EU Elections 2019: These Climate Science Deniers are now Members of the European Parliament

The Brexit Party has swept to victory in the UKโ€™s European Parliament elections, meaning a newย large group of climate science deniers will soon be walking the corridors of Brussels andย Strasbourg.

After the party’sย unprecedented success in an election its candidates never wanted to happen, it will be sending 29ย MEPs to the European Parliament. They will go with a remit to ensure the UK leaves the EU at the earliest opportunity (most likely without a deal โ€” as any deal has so-far proved unacceptable to theย group).

And they will be going to lock horns with a new โ€œgreen waveโ€ of MEPs, many of whom insist on urgent action on climate change, unlike most of the Brexit Partyโ€™s successfulย candidates.

Hereโ€™s what last nightโ€™s Brexit Party winners have to say on climate change, how they are tied to a network of hard-Brexit climate science deniers based in and around offices at 55 Tufton Street, and how they fit into a network of media talking heads funded by the fossil-fuel industry.

Climate Scienceย Deniers

Nigelย Farage

The Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, has a history of spreading misinformation about climateย science.

He told an interviewer in 2013: โ€œI’m all for pollution controls but to obsess with carbon dioxide, which as I understand it, is a perfectly natural occurring phenomenon, strikes me asย strange.โ€

Farage has also called wind energy โ€œthe biggest collective economic insanity Iโ€™ve seen in my entire life,โ€ despite energy experts saying it is now the cheapest source of power, along withย solar.


Read more about Nigel Farage in his full profile in DeSmogโ€™s Disinformationย Database


Annย Widdecombe

Widdecombe, who retired from Parliament in 2010, was one of only five MPs to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. The following year she told the Daily Express: โ€œThere is no climate change, hasnโ€™t anybody looked out of their windowย recently?โ€

She credits fellow former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, founder of the climate denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with inspiring her views on globalย warming.


Read more about Ann Widdecombe in her full profile in DeSmogโ€™s Disinformationย Database


Annunziataย Rees-Mogg

Annunziata Rees-Mogg is the sister Jacob Rees-Mogg, the โ€œhardโ€ Brexiteer Conservative MP and an opponent of measures to tackle climateย change.

While editor of the investment magazine MoneyWeek, Annunziata Rees-Mogg wrote articles recommending how readers could best profit from the Canadian โ€œtar sandsโ€ boom and predicted that coal was about to make a comeback to the UK.

In another article, though, on โ€œHow to profit from the worldโ€™s water crisisโ€, she noted that climate change โ€œwill mean more extreme weather conditions and more water in theย sea.โ€


Read more about Annunziata Rees-Mogg in her full profile in DeSmogโ€™s Disinformationย Database


Nathanย Gill

Gill told BBC Wales in 2015 that climate change was not human-caused and that it was โ€œridiculousโ€ to think humans could change theย climate.

He also said it was โ€œcomplete stupidity to think by sticking a bunch of wind turbines all over Wales that we are somehow going to stop the weather fromย changingโ€.

Martinย Daubney

The former editor of ladsโ€™ mag Loaded has tweeted numerous times about climate change, claiming that: โ€œEvolution we can prove. Unless you’re blinded by faith. Climate change cannot be proven. Unless you’re blinded byย faith?โ€

He has also tweeted positively about a Spectator article by climate science denier Matt Ridley, which reproduces a familiar trope that carbon dioxide is simply โ€œplant foodโ€. ย He also called a piece by long-time climate science denier James Delingpoleย that claimed climate change was responsible for โ€œzeroโ€ deaths globally โ€œsuperb.โ€

Brianย Monteith

Monteith doubts (in his own words) the โ€œharmโ€ of climateย change.

Montieth is a regular contributor to The Scotsman newspaper, and has argued that the BBC holding an editorial meeting to decide a line on climate change was โ€œmore worryingโ€ than the Savile scandal in an article reposted approvingly by climate science denial campaign group the GWPF.

