- — Join DeSmog at the Climate Consciousness Summit 2025
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at 11/11/25 7:27amHave you registered for the Climate Consciousness Summit 2025? The Climate Consciousness Summit 2025 is a transformative seven-day online event that brings together leading voices in climate action, trauma-informed care, and regenerative solutions to explore new ways of responding to the climate crisis. Staged by the Pocket Project in partnership with DeSmog, and co-hosted by Matthew Green, DeSmogs global investigations editor, this free online event starts on Friday and runs until the following Thursday (November 14-20, 2025). Speakers include philosopher Bayo Akomolafe; climate and emotional resilience writer and researcher Britt Wray; youth leader Elizabeth Wathuti; climate psychologist Steffi Bednarek; Global Citizens Assembly co-founder Rich Wilson; Indigenous musician and community organizer Lyla June Johnston, and many more. Below is a clip of Matthews conversation with Hāweatea Holly Bryson about her journey to reconcile her Western therapeutic training with her work as a Māori healing practitioner of the Ngāi Tahu and Waitaha tribes. Their conversation goes live on the summit this Sunday and will be viewable by registering. Join us for keynote conversations, seven practices for personal balance and agency; seven inspirations from the natural world; live panels, and on-the-ground coverage from the DeSmog team at the COP30 climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil. Together, we will cultivate resilience, courage, and collective agency for the times ahead. For more information and to register click here. Dont miss this DeSmog partnership with the Pocket Project — sign up today! The post Join DeSmog at the Climate Consciousness Summit 2025 appeared first on DeSmog.- — Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30
- at 11/10/25 2:42pmIn the city of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil has kicked off the COP30 climate conference, a summit framed as a pivotal moment to reduce emissions and keep the Paris Agreement alive. More than 50,000 people are expected to attend, from heads of state to civil society groups. But as attention turns to Brazil, some of the highest emitters from the food sector are also moving to shape the agenda — positioning industrial farming not as part of the problem, but as a climate solution. Agriculture’s powerful influence operation comes at a fragile moment. Trust in the COP process is faltering, Global South nations are calling for a fairer finance settlement, and social movements are preparing to defend and promote ecological approaches rooted in Indigenous knowledge, equity, and family farming. Behind the scenes, food and farming corporations — including meat giant JBS, pesticide firm Bayer, and food processor Nestlé — which sell products that drive both climate change, deforestation and biodiversity destruction — are promoting a set of actions to tackle global warming that leave their business models intact — or better still, require public investment. Representatives from companies, accompanied at COP30 by a suite of trade associations and front groups — including those that have previously lobbied to block regulations to protect nature and climate — will bring their message to panel events and attend glitzy receptions, under the logos of sponsored media hubs, and pavilions. But climate scientists warn that industry’s favoured voluntary solutions —carbon offsets, biofuels, and “efficiency-based” measures to tackle climate change — cannot deliver the deep, sustained cuts needed to preserve a habitable planet. Assessments show the greenhouses gases that agriculture produces — such as methane and nitrous oxide — can’t be erased using technological fixes alone. Instead, scientists say real progress toward a safe climate will involve systemic transformation: tackling food waste, shifting diets away from high-emission foods and shifting away from the sectors dependence on fossil fuels. In Belém, industrial food and farming will meet its counterpoint at the “People’s Summit,” where Indigenous, peasant, and environmental movements will challenge the narrative that expanding industrial agriculture is compatible with a safe climate. The People’s summit will promote a different path — asking for investment in low-impact, resilient farming, from smallholders and Indigenous group, which have preserved nature to-date. DeSmog’s interactive map traces the powerful and well-connected networks they are up against. We counted more than 23 major companies and 29 industry groups which are active in the lead up or during this year’s climate talks — revealing over 141 points of access for industrial food and farming to oppose international pressure for cuts to agricultural emissions and shape summit outcomes in their favour. An interactive map showing the food and farming corporations, trade groups and initiatives at COP30 and how they are set to navigate the summit. Map design: Rachel Sherrington and Clare Carlile Brazil’s Agribusiness Lobby: A Coordinated Push Brazil is the world’s sixth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, with agriculture responsible for roughly 74 percent of domestic emissions — 1.8 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent — which are generated chiefly by its 236 million-strong cattle herd. Yet Brazil’s agribusiness groups are working aggressively to cast Brazilian farming as climate-friendly at COP30, which will bring together the heavyweights of Brazilian agribusiness — including JBS, the National Confederation of Agriculture (CNA), the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), and the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS) — all regulars at past climate summits and influential in shaping national and international policy. Since early 2025, many of these actors have coordinated messaging and proposals to position the sector as a climate leader, aided by close ties to special envoys and senior officials — COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago has called for the private sector to be “co-architects” of climate policy. Among their representatives is former agriculture minister Roberto Rodrigues, now a COP30 special envoy. Brazilian agriculture’s demands include “tropicalising” emissions metrics — a move critics say could allow methane emissions to be downplayed — and securing carbon credits for soil-sequestration projects — a solution favoured by industry but which soil science shows will not cancel out the sector’s ballooning emissions footprint. These ideas will feature prominently across the summit — from CNI’s sponsored pavilion in the official UN “Blue Zone” to the “Agrizone,” a side venue hosted by state research agency Embrapa, with corporate sponsors, which will showcase “climate-smart” agriculture. Global Agribusiness Joins the Chorus While Brazil takes the lead on agro-influencing, global meat, dairy, pesticide, and grain coalitions are amplifying a similar message. The ProteinPACT, and U.S. feed and meat associations — who represent some of the sector’s largest emitters — will arrive in Belém with large delegations and a well-established playbook from previous COPs. The US dairy industry’s Global Dairy Platform, which DeSmog has revealed lobbied to weaken the GHG protocol, an international standard for how corporations measure their carbon emissions, will also be in Brazil, speaking on panels in the Blue Zone. This year, industry attention centres on COP30’s new “Activation Groups” — 30 multi-stakeholder coalitions convened by the Brazilian presidency to shape policy on themes such as food systems, land restoration, and fossil fuel phase-out. The Global Meat Alliance (GMA), an initiative of industrial producer groups from the UK, North America and Australia described the Groups as a chance to “influence policy.” In a statement to DeSmog, the GMA said this influence “reflects the principle that every stakeholder – including farmers, scientists, Indigenous communities, and industry – must have a seat at the table.” Biogas and biofuel lobbies — including the World Biogas Association and the Pan-American Liquid Fuels Coalition — are also expected to take an active role at this COP, and will have been cheered by a recent leaked document suggesting the Brazilian government planned to use COP to push for a quadrupling of the use in these fuels worldwide. This is despite recent research showing some biofuels are more polluting than fossil energy. DeSmog’s analysis of UN attendee lists shows the number of agribusiness representatives at climate summits has almost tripled since COP26. Several groups operate through the UN’s Farmers Constituency, which critics say is a key battlefield for corporate versus green, agroecology orientated farmers. Australia’s National Farmers Federation — a key lobbyist against climate action at home and abroad — often attends as part of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO). The WFO acts as a convenor for farmers in global policy spaces such as the COPs. In a statement to DeSmog it described itself as “an independent and democratic, member-driven global association that brings together over 75 farmers’ organisations from more than 60 countries across all regions of the world”. “We advocate for the interests of all farmers — regardless of size, geography, production system, age, or gender — recognising their essential role in food systems and the increasing pressures they face, including more frequent and severe climate-related risks”, the spokesperson said. Despite this the WFO has received criticism for counting companies as partners, and peasant groups have accused of “defending business interests.” Other routes to influence available to the sector, as per past COPs, include panels, side events and receptions at pavilions in the Blue Zone, hosted by governments or by civil society groups, as well as networking spaces outside of these where they can share talking points with government negotiators. It’s in these spaces that industry groups may push the controversial alternative methane emissions metric, GWP*, which allows livestock producers to claim “climate neutrality” when methane emissions stabilise rather than fall. Agribusiness has powerful allies in its pursuit of GWP*. Last month New Zealand set a dangerous precedent when it adopted the metric, and Ireland has also signalled it will embrace GWP*, even though the UN’s IPCC has not recommended it replace current metrics and has highlighted its shortcomings, saying it “does not capture the contribution to warming that each methane emission makes.” “My biggest fear is that this push will fly under the radar for governments who are negotiating at this summit,” says Shefali Sharma, senior global agricultural policy expert at Greenpeace told DeSmog. “The scientific consensus is that we must dramatically cut methane to slow warming, but those committing to GWP* are locking in a much hotter world.” With negotiations taking place on a new $300-billion annual climate-finance goal — the so-called New Collective Quantified Goal — agribusiness groups are positioning themselves to receive a share of the funds. Global North meat alliance the GMA and Brazil’s most powerful lobby group the CNA both argue that climate finance should support low-emission agriculture, while the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) is positioning carbon markets —which experts say are failing to deliver clear climate benefits — as a means of mobilising the finance world leaders have promised by world leaders. “It’s a familiar narrative from agribusiness,” said Samanta Fabris of Brazil’s consumer group IDEC. “They say, ‘if you want us to change, invest in us’ — but they already get billions in subsidies, while small producers receive far less.” (A 2021 study from the UN found that — of $590 billion given to agribusiness globally, 90 percent went to harmful industries. In Brazil, small farmers receive one fifth of the credit). Agrizone Sponsored by Bayer, Nestlé Beyond the UN’s official “Blue Zone,” agribusiness will command a major presence at the Agrizone, a parallel venue led by Embrapa. Marketed as a hub for “innovation and sustainability,” the Agrizone has drawn sponsorship from a body linked to the CNA, as well as Bayer, Nestlé, and U.S. and global commodity groups representing grains, seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. Campaigners have expressed concern that the Agrizone provides a PR platform to some of the most destructive businesses operating in Brazil. More broadly, the zone has added to a sense of building unease over corporate capture of COPs, which has promoted a counter summit: the People’s COP supported by more than 1,000 global organisations. It expects to welcome more than 20,000 activists from across the globe. Bruno Prado of Brazil’s National Agroecology Alliance, has characterised the summit as “a space that says that we refuse to let the climate agenda be captured by corporate interests or reduced to the closed-door negotiations that we typically see at the COPs” Embrapa