GWPF funders and directors have donated millions to the Conservatives over the past 20 years
Conservative peer and former MP, Craig Mackinlay, has been appointed as the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a group that challenges established climate science and opposes net-zero policies.
The GWPF, which calls itself a non-partisan think tank and educational charity, has close links to the Conservative Party.
DeSmog published an analysis last September which found that GWPF funders and directors had donated more than £7 million to the Conservatives over the past two decades.
According to DeSmog, GWPF also donated £15,000 to Kemi Badenoch’s leadership campaign.
In a recent Telegraph interview announcing his appointment, Mackinlay described net zero as a “dangerous, ideologically driven agenda” and said he wouldn’t “sit back and allow [it] to take hold.”
In addition, Mackinlay, who lost his lower legs and arms to sepsis, compared net zero to a disease.
He said: “My experience with sepsis taught me that you simply can’t give a dangerous disease a second too long to spread”.
The Tory’s appointment comes as Kemi Badenoch recently described herself a “net-zero sceptic” despite backing the previous Conservative government’s environmental targets.
In a report published last year, the GWPF claimed it is “naive and entirely unrealistic” to attribute climate change to CO2 and said that “there is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis”.
The group previously said: “carbon dioxide has been mercilessly demonised as ‘carbon pollution’, when in fact it is a benefit to the planet”.
The GWPF, which is part of the 55 Tufton Street network of think tanks that campaign against action to limit global warming, was formed by Lord Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser in 2009.
The group also campaigns as Net Zero Watch, and has received more than half a million dollars through a fund linked to the controversial billionaire Koch brothers.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Left Foot Forward doesn’t have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