He registered his current address as in France on official electionย forms.

Tuftoners

Not all of the successful Brexit party candidates have made such explicit statements on climate change. But some are tied to a well-established network of lobbyists based out of offices in and around 55 Tufton Street that push for mass deregulation, which could significantly stymie the UKโ€™s efforts to address climateย change.

Richardย Tice

A long-standing Brexiteer, Tice has called for a โ€œno dealโ€ outcome to the Brexit process, and urged the adoption of World Trade Organisationย rules.

Together with businessman John Longworth, Tice co-founded Leave Means Leave, a pressure group campaigning for a hard Brexit. The organisation was previously based at 55 Tufton Street, along with numerous right-wing, free-market organisations including the UKโ€™s principal climate science denial campaign group The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Tice co-founded the Leave.EU campaign with Arron Banks and Nigel Farage.


Read more about Richard Tice in his full profile in DeSmogโ€™s Disinformationย Database


Johnย Longworth

Longworth chairs Leave Means Leave, a campaign group set up following the EU referendum which advocates for the adoption of World Trade Organisation rules. It was previously based at 55 Tufton Street and was accused by a whistle-blower of colluding with eight other organisations, including the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to push for a โ€œhardโ€ย Brexit.

Longworth writes for Brexit Central, a news site edited by Taxpayersโ€™ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott, and is on the advisory board of both the Institute of Economic Affairs free-market think tank and the Economists for Free Trade group, which backs a โ€œno dealโ€ Brexit and includes climate science deniers Jacob Rees-Mogg, Owen Paterson and Matt Ridley.

Mediaย talking-heads

A couple of the Brexit Party candidates are more media talking heads than they are politicians, with ties to a trans-Atlantic network of lobbyists funded by the fossil fuelย industry.

Claireย Fox

Fox runs libertarian think tank the Institute of Ideas, rejecting government intervention even on issues like child pornography and online terror videos.

She is a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and forms part of a pro-free market network based around the Spiked magazine, funded by US oil billionaires the Koch brothers, DeSmog and the Guardian previously revealed.

Fox has frequently tweeted about her denial of climate science, calling the UNโ€™s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) โ€œadvocacy researchโ€ and says treating the body as โ€œhigh priests of The Science and final word on climateโ€ would be a โ€œbetrayal of scientificย inquiry.โ€

Read more about Claire Foxโ€™s ties to a Koch-funded media network.

Michaelย Heaver

Michael Heaver is the co-founder of the UKIP-backed website Westmonster, launched in January 2017 with funding from Nigel Farageโ€™s financier, multi-millionaire insurance tycoon Arron Banks.

Heaver has repeatedly expressed uncertainty about accepting mainstream views on climate change. Writing on Twitter in 2011, he said: โ€œClimate change is an interesting one, I don’t exactly toeย the line on that one. Far-left green movement worries meย though.โ€

In 2012, Heaver described the news that climate change denier Peter Lilley had been appointed to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee as โ€œsignificantโ€.

In a short blog post describing the launch of the Extinction Rebellion movement in Parliament square in October 2018, Westmonster described protesters as a โ€œfar-left mob who seem interested in maximumย disruptionโ€.

None of theย above

Two of the new Brexit Party MEPs do seem to be supportive of climate action,ย however.

James Glancy recently tweeted support for an article by Tory grandee William Hague, headlined ‘The time for denial is over. Conservatives have to take the climate crisisย seriously’.

And TV personality Dr David Bull, new MEP for the North West, seems happy to acknowledge basic climate science,ย too.

Theyโ€™ll be far from alone in as they take their seats, with dozens of Green party MEPs from across the continent flooding the EUโ€™s legislature after a landmark night for the movement.

Image credit: The Brexit Party/Brian Minkoff/National Assembly for Wales/UCL Institute of Education (IOE)/Composite by DeSmog UKย 

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