has insisted the Agrizone will highlight a wide range of projects, from partners including government, civil society, smallholder groups, and business, and agroecological and Indigenous projects, in addition to those showcased by companies. Bayer has said it is “important to have platforms like COP where governments and civil society can collaborate,” adding that “combating climate change requires collective efforts from the entire value chain. But environmental groups remain sceptical. “We’re told this COP will be ‘for the people’ or ‘for the forest,’” said Rachel Rose Jackson of Corporate Accountability, “but it looks like another event where polluters get privileged access which crowds out the space needed.” Media and PR Push Outside the formal structures on our map, agribusiness will be setting the mood music with a deluge of cultural noise. JBS is sponsoring COP30 coverage through Grupo Globo under the banner COP30 Amazônia and funding a media hub with Grupo Folha near the summit. The CNA and WFO will host the industry-backed film A World Without Cows, defending livestock production against calls for herd reductions by the UN’s IPCC and others. “Agribusiness wants to be everywhere — in media, influencers, education — to present themselves as the solution,” said Samanta Fabris of IDEC. “More than investment, it’s about always being in the room and controlling the narrative.” This messaging extends deep into Brazil’s culture — from podcast networks spotlighting pro-agribusiness voices to classroom materials funded by industry campaigns like All With One Voice, which encourages “empathy for producers” among students. The flood of engagement from industry has added to concerns that, despite small transparency reforms — such as asking attendees to state their affiliation — this will be another summit where corporate engagement is dominant. A letter from climate policy experts last year said the summits were no longer “fit for purpose” and called for curbs on corporate influence. A recent analysis by Transparency International and InfluenceMap found that of 400 businesses and industry associations to be active at recent COPs, only one-third of which had endorsed Paris-aligned targets. DeSmog and others have revealed how many used the summits to block stronger regulation and even strike business deals. “Brazil can be a leader at the climate talks and beyond”, said Nusa Urbancic, chief executive of the Changing Markets Foundation, “because it has a success story of family farming lifting people out of poverty and feeding communities sustainably. I hope Brazil leads with that.” All named organisations and individuals were contacted for comment. With additional reporting by Michaela Herrmann, Brigitte Wear, Clare Carlile, and Maximiliano Manzoni. Editing by Hazel Healy This article is part of DeSmog’s agriculture and climate series. Visit DeSmog’s agribusiness database to find in-depth profiles on Brazil’s main agribusiness lobby groups. New profiles include the leading forum for Brazilian farming unions and states the CNA, beef exporters union Abiec, the trade group representing the largest industrial multinationals, Abag, and government agricultural research unit Embrapa. US meat industry-led groups that will be active at COP30, including ProteinPACT and the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, can also be found in DeSmog’s database. The post Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30 appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Brazil’s COP30 Agriculture Sponsors Linked to Deforestation and Land Conflict
- at 11/10/25 12:19pmThe sponsors of the sustainable agriculture pavilion at this year’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil will include the pesticides and seeds giant Bayer, which South American campaigners allege has promoted an industrial agricultural model that is driving “massive deforestation” on the continent. Bayer will pay at least R$1mn (£142,000) for “diamond” sponsorship of the “Agrizone” pavilion. Organised by Brazils agriculture agency Embrapa, the Agrizone signals the sway of agribusiness in Brazil and its determination to appear sustainable, despite the sector’s high emissions and well-established links to deforestation. Bayer faces an ongoing complaint to the OECD from groups from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia accusing it of promoting an agricultural model in South America that drives deforestation, biodiversity loss and conflicts with Indigenous communities. The German multinational is one of the leading players in South America’s market for genetically modified seeds and related pesticides used to cultivate soya beans. “This monoculture requires the clearance of large acres of land in countries that have huge conflicts on land tenure…Bayer is really pushing an agribusiness model and a soy frontier that negatively impacts human and environmental rights,” said Cristina Hernandez Hurtado, Senior Legal Advisor of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), one of the OECD complainants. “Bayer has tried to position itself as sustainable, and we see their participation in the COP on such a large scale as a big effort to present such an image worldwide,” she added. “We are sceptical of such messaging.” Anyone can file a complaint with OECD National Contact Points over alleged corporate human rights breaches. The OECD does not have the power to impose sanctions, but it can initiate a mediation process between the complainants and the company. Other sponsors of the Agrizone pavilion include Senar, a branch of Brazil’s leading agribusiness lobby group, the CNA, and UPL, an Indian pesticide manufacturer supplying Brazil with products containing chemicals banned in the EU. Those chemicals can still be legally sold by European companies to Brazil. Together, these sponsors have paid at least R$4.4m (£625,000) for branding, private negotiation rooms, the right to host events, and speaking slots in climate debates. A draft contract obtained by Unearthed through an FOI request promises sponsors “visibility” and “image gain” from their “association with companies committed to the changes needed to addressclimate change”. Brice Böhmer, of the campaign group Transparency International, warned that COP30 hosts should be “cautious about the privileged access that is sometimes given to businesses,” as there was at times “a gap between how businesses portray themselves” and work they do to “push for solutions that are in their own interest…behind closed doors.” Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro will reportedly work from the Agrizone during the summit. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Böhmer called for a conflict of interest policy to regulate the visibility and access given to businesses at COP summits. “Are U.N. climate summits becoming platforms for genuine climate action, or industry misinformation and undue influence?” he said. “For COPs to drive real climate action, there should be no space for those who lobby against its goals.” A spokesperson for Bayer said that “Combating climate change requires collective efforts across the entire chain…At COP, we will therefore be involved in discussions on science-based solutions in the fight against climate change.” Bayer formally responded to the OECD complaint in detail in July 2024, saying that the company took “all information about potential adverse human rights and environmental impacts very seriously,” but that based on its own research and the information provided by the complainants, it “could not identify any connection between the adverse impacts and Bayer’s business.” In a statement, Embrapa said that as a public research and innovation institution, it “bases its actions and all its relationships on ethics, transparency and an uncompromising commitment to environmental and human rights legislation in Brazil and worldwide.” It added that it rejected practices that had been “proven to constitute” illegal deforestation, misuse of pesticides or violation of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. Embrapa has recently been campaigning for Brazil to adopt GWP*, a new metric for measuring the climate impact of the greenhouse gas methane, which is intended to take into account the fact that methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere. Critics say that adopting this standard would allow heavy emitters, like the livestock industry, to mask their contribution to global warming. Hannah Daly, Professor of Sustainable Energy at University College Cork, said that if Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, adopted GWP*, it would set a “disastrous precedent.” She added that Embrapa was promoting “a metric that would allow Brazil’s enormous cattle sector to claim climate neutrality while keeping methane emissions high.” Embrapa said that “discussions on SLCPs [short-lived climate pollutants] should continue to be the subject of scientific meetings before being adopted or abandoned. Embrapa considers that divergence and debate are fundamental parts of scientific development and should be based on arguments grounded in scientific evidence.” Deforestation and Land Conflicts Bayer is a dominant force in South America’s market for genetically modified soya seeds and the herbicides used on them. The development of herbicide-resistant seeds transformed the soya industry in Brazil, where as much as 98 percent of the crop is now reportedly genetically modified. The expansion of soya cultivation has consumed vast tracts of land, driving deforestation and land conflicts at Amazon and Cerrado frontiers. “This clearance is often tied to forced evictions or the encroachment of indigenous and peasant communities,” Cristina Hernandez Hurtado told Unearthed. The Guasu Guavirá indigenous land in Western Paraná is under dispute — home to Indigenous villages, but claimed by farmers whose soya fields surround it. “We have no freedom. And many communities border farmland. So, the pesticides are sprayed 5 metres, 10 metres from the Guaranis homes,” said Ilson Soares, leader of the Guasu Guavirá land’s Yvy Okaju village. He added that farmers have at times used pesticides against Indigenous people as a “chemical weapon.” “Pesticides also cause…anxiety, sadness,” said a female leader from the Guasu Guavira indigenous land who asked for anonymity to avoid threats. She added: “When it comes to pesticides and when it comes to soyabean plantations, nothing is sustainable.” Brazil is now the largest producer of soya in the world, producing some 169.5mn tonnes in 2024-25. The UK imported £243 million of soya from Brazil in 2024, more than from anywhere else, mostly for livestock feed. The OECD complaint against Bayer also cites impacts in Bolivia, where it says genetically modified soya now uses around 50 percent of cultivated land, and around 436,000 hectares of forest were cleared for soya between 2011-2022. Bayer did not answer questions from Unearthed directly related to the allegations in the OECD complaint, but said, “Bayer has historically made sustainability one of its key strategic pillars and contributes globally with innovative solutions and initiatives related to agriculture, health, energy transition and sustainable food systems.” Hurtado, from ECCHR, said Germany’s national office for the OECD was expected to decide soon whether to mediate the complaint. UPL, an Indian pesticide manufacturer, will also sponsor the Agrizone. UPL has paid R$900,000 (£125,000), securing various branding and a 300 sq m stand. As of 2023, UPL was permitted to sell 136 agrochemical products in Brazil containing substances banned in the EU due to human health or environmental concerns. UPL did not respond to a request for comment. Anti-conservation Lobbyists Agrizone sponsor Senar is the education arm of CNA, Brazil’s largest agribusiness lobby group. Senar has paid for “master sponsorship”, the highest level, at R$2.5 million (£360,000). CNA recently backed Brazil’s so-called “devastation bill”, a package of legal reforms condemned by climate groups for allegedly loosened environmental licensing. Environment Minister Marina Silva said the bill as originally drafted would undermine the country’s pledge to eliminate deforestation by 2030. By contrast, CNA publicly supported the bill, arguing it would reduce bureaucracy. CNA has also led efforts to overturn the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a landmark agreement to block the sale of deforestation-linked soya. In February the CNA filed a complaint with Brazil’s anti-trust agency (CADE) claiming that the moratorium was “illegal”. CADE took a preliminary step to suspend the ASM, but a federal court reversed that decision; a final ruling is pending. Studies have shown that the moratorium has significantly brought down Amazon deforestation. CNA has also lobbied against EUDR legislation, which bans the import by the EU of products from deforested land, calling it a “significant trade restriction”. CNA did not respond to a request for comment. Embrapa said that although Senar was a private entity, it has “strong public ties and