Brexit, One Year On: Green Tape, Fossil Fuels, and Climate Science Deniers

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On June 23 2016, 46 million voters merrily skipped to the polls to have their say about whether the UK should remain in the European Union. Early the following morning, it was revealed that 52 percent of the population had votedย Leave.

Most were shocked, a small majority were joyous, the rest were dismayed โ€” including many who were concerned Brexit would mean the UKโ€™s climate policy and environmental regulation coming underย attack.

One year on, the negotiations have formally started and things have progressedโ€ฆ aย bit.

DeSmog UK looks back a tumultuous 12 months where Brexit has dominated the political agenda, and try to untangle what it means for the UKโ€™s prospects of tackling climateย change.

Cutting โ€˜Greenโ€™ย Tape

Campaigners had warned before the referendum that a vote to leave the EU put the UKโ€™s environmental regulations at risk. The volume of those warnings only increased once the result wasย in.

DeSmog UK analysis suggested Brexitโ€™s cost to the UKโ€™s environmental programmes could be in the ballpark of ยฃ40 billion (and it really is a very big ballpark, even at this stage, with countlessย unknowns).

Theresa May did little to calm nerves when one of her first decisions on stepping into Downing Street after David Cameronโ€™s post-referendum resignation was to scrap the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Rumour had it that the decision was prompted by one of Mayโ€™s special advisors, Nick Timothy, who had famously once called the Climate Change Act a โ€œmonstrous act ofย self-harmโ€.

The department was duly folded into the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). After the initial task of deciding how to pronounce the acronym was sorted โ€” somewhere betweenย โ€œbaizeโ€ and โ€œbaseโ€, apparently โ€” the new climate minister, Nick Hurd could set about defending the governmentโ€™s increasingly patchy climate policyย record.

Hurd told MPโ€™s that while Brexit and Donald Trumpโ€™s US presidential electoral victory added โ€œcomplexityโ€ to the UKโ€™s efforts, neither would ultimately stop the government delivering its emissions reductionย plans.

Likewise, the governmentโ€™s 77-page Brexit plan suggested the UK remained committed to tackling climate change, though it didnโ€™t actually say how.

Like Timothy, who was unapologetically sacrificed after the Toriesโ€™ disastrous showing in the recent snap election, Hurd is no longer in his post. He has been replaced in BEIS by Claire Perry, though the departmentโ€™s boss โ€” secretary of state Greg Clark โ€” remains inย place.

While the government spent 12 months putting a brave face on things, experts took to parliamentary committees to suggest the situation may actually be prettyย bad.

They cautioned that Brexit should not become a โ€œcatch-all excuseโ€ to bend to the will of polluting industries, and warned of the potentialย โ€œenormous gapโ€ in the UKโ€™s environmental policy once the UKโ€™s exit from the EU wasย complete.

As the UKโ€™s snap election loomed, Labour were keen to continue to emphasise this point, arguing that the Tories were looking to use Brexit as a โ€œvehicle for deregulationโ€.

Defra minister Therese Coffey confirmed that European environmental regulations would not be subject to the governmentโ€™s โ€œone in, two outโ€ regulatory rule when being copied across as part of the Great Repeal Bill,ย however.

And New environment secretary and arch-Brexiteer Michael Gove sought to offer further reassurances in recent weeks, saying Brexit could actually increase the stringency of some regulations โ€” sounding unexpectedly like the Green Party in theย process.

His words have been met with skepticism, however โ€” which perhaps isnโ€™t surprising since not long ago he tried to remove climate change from the geography national curriculum and barred then climate secretary Amber Rudd from attending the 2014 UN climateย talks.

The deregulation agenda has also come under attack in the wake of the Grenfell tower tragedy that was partially attributed to the use of undetected illegal cladding, perhaps further discouraging those that want to further cutย environmental redย tape.


New environment secretary Michael Gove at a talk for thinktank Policy Exchange. Credit: Policy Exchange CC BYย 2.0

Rejecting โ€˜Hardโ€™ย Brexit

Theresa Mayโ€™s desire to bolster support for her vision of a โ€œhardโ€ Brexit, combined with polls that suggested she would win easily, led her to announce a snap general election sheโ€™d promised not toย call.

