Climate-change denying Reform councils are axing net zero targets

Council documents reveal how Reform councillors justify the scrapping of environmental policies by claiming it is “unproven” that global warming is linked to human activity. Nigel Farage’s party won control of 10 councils in the local elections in May.

While Farage has described net zero as “lunacy”, climate denial by Reform politicians is unlikely to be a vote winner. Opinion polls show most people are concern about the climate and support net zero policies.

Kent councillors who voted last month to scrap the council’s climate change emergency declaration were given a briefing document attacking the evidence for global warming linked to human activity.

The briefing report stated: “The world is exiting a mini ice age and therefore some warming should be expected.” It also cited the World Climate Declaration of 2022, which it said had concluded there was no climate emergency.

The global news agency AFP fact-checked the 2022 declaration and found it was initially published by a group founded by a retired geophysicist who previously worked for Shell. There were scientists among the signatories but it was also signed by a lawyer, a pilot, a fisherman, three energy workers’ union representatives and a sommelier.

In Lincolnshire, Reform has “declared war” on green energy projects, despite them providing a green economic boom for the region. “There is no climate crisis,” Sean Matthews, leader of Lincolnshire council, posted on X last year. “We are all paying for these idiots to escalate their fantasies.”

Reform-controlled Derbyshire council has scrapped a goal to adapt to the impacts of climate change. At Derby city council, a Reform councillor tabled a motion that failed to pass declaring: “there is no immediate, measurable, man-made climate emergency”.

The most authoritative source on the scientific evidence is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has said: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” All 10 of the warmest years in the UK in a series from 1884 have occurred in the 21st century.

Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform, is its most prominent climate science denier, and has said his party would pull out of the Paris agreement, which aims to limit the increase in global average temperatures to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels.

“There is no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change,” Tice said in an interview in February. “We’ve been lied to.”

Reform hosted the Chicago-based climate science denial group the Heartland Institute at its party’s annual conference in Birmingham last month. Lois Perry, director of Heartland UK/Europe, told the conference the government wanted to get the public to use electric cars, which could be controlled and disabled remotely. “Not a conspiracy,” she said. “These cars can be shut down.”

Heartland Institute describes the climate crisis as a “sham”. Farage was guest of honour at the launch of the institute’s UK and European arm last December. Perry said on a podcast last month that Farage is “proud” to work with the institute and considers it “fab”.

In policy documents before the last election, Reform denied evidence for human-caused climate change, but this was removed after Farage become leader in June last year. He said he an interview last year he was not “going to have any debate on the science”.

A report by the New Economics Foundation thinktank has calculated Reform’s environmental policies could cost the UK £92bn in lost revenue and cost more than 60,000 jobs. DeSmog, a journalistic organisation that reports on climate change, reported last year that between 2019 and 2024, Reform raised £2.3m from fossil fuel interests, polluting industries and climate science deniers, amounting to 92% of its donations.

Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, which supports efforts for a transition away from oil and gas production in the UK, said: “The anti-science, anti-renewables rhetoric of Reform and some of its councillors is straight out of the Trump handbook.

“They are all cheerleaders for an oil and gas industry that has made obscene profits in recent years and which is driving dangerous changes to our climate.”

Reform and the Heartland Institute have been contacted for comment.

Photograph by Getty