purposes, as they mainly work in professional training, social assistance, and promoting the quality of life of workers. Therefore, they are relevant actors in the innovation ecosystem of agriculture and family farming, given that they fulfil an important social function that complements Embrapa.” Climate Denial and Disinformation In July, COP30 organisers pledged to tackle disinformation. But two of the Agrizone’s sponsors have recently been linked to climate denial. Bayer sponsors Agro Bar, an agribusiness-focused podcast, which in 2023 interviewed notorious Brazilian climate change denier Luiz Carlos Molion. On the episode, Molion, said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is responsible for “climate terrorism”. He dismisses CO2 as a significant climate driver, calling it a vital “gas of life” with an atmospheric effect that is too small to measure. Members of the Brazilian Academy of Science have publicly refuted Molion’s theories. A spokesperson for the Agro Bar Podcast said it aimed to “broaden the debate and bring different voices and points of view on issues that impact agribusiness and society,” and that “Bayer had no involvement in the agenda, the choice of interviewee or the production of the episode in question”. During the episode, the presenters did not challenge any of Molion’s views. “The absence of immediate challenges to guests, or humorous reactions at specific moments, are characteristics of the free debate format and do not imply the promotion of falsehoods or misinformation,” the spokesperson said. Molion has also regularly lectured at events organised by Agrizone sponsor Senar, where he has been billed as “Brazil’s top climate expert.” At a Senar lecture in 2023, Molion claimed that Amazon rainfall has absolutely no influence on the rest of the country and that deforestation has no impact on the global climate. Molion did not respond to a request for comment. Bayer did not comment on Molion’s appearance on Agrobar, and still sponsors the podcast. Another regular guest at CNA/Senar conferences, former Embrapa scientist Evaristo de Miranda, has been accused of leading a group of researchers that intentionally produced “fake controversies…that have seriously impacted environmental conservation, particularly in issues related to deforestation and climate change”. Miranda’s claims, made via reports, presentations, and newspaper articles, included that Brazil’s environmental protections are the strongest in the world, that conservation laws hinder development and concern over Amazon deforestation is misplaced. Miranda did not respond to a request for comment. Professor Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, co-led a systematic review of 300 scientific papers on climate misinformation. He told Unearthed that the Brazilian government’s spearheading of a disinformation initiative was important, but that: “the inclusion of sponsors…that have previously and continuously supported denialist and contrarian voices regarding climate change calls into question the value of this component of COP30.” The post Brazil’s COP30 Agriculture Sponsors Linked to Deforestation and Land Conflict appeared first on DeSmog.
- — COP30’s Agriculture Showcase Sponsored by Agribiz Interests Linked to Deforestation and Anti-conservation Lobbying
- at 11/10/25 12:19pmThe sponsors of the sustainable agriculture pavilion at this year’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil will include the pesticides and seeds giant Bayer, which South American campaigners allege has promoted an industrial agricultural model that is driving “massive deforestation” on the continent. Bayer will pay at least R$1mn (£142,000) for “diamond” sponsorship of the “Agrizone” pavilion. Organised by Brazils agriculture agency Embrapa, the Agrizone signals the sway of agribusiness in Brazil and its determination to appear sustainable, despite the sector’s high emissions and well-established links to deforestation. Bayer faces an ongoing complaint to the OECD from groups from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia accusing it of promoting an agricultural model in South America that drives deforestation, biodiversity loss and conflicts with Iindigenous communities. The German multinational is one of the leading players in South America’s market for genetically modified seeds and related pesticides used to cultivate soya beans. “This monoculture requires the clearance of large acres of land in countries that have huge conflicts on land tenure… Bayer is really pushing an agribusiness model and a soy frontier that negatively impacts human and environmental rights,” said Cristina Hernandez Hurtado, Senior Legal Advisor of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), one of the OECD complainants. “Bayer has tried to position itself as sustainable, and we see their participation in the COP on such a large scale as a big effort to present such an image worldwide,” she added. “We are sceptical of such messaging.” Anyone can file a complaint with OECD National Contact Points over alleged corporate human rights breaches. The OECD does not have the power to impose sanctions, but it can initiate a mediation process between the complainants and the company. Other sponsors of the Agrizone pavilion include Senar, a branch of Brazil’s leading agribusiness lobby group, the CNA, and UPL, an Indian pesticide manufacturer supplying Brazil with products containing chemicals banned in the EU. Those chemicals can still be legally sold by European companies to Brazil. Together, these sponsors have paid at least R$4.4m (£625,000) for branding, private negotiation rooms, the right to host events and speaking slots in climate debates. A draft contract obtained by Unearthed through an FOI request promises sponsors visibility and image gain” from their “association with companies committed to the changes needed to address climate change”. Brice Böhmer, of the campaign group Transparency International, warned that COP30 hosts should be “cautious about the privileged access that is sometimes given to businesses,” as there was at times “a gap between how businesses portray themselves” and work they do to “push for solutions that are in their own interest… behind closed doors.” Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro will reportedly work from the Agrizone during the summit. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Böhmer called for a conflict of interest policy to regulate the visibility and access given to businesses at COP summits. “Are UN climate summits becoming platforms for genuine climate action, or industry misinformation and undue influence?” he said. “For COPs to drive real climate action, there should be no space for those who lobby against its goals.” A spokesperson for Bayer said that “Combating climate change requires collective efforts across the entire chain…At COP, we will therefore be involved in discussions on science-based solutions in the fight against climate change.” Bayer formally responded to the OECD complaint in detail in July 2024, saying that the company took “all information about potential adverse human rights and environmental impacts very seriously” but that, based on its own research and the information provided by the complainants, it “could not identify any connection between the adverse impacts and Bayer’s business.” In a statement, Embrapa said that as a public research and innovation institution, it “bases its actions and all its relationships on ethics, transparency and an uncompromising commitment to environmental and human rights legislation in Brazil and worldwide.” It added that it rejected practices that had been “proven to constitute” illegal deforestation, misuse of pesticides or violation of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. Embrapa has recently been campaigning for Brazil to adopt GWP*, a new metric for measuring the climate impact of the greenhouse gas methane, which is intended to take into account the fact that methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere. Critics say that adopting this standard would allow heavy emitters, like the livestock industry, to mask their contribution to global warming. Hannah Daly, Professor of Sustainable Energy at University College Cork, said that if Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, adopted GWP*, it would set a “disastrous precedent.” She added that Embrapa was promoting “a metric that would allow Brazil’s enormous cattle sector to claim “climate neutrality” while keeping methane emissions high.” Embrapa said that “Discussions on SLCPs [short-lived climate pollutants] should continue to be the subject of scientific meetings before being adopted or abandoned. Embrapa considers that divergence and debate are fundamental parts of scientific development and should be based on arguments grounded in scientific evidence.” Deforestation and land conflicts Bayer is a dominant force in South America’s market for genetically modified soya seeds and the herbicides used on them. The development of herbicide-resistant seeds transformed the soya industry in Brazil, where as much as 98 percent% of the crop is now reportedly genetically modified. The expansion of soya cultivation has consumed vast tracts of land, driving deforestation and land conflicts at Amazon and Cerrado frontiers. “This clearance is often tied to forced evictions or the encroachment of indigenous and peasant communities,” Cristina Hernandez Hurtado told Unearthed. The Guasu Guavirá indigenous land in Western Paraná is under dispute – home to Indigenous villages, but claimed by farmers whose soya fields surround it. “We have no freedom. And many communities border farmland. So, the pesticides are sprayed 5 metres, 10 metres from the Guaranis homes,” said Ilson Soares, leader of the Guasu Guavirá land’s Yvy Okaju village. He added that farmers have at times used pesticides against Indigenous people as a “chemical weapon.” “Pesticides also cause … anxiety, sadness,” said a female leader from the Guasu Guavira indigenous land who asked for anonymity to avoid threats. She added: “When it comes to pesticides and when it comes to soyabean plantations, nothing is sustainable.” Brazil is now the largest producer of soya in the world, producing some 169.5mn tonnes in 2024-25. The UK imported £243m of soya from Brazil in 2024, more than from anywhere else, mostly for livestock feed. The OECD complaint against Bayer also cites impacts in Bolivia, where it says genetically modified soya now uses around 50 percent% of cultivated land, and around 436,000 hectares of forest were cleared for soya between 2011-2022. Bayer did not answer questions from Unearthed directly related to the allegations in the OECD complaint, but said “Bayer has historically made sustainability one of its key strategic pillars and contributes globally with innovative solutions and initiatives related to agriculture, health, energy transition and sustainable food systems.” Hurtado, from ECCHR, said Germany’s national office for the OECD was expected to decide soon whether to mediate the complaint. UPL, an Indian pesticide manufacturer, will also sponsor the Agrizone. UPL has paid R$900,000 (£125,000), securing various branding and a 300 sq m stand. As of 2023, UPL was permitted to sell 136 agrochemical products in Brazil containing substances banned in the EU due to human health or environmental concerns. UPL did not respond to a request for comment. Anti-conservation lobbyists Agrizone sponsor Senar is the education arm of CNA, Brazil’s largest agribusiness lobby group. Senar has paid for master sponsorship, the highest level, at R$2.5 million (£360,000). CNA recently backed Brazil’s so-called “devastation bill”, a package of legal reforms condemned by climate groups for allegedly loosened environmental licensing. Environment Minister Marina Silva said the bill as originally drafted would undermine the country’s pledge to eliminate deforestation by 2030. By contrast, CNA publicly supported the bill, arguing it would reduce bureaucracy. CNA has also led efforts to overturn the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a landmark agreement to block the sale of deforestation-linked soya. In February the CNA filed a complaint with Brazil’s anti-trust agency (CADE) claiming that the moratorium was “illegal”. CADE took a preliminary step to suspend the ASM, but a federal court reversed that decision; a final ruling is pending. Studies have shown that the moratorium has significantly brought down Amazon deforestation. CNA has also lobbied against EUDR legislation, which bans the import by the EU of products from deforested land, calling it a “significant trade restriction”. CNA did not respond to a request for comment. Embrapa said that although Senar was a private entity, it has “strong public ties and purposes, as they mainly work in professional training, social assistance, and promoting the quality of life of workers. Therefore, they are relevant actors in the innovation ecosystem of agriculture and family farming, given that they fulfil an important social function that complements Embrapa.” Climate