It didnโ€™t goย well.

May returned to parliament having lost the Conservativesโ€™ majority in the House of Commons. She is now locked in negotiations with Northern Irelandโ€™s hard-line socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

The good news for May is that the DUP is pro-Brexit. The bad news for everyone is that they have known climate science deniers among their ranks, one of whom was previously Northern Irelandโ€™s environmentย secretary.

In the run up to the election, the Tories were the only party to back fracking, and stood on a platform of keeping the North Seaโ€™s oil and gas drilling industryย alive.

Given the only mention of climate change in the Queenโ€™s speech โ€” which lays out the governmentโ€™s legislative agenda for the year ahead โ€” was a reaffirmation to stick with the Paris Agreement, itโ€™s unclear how much of its manifesto the Conservatives are actually planning to try andย implement.

But as the DUP and Tories are aligned on a more hard-line Brexit, it seems the government will likely try and stick to the Conservativeโ€™s manifesto pledge to construct energy policy โ€œbased not on the way energy is generated but on the ends we desire โ€“ reliable and affordable energy, seizing the industrial opportunity that new technology presents and meeting our global commitments on climateย changeโ€.


Avaaz campaigners demonstrate outside parliament after the UK‘s snap general election. Credit: Avaaz CC0ย 1.0

Strengthening Dodgyย Networks

By managing to so spectacularly lose an election she actually won, Theresa May has inadvertently strengthened the hands of a number of key figures embroiled in a trans-atlantic Brexiteer climate science denier network, previously mapped by DeSmog UK.

Michael Gove is back in the cabinet as environment secretary. He is linked to the network through his friendship with far-right Breitbart journalist James Delingpole and former chancellor Nigel Lawson, the founder of the climate science denying campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Another cabinet member pushing for a hard Brexit is Liam Fox, who keeps his post as trade secretary. He just so happens to be a close ally of the shady libertarian free-market US think tank partially credited with delivering Trump to the White House, the Heritage Foundation. In a show of Foxโ€™s new found influence, he this week managed to get the government to commit to a new trade bill that means the UK can break free from EUย restrictions.

May has decided to keep Boris Johnsonย as foreign secretary โ€” partly to keep him out the way, and partly because she had little power to demote him โ€” and he is publically offering his steadfast support.ย Many commentators still see him as a future Tory leader,ย however.

Johnson has a very patchy grasp of climate science, and has previously received donations from GWPF funder, Michael Hintze (who also donated to Vote Leave).

Andrea Leadsom also remains in the cabinet, though in a new post as leader of the House of Commons. Leadsom has received donations in the past from climate science denial enablers the American Legislative Council (ALEC) and was on the campaign committee of Voteย Leave.

Beyond the cabinet, Donald Trumpโ€™s golden elevator buddy Nigel Farage is also considering a return to the frontline of British politics, supposedly because heโ€™s concerned the prime minister is now too weak to conduct Brexit properly. Farage isnโ€™t convinced climate change is a problem, which given his penchant for political interventions remains something of a problemย itself.

The Conservativesโ€™ imminent pact with the DUP has also strengthened the network’s bonds to Theresaย May.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson is a well known climate science denier who regularly books rooms in the House of Commons for other members of the network. That includes a number of MPs who signed two open letters: one calling on the government to scrap the fifth carbon budget, and the other complaining of the BBCโ€™s โ€œbiasedโ€ coverage of the Brexitย referendum.

So, whatโ€™s the state of play one yearย on?

The UKโ€™s environmental regulations are still under threat, fracking and fossil fuels remain stubbornly on the governmentโ€™s agenda, and a group of fringe climate science deniers have seen their influence grow as the prime ministerโ€™s hand has beenย weakened.

And the Brexit process has only justย begun.

View this map on LittleSis

Main image credit:ย Jonathan Rolande via Flickrย CC BYย 2.0

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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