science, describing a landmark 2021 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “alarmist” and “deeply dubious”. 

The IPCC report was produced by the world’s leading climate scientists and concluded that the world was approaching “irreversible” levels of global heating, with catastrophic impacts rapidly becoming inevitable. 

But Benjamin Zycher and Peter J Wallison, senior fellows at the AEI, played down its findings by claiming that “we don’t understand all the elements in the complex climate system – the effects of clouds alone are understood poorly”. 

The authors, neither of whom have backgrounds in science, added that it would be “beyond irresponsible” for governments to adopt policies on the basis of the report. 

The think tank also separately criticised COP 26, the annual UN climate conference hosted by the UK in 2021, with one of its authors claiming that delegates spread a “false narrative” that urgent action is required to tackle climate change.

Researchers have found that AEI has received more than $330m in donations from climate denial groups since 2008, including $4.8m from US oil giant ExxonMobil. 

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson told openDemocracy that Badenoch meets “all sorts of stakeholders that have different views – it’s no different to what it’s like in the UK”.

“There are various think tanks in Westminster that have sceptical views about climate change and ministers meet these people all the time,” they added.

The department has refused a Freedom of Information request by openDemocracy for minutes of the meeting with the AEI on grounds that there were “closed discussions under the Chatham House rule” – meaning that their contents are secret.

Badenoch also gave a speech at another US think tank, the Cato Institute, during her official visit in November. The institute was founded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, one of the top funders of climate denial in the US. Cato is “focused on disputing the science behind global warming and questioning the rationale for taking action”, according to Greenpeace US. 

The minister, who was beaten by Liz Truss in the first of last year’s Conservative leadership elections, gave a speech promoting free trade at the institute’s headquarters in Washington DC in which she hinted that some policies to tackle climate change could “impoverish” the UK. 

“We all know that climate change is a challenge for us all, wherever we live in the world. But we know that we can and should solve it by using free trade and investment to accelerate the technological progress that will protect the planet,” she claimed. 

“And something that not enough politicians say: we must do this, we must protect the planet in a way that does not impoverish the UK, the US or, let’s be honest, any other country,” she said.

During her unsuccessful campaign for the Tory leadership, Badenoch came out against the UK’s net zero target, describing the policy as “unilateral economic disarmament”. She told the Telegraph she “believe[s] in climate change” but said “there is a better way of going about these things”. 

The American Enterprise Institute has been approached for comment.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “Claiming that speaking to a particular think tank implies adopting every one of their policy positions is treating the public like fools. The Secretary of State visited Washington DC to emphasise the importance of trade as a force for security and prosperity, including green trade and investment, and to promote the UK’s high-talent, business-friendly environment and highly innovative economy.”

Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

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Continue ReadingTrade secretary Kemi Badenoch dined with anti-climate lobbyists in US