denial and disinformation In July, COP30 organisers pledged to tackle disinformation. But two of the Agrizone’s sponsors have recently been linked to climate denial.Bayer sponsors Agro Bar, an agribusiness-focused podcast, which in 2023 interviewed notorious Brazilian climate change denier Luiz Carlos Molion. On the episode, Molion, said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is responsible for “climate terrorism.” He dismisses CO2 as a significant climate driver, calling it a vital gas of life with an atmospheric effect that is too small to measure. Members of the Brazilian Academy of Science have publicly refuted Molions theories. A spokesperson for the Agro Bar Podcast said it aimed to “broaden the debate and bring different voices and points of view on issues that impact agribusiness and society,” and that “Bayer had no involvement in the agenda, the choice of interviewee or the production of the episode in question.” During the episode, the presenters did not challenge any of Molions views. “The absence of immediate challenges to guests, or humorous reactions at specific moments, are characteristics of the free debate format and do not imply the promotion of falsehoods or misinformation,” the spokesperson said. Molion has also regularly lectured at events organised by Agrizone sponsor Senar, where he has been billed as “Brazils top climate expert.” At a Senar lecture in 2023, Molion claimed that Amazon rainfall has absolutely no influence on the rest of the country and that deforestation has no impact on the global climate. Molion did not respond to a request for comment. Bayer did not comment on Molion’s appearance on Agrobar, and still sponsors the podcast. Another regular guest at CNA/Senar conferences, former Embrapa scientist Evaristo de Miranda, has been accused of leading a group of researchers that intentionally produced “fake controversies…that have seriously impacted environmental conservation, particularly in issues related to deforestation and climate change.” Miranda’s claims, made via reports, presentations and newspaper articles, included that Brazil’s environmental protections are the strongest in the world, that conservation laws hinder development and concern over Amazon deforestation is misplaced. Miranda did not respond to a request for comment. Professor Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, co-led a systematic review of 300 scientific papers on climate misinformation. He told Unearthed that the Brazilian government’s spearheading of a disinformation initiative was important, but that: “the inclusion of sponsors…that have previously and continuously supported denialist and contrarian voices regarding climate change calls into question the value of this component of COP30. The post COP30’s Agriculture Showcase Sponsored by Agribiz Interests Linked to Deforestation and Anti-conservation Lobbying appeared first on DeSmog.
- — The Telegraph’s Record of Climate Falsehoods
- at 11/10/25 10:00amThe Telegraph, which has accused the BBC of bias and a lack of editorial rigour, has been forced to amend a swathe of climate inaccuracies. The BBC’s director-general and CEO resigned this weekend after a critical review of the broadcaster’s coverage was leaked to The Telegraph. The Telegraph has used this opportunity to slam the BBC – saying that the “BBC has just signed its own death warrant” and that its future is “now in doubt”. The paper is also reporting that the BBC is now reviewing its climate and energy coverage over accusations of bias. However, The Telegraph has repeatedly made basic errors in relation to its climate coverage in recent times. According to its corrections and clarifications page, The Telegraph published four articles in December and January that included the false claim that Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband plans to build 1 billion solar panels to meet his net zero emissions targets. In reality, reaching net zero by 2050 will require a tenth of that figure – 100 million solar panels. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); The Telegraph has repeatedly castigated the BBC in recent days for its apparent lack of fairness, yet the newspaper frequently attacks its opponents using hyperbolic, incendiary language – even when its facts are wrong. One of the reports that used the false solar panels statistic was entitled, “Miliband’s eco lunacy will wreck Britain and enrich the Chinese dictatorship”. In an article from Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice entitled, “Ed Miliband’s solar farm building spree will ruin our countryside for ever”, the newspaper also claimed that the solar panels set to be installed over the next decade will cover an area of farmland the size of Greater London – a falsehood that had to be corrected. Tice is a notorious climate science denier who has suggested that CO2 is “plant food”. Other Telegraph falsehoods have included the amount of undersea cables and overland power lines needed to reach net zero, the amount that would be saved by manufacturers if “net zero costs” were scrapped from bills, and that Britain has been “paying the highest electricity prices in the world for second year running”. The BBC has made 33 corrections to its coverage overall this year, compared with 114 corrections from The Telegraph. “Looking to The Daily Telegraph as an arbiter of journalistic accuracy and ethics is like calling on the fox to give you advice on securing the hen house,” said Mic Wright, author of Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn’t and Why it Matters. “The paper’s attacks on the BBC are not remotely done in good faith and are the result of the publishers ideological and commercial interests. There is no world in which The Telegraph’s output would survive the level of scrutiny applied to the BBC’s journalism.” The leaked review of BBC editorial decisions was produced by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee. He claimed that a speech by Donald Trump during the 6 January 2021 riots on Capitol Hill in Washington DC had been selectively edited by Panorama to suggest that Trump was encouraging the riot. Trump is now threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion (£760,000). While Trump’s speech was edited to distort his words, he did tell his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol”, after which rioters smashed through barricades, ransacked the U.S. Capitol, and injured 174 police officers. When he re-entered office in January 2025, Trump retrospectively pardoned all 1,600 individuals who were charged or convicted in relation to the attempted coup. “It’s easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world’s number one news source,” said Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. “We can’t let him. “The BBC belongs to all of us here in the UK. The prime minister and leaders from across the political spectrum should be united in telling Trump to keep his hands off it.” The Telegraph was approached for comment. The Telegraph’s Climate Deniers As DeSmog has shown, The Telegraph has ramped up its aggressive, inaccurate, anti-climate attacks over recent years. DeSmog’s analysis of opinion and editorial articles about the environment published on The Telegraph’s website in the first 100 days of the current Labour government found that 94 percent were anti-green – attacking or undermining climate science, policy and technological solutions, or environmental activists. The Telegraph focused on Ed Miliband, with its columnists regularly deploying ad hominem attacks, labelling him “red Ed” and “mad Ed”. In one article, columnist Allison Pearson called Miliband “thoroughly mental Mili”. In an article last week about the BBC, Pearson said: “We have become accustomed to BBC journalists lying by omission and the prioritisation of pet subjects – I swear there isn’t a spark caused by two sticks rubbed together in southern Europe that hasn’t been seized on by climate editor Justin Rowlatt as evidence of man-made global warming.” Pearson has formal ties to climate science denial groups – a common feature of The Telegraph’s climate commentators. She is a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels. Telegraph journalist and GWPF director Allison Pearson. Credit: Keith Morris / Hay Ffotos / Alamy Fellow Telegraph columnist Lord David Frost is a director of Net Zero Watch, the GWPF’s campaign arm. Frost – who has no scientific training – has claimed that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” to Britain. He was recently appointed director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, an anti-climate lobby group that received funding from oil major BP for decades. Individuals associated with the GWPF wrote at least 48 articles in The Telegraph during Labour’s first 100 days, yet their ties to the climate denial group were not mentioned once by the newspaper. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.” The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.” A previous DeSmog analysis found that, during the six-month period to 16 October 2023, 85 percent of The Telegraph’s editorials and opinion pieces on environmental issues were anti-green. Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, previously said the editors of The Telegraph had “lost their minds when it comes to climate change”. “Both newspapers [The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph] are campaigning against climate policies,” Ward told DeSmog. “They are bombarding their poor readers with laughable propaganda, particularly in their comment columns.” Additional research by Joey Grostern The post The Telegraph’s Record of Climate Falsehoods appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Revealed: U.S. Dairy Industry Push to Water Down Global Emissions Framework
- at 11/10/25 9:12amTrade associations representing some of the largest dairy companies in the world have coordinated efforts to weaken international standards for how corporations measure their carbon emissions. Experts say these changes would lead to double-counting of the dairy sector’s emissions cuts, allowing the industry to sell carbon credits to polluting companies for reductions that they are also counting against internal targets. Consultation documents and position papers reviewed by DeSmog reveal the lobbying effort was led by trade group Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, whose board includes the two largest dairy companies in the U.S., Dairy Farmers of America and Land O’Lakes. In the papers, U.S. trade associations like the National Milk Producers Federation, and the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) called for major changes in the GHG Protocol, a multi-stakeholder initiative which sets vital global frameworks underpinning how corporate targets are set for cutting emissions. The standards body is currently undergoing a once-per-decade review of its frameworks and standards. In response to DeSmog’s findings, an IDFA spokesperson denied lobbying the body and said the group was “consistently opposed” to double counting in the sector, supporting regulatory approaches that were “practical and feasible”. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); The meat and dairy industry is responsible for between 12 and 20 percent of all emissions worldwide, and is the largest emitter of methane, a greenhouse gas responsible for a third of global warming to date. In recent years, the sector has nonetheless ramped up efforts to promote itself as a major contributor to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, by claiming that livestock operations have vast potential to increase the capacity of soil to store carbon. In early October, representatives of the world’s largest dairy companies dominated discussions at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conference in Rome on sustainable livestock transformation. Dairy companies have also been well-represented at international climate summits in recent years, and are expected to attend this year’s COP30 conference, which kicked off this week in Belém, Brazil. In a 2023 public consultation on the GHG Protocol, many dairy trade groups submitted near-identical responses calling for more lenient rules on the sales of carbon credits, and repeatedly requested a “seat at the table” in ongoing discussions. Carbon credits are certificates that represent cuts in carbon emissions by the sellers, which buyers — such as fossil fuel companies — can use to reduce their carbon pollution on paper, a process known as offsetting. The market for agricultural carbon credits could reach $13.7 billion annually by 2050. Global leaders reached a controversial agreement to enable the trading of emissions reductions through carbon markets at the COP29 climate conference in 2024, and new announcements on their expansion are expected at the upcoming COP30 summit. The GHG Protocol is also launching new guidance on carbon emissions from the conversion of land, for example from forests to agricultural pastures. In response, the dairy sector has called for changes that would allow more lenient accounting for the carbon emissions created by deforesting land. Insiders told DeSmog that the GHG Protocol was unlikely to introduce the dairy industry’s favored changes, with the review being steered by academics and environmental groups alongside corporations. Still, the calls are indicative of wider efforts by the dairy sector “to stop any kind of regulation of the industry,” said Ben Lilliston from the research and advocacy organisation Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “This is part of the dairy industry’s strategy to slow more concrete action — to avoid the fact we need to transition away from producing so much dairy,” he said. “This is a important fight about who defines the rules.” ‘Sink and Emitter’ In the run up to submitting their consultation responses, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy facilitated “task force meetings” that “helped develop an institutional perspective on current GHG Protocol concerns that are especially relevant to U.S. dairy farmers and dairy processors alike”, the documents show. In the following months, near-identical submissions were made by individual companies including Hilmar Cheese, Land O’Lakes, and Papa Johns, as well as trade groups representing the likes of Nestlé and Danone. Nestlé’s annual emissions are roughly three times those of Switzerland. The company left an industry initiative to cut methane emissions earlier this month. The Innovation Center is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Dairy Research and Promotion Program, better known as the Dairy Checkoff Program, which is funded by a small tax that dairy farmers pay on sales. Small-scale producers have accused the program of promoting the interests of large-scale industrial farms over over their own. In their responses to the GHG Protocol consultation, multiple dairy groups stated that the industry needed special consideration in the new rules, because it is “uniquely positioned to offer a source of GHG reductions for many other sectors unable to reduce their own footprints internally as both a carbon sink and emitter”. Carbon sinks are natural systems, such as soil, that absorb and store carbon — also called carbon sequestration. Farmers can improve how well their pasturage stores carbon for example by using conservation grazing. They can also reduce methane emissions from cattle by using special additives in the cows’ feed, or improving their management of manure. However, dairy companies have repeatedly been accused of over-hyping the potential of these measures to lower their carbon emissions, and thereby justifying expansion of their herds. A large body of scientific research shows that all forms of meat and dairy production are net emitters, due to large amounts of methane and other potent greenhouse gases emitted by the cattle themselves. A major study published last year in the journal Nature Communications found it was “not feasible” for the global livestock industry to sequester enough carbon in the soil to cancel out its own planet-warming emissions. Dairy’s Push for Carbon Credits Different dairy industry groups used near-identical language to argue that current accounting rules did not adequately recognise the sector’s emissions savings, due to restrictive rules on carbon credits. Under current GHG Protocol rules, neither dairy farmers nor the buyers of their products can count emissions reductions against their own reported figures if they choose to sell carbon credits for them. However, the sector is lobbying for this to be changed – so that farmers and their buyers as well as the purchasers of the carbon credits would be able to count reductions in their own reporting and to show progress against their targets. “Dairy farms and other agriculture sectors cannot accurately demonstrate progress toward their own GHG reduction goals if GHG Protocol standards do not acknowledge the credits generated and sold to other sectors”, multiple groups said in the consultation responses. “Agricultural (and forestry) producers should have the opportunity to maximize their benefits from the important services provided by responsible livestock, farm, soil and ecosystem management.” However, the suggested amendment could lead to significant double counting against corporate targets, overstating global progress towards vital climate goals. The sector “is trying a whole host of things to try to maintain business as usual and lower climate scrutiny,” said IATP’s Lilliston. “Any double counting takes away from transparency and accountability” and would paint a falsely positive picture of about carbon cuts. “The diary industry’s message is, ‘we have this. We’ve got this taken care of.’ They are expert at playing the system”. The industry’s proposed changes would significantly benefit companies that use or process large amounts of dairy, which cannot currently claim emissions reductions from measures taken by farmers in their supply chain if carbon credits for these have already been sold. Matt Herrick, executive vice president and chief impact officer for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that given the opportunity, the organisation would be keen to contribute to the protocol further, “beyond submitting comments through a generic online portal”. The group’s contributions in the consultation were designed “to educate the GHGP about insufficiently clear areas of existing standards identified by various actors throughout the dairy supply chain,” he added, including what he described as “gray areas” in the the protocol’s standards and guidance. Land Conversion Changes to the GHG Protocol will affect all sectors. However, the dairy industry was found to have particularly active in efforts to shape accounting for supply chain emissions — by far the largest source for the majority of companies. The industry also lobbied on new guidance on how companies should account for emissions arising from land management and land use change, which the GHG Protocol is expected to finalise later this year. Agriculture is the number one driver of land use change and deforestation globally, which have been responsible for around one third of all CO2 emissions since 1750. Eighty percent of all agricultural land is used for livestock. In addition to the lobbying on carbon credits, a second “task force”, coordinated by the industry-led initiative Pathways to Dairy Net Zero, lobbied to water down the proposed new accounting rules. Efforts were supported by the trade group the Global Dairy Platform, which counts staff from companies including Arla and Saputo on its board. In a 2023 position paper, the Global Dairy Platform wrote: “The dairy sector urges the GHG Protocol to allow mass balancing in commodity agriculture supply chain GHG accounting.” “Mass balancing” is a controversial approach to certifying agricultural goods like soya and dairy where products from more sustainable farms are mixed with conventional products before being purchased by dairy processors — who then buy the product alongside special environmental certificates, allowing them to claim that the ingredient was sustainablysourced. Under the first draft guidance, published in 2022, the GHG Protocol stated that emissions savings could not be calculated on the basis of mass balance, because products bought by the companies were not physically traceable to the lower-carbon farms. In response, the Global Dairy Platform warned the GHG Protocol “Unnecessarily restrictive traceability standards present a real tension and disincentive with the dairy sector’s ongoing climate change mitigation work.” Recognition of mass balance systems could be “credible, accurate and workable” for the sector, it argued. The dairy companies and industry groups referenced in this article did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. Environmental experts said that recognition of mass balance systems could weaken the impetus for companies to cut emissions in their own direct supply chains. “Agribusinesses wouldn’t really have to do due diligence to make sure that their actual suppliers have good land management practices in place,” said Mathilde Crepy from ECOS, an NGO specialising in environmental standards. “It moves away from the physical reality of things and towards wishful thinking,” she added. “It hides the bigger picture.” The post Revealed: U.S. Dairy Industry Push to Water Down Global Emissions Framework appeared first on DeSmog.
- — UK Newspapers Publish More Ads for Polluting Products Than Climate Coverage
- at 11/8/25 2:51amBritish national newspapers devoted more than triple the space to advertising polluting industries such as oil, airlines, and sports utility vehicles than they did to covering last year’s United Nations climate talks, according to a new study. Total high-carbon advertising — including for fossil fuel companies, cruises, and banks financing oil and gas – amounted to 5,086 column inches on two key dates during 2024s COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, relative to 1,745 column inches for the negotiations themselves. With the next round of talks, known as COP30, getting underway in Belém, Brazil, newspapers will likely repeat the pattern, warned Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute think tank, which conducted the research. “What will people in the UK see when they open their newspapers? A handful of stories warning them that there is an urgent challenge that must be addressed, but that will likely be drowned out by at least three times the amount of advertising normalising pollution,” Simms said. “We need tobacco-style controls on ads that promote polluting products.” The research examined coverage in ten British national newspapers, including the Times, the Sun and the Daily Mail, on November 11, the opening day of the Baku talks, and November 25, the morning after the conference ended and when coverage peaked. The ten papers dedicated an average of 2.1 percent of their editorial space to the conference. Some of the newspapers carried almost no mention of major climate impacts at the time, such as the floods in Valencia, Spain or Storm Bert in the UK. Cruises and package holidays dominated travel advertising during the same period, accounting for 50 percent of travel promotions. The Financial Times was the only paper that carried no travel ads during the period, publishing 55.7 percent of the COP29 coverage across all papers. The Guardian, which has not accepted advertising from fossil fuel companies since 2020, published a full-page advertisement for Turkish Airlines on one of the key conference dates, the study found. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on countries to ban fossil fuel advertising and urged news media and tech companies to stop running the ads. “The public are being told by reporters that climate scientists are warning that we must stop burning fossil fuels, but those who still buy print newspapers are bombarded with adverts suggesting everyone else is enjoying long haul flights and luxury cruises,” said Brendan Montague, the study’s author and editor of The Ecologist. The Times, the Sun, the Daily Mail, and The Guardian did not respond to requests for comment. The post UK Newspapers Publish More Ads for Polluting Products Than Climate Coverage appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Revealed: Soap Opera-inspired Clean Energy Ads Helped Shell Boost Petrol Sales in Brazil
- at 11/7/25 8:34amThis story has been published in partnership with Intercept Brasil. Oil giant Shell tapped into Brazil’s love of the soap opera to sell more fossil fuels, hiring famous actors to appear in adverts designed to lure customers to its petrol stations by associating the company with clean energy. The “Caminhos do Amanhã” (“Paths of Tomorrow”) campaign originally featured Sophia Abrahão and Sérgio Malheiros, two of Brazil’s biggest soap and film stars, discovering Shell’s electric car charging points as they plan for life with their first baby. The plot unfolded in ad breaks during primetime soap operas watched by millions of Brazilians in 2023, before being rebooted late last year, this time fronted by popular social media influencers and their children. British-owned ad agency VML, which devised the campaign, aimed to use the public’s positive associations with clean energy to “strengthen trust in Shell” and in turn increase sales of car fuels at its stations, including petrol, according to documents obtained by DeSmog. This approach — known as the “halo effect” in the advertising industry — increased fuel sales by 13 percent, according to the documents, which did not give further details on the time period or total volumes of fuels sold. VML’s plan to make Shell “strongly associated with new energy sources” contrasts with the reality of the oil company’s business. Shell Brasil has made car charging available at less than 1 percent of its petrol stations in Brazil while the campaign has run over the past two years. In March, the company dropped the vast majority of its solar and onshore wind plans in Brazil. The United Nations COP30 climate talks begin on November 10 in Belém, a city near the mouth of the Amazon River. Brazil’s role as host is to keep nations in agreement on the pace and process of weaning themselves off the petrol and other fossil fuels causing climate breakdown. VML’s tactics have raised concerns among climate advocates, who say that advertising and public relations agencies — often owned by Western conglomerates such as VML’s London-based owners WPP — are making it harder for governments and civil society in the Global South to argue for a transition away from fossil fuels. Critics say the agencies creating such campaigns help oil and gas clients present themselves as investing heavily in clean energy, while they double down on fossil fuel extraction and flood climate negotiations with lobbyists. “VML is helping turn misleading narratives into perceived truth,” said geographer and ecologist Adriano Liziero, who runs a popular environmental Instagram channel in Brazil. “This is confusing the public and obscuring the political and economic mechanisms that keep fossil fuels in place — contrary to what science indicates.” Shell spent up to $10 million on the Caminhos do Amanhã campaign during its launch year in 2023, according to the documents. The story of Sophia and Sérgio, who are also a couple in real life, was shown hundreds of times during free-to-air channel TV Globo’s biggest soap operas — known in Brazil as “novelas” — as well as in cinemas, on billboards, and on social media. Bursting with infidelity, betrayal and cliff-hangers, novelas feature many of the country’s most recognisable celebrities, making them an ideal vehicle for corporations to seed their messaging. In 2023, the UK’s advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority, banned a Shell ad campaign, also made by VML, for overstating the oil company’s clean energy initiatives. Last month, VML’s UK CEO Pip Hulbert, who previously led the Shell account at the agency, was promoted to international chief client officer. Hulbert, VML, WPP, and Shell did not respond to requests for comment. Brazil’s Oil Expansion Shell is the second biggest oil producer in Brazil after Petrobras, the country’s national oil company. Their combined exploration plans are poised to drive Brazil up from the seventh to the fourth largest oil and gas producer in the world. In March, Shell Brasil greenlit a new offshore project that will produce 120,000 barrels of oil a day by 2029 and announced plans for another. Nevertheless, in a new version of the Caminhos do Amanhã campaign launched in October last year, Shell continued to emphasise clean energy. In this version, YouTube and Instagram videos featured Brazilian social media influencers telling their young children how “innovation and investment in technology” by Shell is creating a more sustainable world. The videos received hundreds of thousands of likes each, with the top performing video by singer Zanq being watched 13 million times. Biologist-turned-influencer Atila Iamarino, who has over 1 million followers on Instagram, posted videos explaining technical energy topics including carbon neutrality — when as many carbon emissions are being captured as emitted. Other clips showed the influencers talking about and trying out Shell’s charging points and biofuels. The Caminhos do Amanhã campaign made Shell the energy company most trusted and most associated with clean energy in Brazil, according to market research referenced in the documents obtained by DeSmog, despite the company’s business model remaining overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels. Shell has electric charging points at just 80 of its 6,500 fuel stations, Shell’s gas station subsidiary Raizen told DeSmog. Shell’s 100 percent ethanol biofuel, which also features heavily in the campaign, is available at less than one in six stations. Raizen told DeSmog that Shell has paused the expansion of its electric charging programme while the company conducts a “portfolio review.” Globally, 0.35 percent of Shell’s primary energy production comes from renewable sources, according to a study published this month in the journal Nature. One Shell Brasil-sponsored post in VMLs campaign featured popular Brazilian singer Zanq. As of mid-October 2024, it had 310,168 likes. Brazilian influencer Michele Passa also participated in VMLs Caminhos do Amanhã Paths of Tomorrow -campaign for Shell. Petrobras has also faced criticism for running misleadingly green ad campaigns in advance of COP30. The company hired a squad of climate and science influencers to emphasise its research into biofuels, even as the company secured approvals to begin drilling for offshore oil in the Amazon basin. One of Petrobras’ key ad agencies, Ogilvy, is also owned by the British holding company WPP. Ogilvy’s current 2022-2027 contract with Petrobras is worth over R$450 million ($83 million), according to Petrobras transparency disclosures reviewed by DeSmog. Pressure Growing for Ad Bans The advertising industry is increasingly coming under pressure for its role in delaying climate action by creating the impression that major polluters are coming up with viable alternatives to oil and gas — even though their clients are overwhelmingly continuing to do business as usual. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for a global fossil fuel advertising ban and said the “Mad Men” running advertising and PR agencies should drop their polluting clients. The strategy behind the Caminhos do Amanhã campaign was “the strongest example I have seen of why advertising by oil and gas companies should be banned, even when they are promoting clean energy projects,” a former employee of a WPP ad agency told DeSmog. “The message is one of transition, but the outcome is growing the status quo and moving us away from a viable future,” said the former employee, who declined to be named for fear of professional repercussions. Some local and national governments in Europe have introduced restrictions on fossil fuel advertising, including France and Spain, but so far, no South American governments have followed suit. Meanwhile, a growing movement of agencies and ad executives are shunning oil and gas clients. Industry campaign group Clean Creatives says more than 1,500 agencies worldwide have pledged not to work with the fossil fuel industry. They don’t yet include the biggest agencies in the industry, however — like VML and its owner WPP — where some employees say the type of tactics used in the Caminhos do Amanhã campaign are rarely challenged. “It just really clearly expresses how disconnected the people who are making those ads and branding exercises are from the actual results,” said a former employee at WPP branding agency Landor, who has previously worked on projects for oil giant BP, and who also declined to be named to avoid work repercussions. “You kind of get desensitised to the idea that it is problematic and you get socialised to those kinds of approaches,” they added. Additional reporting by Juliana Aguilera. This story has been published in partnership with Intercept Brasil. The post Revealed: Soap Opera-inspired Clean Energy Ads Helped Shell Boost Petrol Sales in Brazil appeared first on DeSmog.
- — New IEA Boss Lord Frost’s Record of Climate Science Denial
- at 11/7/25 7:29amLord David Frost has been announced as the new director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the influential anti-government lobby group. The IEA’s press release hailed the former Brexit negotiator and Conservative minister for his “clarity of thought, strategic leadership, and ability to deliver institutional change”. The statement did not mention Lord Frost’s role as one of the UK’s leading opponents of climate action. Frost is a director of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s foremost climate science denial group. The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels. Frost – who has no scientific training – has claimed that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” to Britain. Earlier this week, a Charity Commission probe into the IEA called on the group to implement reforms to improve transparency and reduce its political bias. The IEA is able to maintain its charitable status – which carries tax benefits – because it is considered to be an “educational” group. Contrary to Frost’s views on climate change, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.” The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.” The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – an orchestrated alliance of radical right-wing groups based in Westminster that lobby to dismantle state services and privatise public bodies. These groups share an opposition to climate action, and have spent decades attempting to undermine the scientific consensus behind policies to reduce emissions. The IEA has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and has celebrated the Conservative Party’s pledge to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act. The IEA received funding from oil giant BP from 1967 to at least 2018, and has accepted donations from GWPF backers. Frost has resigned the Conservative whip to take up his new role at the IEA, and will sit as a non-affiliated peer in the House of Lords. Frost’s Climate Denial Since resigning as Brexit minister in 2021, Frost has been a leading opponent of the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target. In May he wrote a column which celebrated that “the Tories are joining Reform in distancing themselves from the craziness of this agenda”, adding that the Climate Change Committee – the government’s independent net zero advisory group – “will be thrown on to the junk heap of history and we will never speak of it again.” Last month he wrote that “we need to end the disaster of net zero”. Lord Frost. Credit: Number 10 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Frost has also used his position in the House of Lords to promote climate science denial. In a July 2023 debate on climate change, Frost declared that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial”, since more people “die from cold than heat in Britain”. He argued that the UK should stop trying to mitigate rising temperatures, and should instead adapt to its effects and invest in nuclear and gas power. Rising global heat kills one person a minute worldwide, while it has been estimated that the climate crisis may cause 14.5 million additional deaths by 2050. Lord Frost and Net Zero Watch Frost is also formally affiliated with anti-climate institutions. In November 2022, he became a director of the GWPF, claiming the group provides an “objective view” of climate change. Frost gave the annual GWPF lecture in 2023, in which he claimed: “Climate change is a problem, one of the many we face: it is not existential and it doesn’t mean extinction is coming.” He added that the “causal connection” between cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 and limiting global temperatures to 1.5C “is very much open to debate”. Frost stepped down from the GWPF in December 2024, only to join the board of Net Zero Watch, its campaign arm, where he remains an active director. In 2022, Net Zero Watch urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels” with “a new fleet of coal-fired power stations”, and called for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. Net Zero Watch chair Neil Record (life vice president and former chair of the IEA) was a major donor to Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign. The post New IEA Boss Lord Frost’s Record of Climate Science Denial appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Nvidia Flogged AI for Brazilian Oil and Gas on Eve of COP30
- at 11/7/25 5:35amAs world leaders prepared to descend on the small city of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon for the COP30 climate summit, artificial intelligence (AI) chip-manufacturer Nvidia was instead peddling its energy-guzzling AI tools to Brazilian oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal. During the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Rio de Janeiro last week, a gathering of over 23,000 oil and gas representatives, Nvidia sent a senior energy staffer to sell bespoke AI software to help oil giants dredge up ever-vaster troves of fossil fuels. Nvidia did so even though the tech giant markets itself as a creator of AI-driven climate crisis solutions, and has made the (contested) claim that 100 percent of its prodigious electricity consumption comes from renewable sources.The company’s Global Head of Subsurface Energy Solutions, Nefeli Moridis, who is on the board of the Society of Petroleum Engineers International, joined an OTC Conference panel on 29 October which discussed how to use AI to tackle the “biggest challenges” in offshore oil and gas operations – including “optimizing production.” A promotional banner for an event at the 2025 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Rio de Janeiro.Credit: OTC Brasil / Linkedin The panel also featured representatives from tech giants Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, who talked about “why Brazil is uniquely positioned to lead the global offshore AI transformation”, alongside a senior figure from one of the conference’s “master sponsors” – Brazilian state-owned oil and gas company Petrobras. Petrobras, which has already garnered criticism for accelerating its exploration of new oil and gas reserves ahead of COP30, was granted a new license in late October from the Brazilian government (also a master sponsor) to drill on the Amazon coast. “What a great discussion! Robotics can – and will – be leveraged in offshore environments to push the boundaries of what’s possible,” Moridis promised on social media platform LinkedIn after speaking on the panel. An event at the 2025 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Rio de Janeiro.Speakers included Otávio Ciriblli from Petrobras (far-right); Nefeli Moridis from Nvidia (third from left); Stefany Mazon from Microsoft (second from left); Arno Van Den Haak, Amazon Web Services (second from right).Credit: OTC Brasil / Linkedin Nvidia’s decision to flog its technology to fossil fuel firms at the OTC Conference was not a one-off. The tech giant, which was recently crowned the world’s largest public company and donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, has a long history of selling its wares to oil and gas companies. On the “oil and gas operations powered by AI” page of its website, Nvidia celebrates its recent work developing an AI assistant for Saudi Aramco, a custom AI chatbot with expertise about chemicals for Shell, and an AI tool for Petrobras to “speedup reservoir simulations”. The contradiction between Nvidia’s climate claims and its courtship to oil and gas giants, particularly in the shadow of the upcoming COP30 negotiations, has sparked outrage among campaigners. “This kind of hypocrisy undermines the credibility of tech companies heading into COP – they can’t present themselves as climate leaders while marketing AI to expand fossil fuel production,” said Holly Alpine, a former Microsoft employee turned campaigner for Enabled Emissions, which fights to stop big tech from enabling fossil fuel industry expansion. Tech companies have been selling their services to the fossil fuel industry for a long time. A 2023 survey by consulting firm EY reported that 92 percent of fossil fuel companies are already using AI for their operations. Nvidia’s Climate Contradictions It is still unclear whether Nvidia will be attending COP30 – especially given the company’s increasing closeness to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which has reversed American climate policy so dramatically that some experts are now calling the U.S. a “petrostate”.The Trump administration has pulled out of attending COP in Brazil this year. Nvidia, regardless of the company’s closeness to Trump, continues to trumpet its climate credentials. Just a month ago at New York Climate Week, the world’s largest discussion of climate crisis solutions outside COP, Nvidia’s Head of Sustainability Joshua Parker spoke on a panel that celebrated the company’s “innovative climate technologies”, which Parker argued will “advance sustainability solutions at an unprecedented pace”. The company has previously boasted that its products make “every day about Earth Day” by monitoring wildfires and extreme weather, on top of the energy efficiency of its chips. Nvidia also had a presence at past COP summits. At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nvidia sent its senior sustainability leader to sell the idea that “AI has the potential to make other sectors much more energy efficient”. The previous year, at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Nvidia joined up with the Commonwealth Secretariat for a panel about using AI to support climate action in nations vulnerable to climate change, including to track sea level rise in countries like Tonga. Its climate pledges are not without controversy. Nvidia’s claim that 100 percent of its electricity consumption in 2025 is powered by renewable energy was challenged by a report from Greenpeace in October that ranked Nvidia last among tech giants on the decarbonisation of its supply chain. The Greenpeace report said that Nvidia relies on suppliers that use fossil fuels to power their operations, and criticised the company for failing to release data on how much electricity those suppliers use. In the 2025 fiscal year, Nvidia suppliers produced 6 million tonnes of CO2, according to Greenpeace – double what they produced just two years earlier. Alpine goes further. “A company cannot claim to lead on climate while its technology drives the very emissions it vows to eliminate – or claim transparency while concealing those risks from shareholders,” she told DeSmog. Nvidia was approached for comment. Beyond Nvidia This phenomenon goes well beyond Nvidia and COP30. AWS and Microsoft, which fielded two of the OTC Conference’s AI panel speakers, reportedly make vast sums from the fossil fuel industry. A 2024 report by the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice goes so far as to claim that by this year, AWS “could be making $9.6 billion annually from the oil and gas industry alone – about 10 percent of AWS revenue.” Amazon is not hiding its work with these companies. In response to DeSmog, Amazon stated: “The energy industry should have access to the same technologies as other industries. We will continue to provide cloud services to companies in the energy industry to make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive and help them accelerate development of renewable energy businesses.” As for Microsoft, documents viewed by The Atlantic last year suggest that oil and gas revenues may account for a market opportunity of $35 billion to $75 billion each year for the firm. Alpine told the Financial Times this may constitute up to half of the company’s cloud revenue. Alpine’s campaign group, Enabled Emissions, argues that tech companies selling AI for fossil fuel expansion are causing “staggering emissions” by enabling increased oil and gas drilling with their software. “AI isn’t neutral – it’s shaping the pace and scale of fossil fuel expansion,” Alpine told DeSmog. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); AI at COP30 As the energy-intensity of the AI boom skyrockets, and big tech firms water down or even completely rescind their climate commitments, they are also reportedly shrinking from visibility at climate events. Last year, the Financial Times reported that big tech firms had already begun stepping back from participation at COP29 compared to previous years. On 28 October, Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates, a philanthropist worth an estimated $118 billion, wrote a memo addressed to COP30 attendees saying climate change won’t cause humanitys demise.” Gates’s arguments in the memo have drawn outcries of dismay from some of the world’s top climate scientists, who have pointed out that “this memo is already being championed by those seeking to misinform and sow doubt about climate change and delay climate progress – up to and including the executive branch of the United States government.” Whether big tech firms attend or not, COP30 is expected to involve discussions of the threats to climate change posed by the immense amounts of energy needed to fuel the global AI energy boom, as well as efforts to address the climate crisis using AI – an effort critics say is misguided. “The fact is that the climate crisis is not primarily a technological problem: we have most if not all of the tech we need to fix it,” Adam Becker, science journalist and author, previously told DeSmog. “Tech oligarchs think that they can burn fossil fuels with impunity and clean it up later with a magic wand given to them by a machine god. But that isn’t going to happen. The reality is that we need to save ourselves from the machinations of these cruelly myopic billionaires.” The post Nvidia Flogged AI for Brazilian Oil and Gas on Eve of COP30 appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Charity Commission Demands More Transparency and Neutrality from IEA
- at 11/6/25 9:19amThe Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the anti-state pressure group, must implement reforms to be more transparent and less politically biased, according to the charities regulator. The Charity Commission launched an investigation into the IEA in May, based on “perceptions of potential political bias, perceptions of a potential lack of transparency around funding, and perceptions that the charity may have pre-determined policy positions which would not be in keeping with its charitable purposes to advance education.” In response to the Good Law Project (GLP), which made the original complaint alongside a cross-party group of MPs, the regulator stated that the IEA had provided evidence that demonstrated “a significant change in approach since it changed chair and director general / CEO in 2023; with a greater push for greater transparency and political neutrality.” The Charity Commission added that the IEA “needs now to deliver on its plans and implement these changes.” However, the IEA has today announced that it has appointed Lord Frost, until recently a Conservative peer and the director of a climate science denial group, as its new director-general. The IEA is registered as a charity, and the regulator states that “political activity must not become the reason for the charity’s existence.” The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – an orchestrated alliance of radical right-wing groups based in Westminster that lobby to dismantle state services and privatise public bodies. These groups share an opposition to climate action, and have spent decades attempting to undermine the scientific consensus behind policies to reduce emissions. The group is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. It has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”, has said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences would be “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and has celebrated the Conservative Party’s pledge to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act. Despite the Charity Commission’s demand for greater transparency, the IEA still doesn’t publicly declare the names of its donors. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Greenpeace’s investigative outlet Unearthed previously revealed that the IEA had received money from BP every year from 1967 to 2018. The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005. Investigations have also discovered that a number of IEA donors are connected to the Conservative Party and other climate science denial groups in the Tufton Street network. Conservative donors Nigel Vinson, Lord Hintze, and Lord Moynihan have all donated to both the IEA and the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s foremost climate science denial group, based in 55 Tufton Street. Neil Record, one of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s closest allies and donors, is the chair of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch, and is the life vice president of the IEA. From 2009 to 2024, the IEA was run by Mark Littlewood – a close ally of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who lasted just 45 days in the job after she implemented a series of disastrous economic reforms backed by the IEA. However, there is also little evidence that the IEA has adopted a more neutral stance following Littlewood’s departure, in contravention of the Charity Commission’s conclusions. On 2 October, the IEA said it was “fantastic news” that the Conservative Party had pledged to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act, which formalised the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target. “This is an encouraging first step back to sanity,” it said. A day earlier, the group slammed Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband’s energy and climate agenda, stating: “The government is delivering higher prices, higher taxes, higher emissions, higher interest rates, lower investor confidence, and elevated risks to energy security. “Earlier in the week, the minister said he didn’t like billionaires very much. We can agree on one thing: he will ensure very few will wish to live here and pay his taxes.” These statements don’t seem to conform with the IEA’s promise to be less politically biased. The IEA has today appointed Lord Frost, a director of Net Zero Watch, as its new director-general following the resignation of Tom Clougherty. Frost has sat as a Conservative peer since 2020, but will now resign the Tory whip. Linda Edwards, the IEA’s CEO, responded to the Charity Commission’s findings by saying: “The institutions of a free society and free markets are threatened across the free world. Vexatious campaigns like this attempt to destroy ideas, rather than debate them.” Edwards is a board member at Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organisation that supports over 500 “free market” groups around the world. DeSmog revealed that Atlas was paid tens of thousands of dollars by oil major ExxonMobil to stoke confusion and doubt about climate change among developing nations during critical early moments of climate diplomacy. The IEA and Atlas were both founded by Antony Fisher. “Whilst we are pleased the Charity Commission recognised the need for formal guidance to the Liz Truss IEA,” said Jo Maugham, executive director of the GLP, “we think it is – not for the first time – remarkably complacent in believing the leopard of 55 Tufton Street will change its spots. We will not let the matter rest here, and are consulting with our lawyers.” A previous case brought against the GWPF didn’t lead to any meaningful sanctions against the Tufton Street group. The GLP accused the GWPF of breaching charity law by spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on one-sided research attacking climate science, and by funding the lobbying activities of its campaign arm Net Zero Watch. However, the Charity Commission asked the GWPF to make only minor changes to its ownership structure and output. The post Charity Commission Demands More Transparency and Neutrality from IEA appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Why the UK Advertising Industry Remains in Climate Denial
- at 11/6/25 7:01amBy the mid-1950s, the average American had roughly five times more discretionary dollars in their pocket than they’d had a decade earlier. Whilst this boosted the sales of goods, it also created a challenge: Durable products like cars and cookers lasted too long. So to keep revenues growing companies needed to come up with other ways to get people to spend their money. To solve this problem, as Vince Packard documented in his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, the American advertising agency McCann-Erickson established a ‘motivational department’ staffed by five full-time psychologists. Nicknamed the ‘head shrinkers’, they developed a strategy called ‘psychological obsolescence’. It aimed to manipulate people into viewing their perfectly functional possessions as outdated and nudge them into an endless cycle of wanting more. Fast forward to today, and the pollution caused by that desire creation has become a significant factor in climate breakdown. In the UK — which has committed under the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 81 percent by 2035 — research shows that the average citizen’s carbon footprint would be about one-third smaller if not for the influence from advertising. This influence pushes us towards excessive consumption, which is particularly concerning when it comes to polluting products such as fast fashion, or high-carbon, cheap flights which encourage frequent flying. All this consumption is of course driven by fossil fuels, and this highlights another controversial issue in that adverts from oil and gas companies often allow significant misinformation to seep into the publics subconscious. With the COP30 climate talks due to open in the Amazon city of Belém next week, the Brazilian hosts decision to hire the New York-based public relations firm Edelman — closely tied to the oil industry — to craft a strategic narrative and manage media at the negotiations has thrown the climate contradictions in the advertising world into even starker relief. So in the midst of a climate emergency, why are adverts that are designed to drive excessive consumption and skew our perceptions around fossil fuels, allowed? According to my research, the UK advertising industry — which regularly wins awards for its creativity, is led by regulatory bodies and trade organizations that are in the grip of vested interests, and operate in a culture of denial. Mark Their Own Homework In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is tasked with regulating claims made by advertisers to ensure that adverts are ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’. Yet the ASA (unlike similar regulators in other countries) is funded by the advertisers themselves, rather than the government. That means that it’s regulating the companies that pay its wages. As one MP commented, they “mark their own homework”. The ASA has also been criticised by the House of Lords for its lack of independence and accountability. One Peer said: “the code-writing, administration, appointments and funding [of the ASA] are entirely in the hands of the advertising industry… it is not accountable to anyone outside the industry — indeed, it is hermetically sealed.” When it comes to regulating potentially misleading adverts for fossil fuels, the ASA acts at a snail’s pace, often taking six months or more to decide whether or not to ban an advert. This means that the advert is allowed to air whilst this prolonged decision-making goes on, spreading misinformation. The ASAs review process remains opaque. Rulings are at times inconsistent. For instance, in early 2025, the ASA banned social media adverts for French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, which featured renewable energy visuals and information, but failed to state that TotalEnergies operations remained mostly fossil-fuel based. Yet the ASA cleared a similar advert for Shell, which also prominently featured renewable energy imagery and messages, but also briefly showed some small print at the bottom detailing Shell’s proportion of investments in fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the overall impression and tagline was misleading in suggesting that Shell was ‘powering progress’. The ASA’s codes state that all information on an advert must be easily understood by a lay person, and the small print referencing Shells fossil fuel investments clearly did not meet that criteria. Overall, the ambiguity and lack of consistent application of the ASA’s advertising codes means that fossil fuel advertisers are able to continue to suggest they are investing in a renewable energy future. This is clearly untrue, as big oil and gas majors are rolling back climate targets and continuing to ‘drill baby drill’. In the summer of this year, the ASA started to run its own adverts, promoting itself as an effective regulator. In July, on the very day that the UK Parliament held its first debate on to ban fossil fuel advertising, ASA adverts appeared in London Underground stations. These adverts may have been an attempt to reassure any passing politicians that there was no need to change the laws around the regulation of fossil fuel advertising. Ads placed by the Advertising Standards Authority at London tube stations. (Credit: Victoria Harvey) However, even the ASA’s own adverts don’t appear to be that truthful. For example, the adverts stated that the ASA ‘regulate ads across all media.’ But that’s not the case: There is a whole list of exemptions, such as political advertising and point of sale that the ASA does not regulate. The adverts stated that the ASA ensure that adverts ‘stick to the rules’. Again, untrue: The regulator can only begin to address a potential ban once an advert is made public, and therefore only has retrospective powers. It seems the ASA’s own advertising might therefore fail to meet its own codes. Complaints submitted to the ASA about these particular adverts received a response which stated that there is no process in place for regulating its own potentially misleading advertising. This highlights a key flaw in the ASA’s self-regulatory position and leaves no recourse for the public to demand accountability. Contradictory Claims The advertising industry trade group, the Advertising Association (AA), does not focus on the regulation of misleading adverts but exists to represent the industry and its members. The organisation, however, does not want to engage in discussion of the role advertising might play in promoting excessive consumption. My research on institutional change in the advertising industry found that the AA avoids recognising that adverts for highly polluting goods and services might harm the environment through a unique strategy of denialism, oddly insisting to some audiences that advertising is highly effective and to others that it is highly ineffective. For example, to the bafflement of its industry audience, the AA claims that in around 88 percent of cases advertising is ineffective at growing markets or increasing sales, citing its ‘investigations’ of the academic literature and its own data. In stating this as a fact, the AA avoids the need to account for emissions arising from the increased consumption driven by advertising — known as ‘advertised emissions.’ If adverts are ineffective, and therefore don’t increase consumption, there is no need to actually try and measure that consumption, the AA maintains. Any attempt to evaluate advertised emissions is therefore futile, the AA insists, and the industry will never get to net-zero carbon emissions by measuring it. However, the group presents a different narrative to government officials and other audiences when it needs to prove advertising’s value to the UK economy. The AA portrays the advertising industry as a highly relevant and effective sector, providing, a £42-billion asset to the UK economy that adds £6 to the countrys Gross Domestic Product for every £1 spent. Can both things be true — that advertising is both effective and ineffective? Likely not, and there is ample evidence to prove adverts are highly effective at influencing behaviour and increasing consumption. But by denying this, the AA can argue against potential restrictions or advertising bans, thus retaining their membership fees from big brand advertisers as well as advertising agencies. As one senior advertising professional I interviewed for my research put it, the AA had been “captured by the highest-paying clients.” This practitioner and others I spoke to said they want their trade body to recognise both the need for restrictions on adverts for products that pollute, especially fossil fuels, and for advertised emissions to be recognised. The interviewees said that no matter how hard they pushed for change, the AA mostly ignored their views — which goes against the AA’s mandate to act as ‘the link between practitioners and the politicians and policymakers whose decisions impact the sector.’ The AA’s Ad Net Zero (ANZ) initiative is its nod to sustainability. Borrowing pillars from other initiatives, it acknowledges the need to tackle the operational emissions generated by advertising agencies, which include emissions from staff flights, or from producing the energy needed to produce adverts. However, the initiative completely fails to address advertised emissions or the industrys work with fossil fuel majors. The initiative also has an Ad Net Zero Awards scheme for adverts that drive behavioural change, such as by promoting recycling or reducing food waste. What is not mentioned is that around three-quarters of agencies that won an ANZ award in 2024 also had contracts with fossil fuel clients. One professional I interviewed said the awards were not substantial: “Its literally just for an agency to say, “look were doing something around [sustainability]” …and so its kind of an agency greenwashing itself.” In 2022, the House of Lords took an interest in how advertising impacts the climate. It called on the AA to give evidence on how advertising might advance the government’s climate agenda. The AA, however, did little beyond promoting its ANZ awards scheme. The Peers were unimpressed, with one commenting that the AA’s submission for the meeting was: “extremely superficial, [emphasising] that the adverts did not make any difference and so on and so forth. That rather belies the fact that this is a £32 billion business. It seemed to me, from the submission you put in in the first place, that you were not fundamentally engaging with this at all.” It’s clear that some of the professionals I spoke with for my research also don’t think the AA are engaging with the issue. One said: “I do wonder how much the AA is responsible for this too… because they are creating the space where thats the outlet where you go” [to try and change the industry], “but theyre not doing anything. I think there needs to be a BBC Panorama undercover.” Complicit in the Delay So if the institutions which are meant to regulate and represent advertising are failing, what about the advertising agencies themselves? All six of the largest global holding groups — Dentsu, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omincom, Publicis, and WPP — have contracts with fossil fuel clients, which means that many of their UK agencies service fossil fuel briefs. In my interviews, senior employees in some of these organisations described a range of interventions they had used to move their agencies away from taking on polluting projects, such as appealing directly to their CEOs to drop fossil fuel clients — in one case, with an open letter signed by over 800 staff. In return, some were threatened with dismissal or other punitive measures, such as having their activities monitored and being asked to take down personal LinkedIn posts about climate change, or being told to “pull back on the climate work”. One reason for this pushback could be the risk of loss of any revenue from oil and gas clients, and research from DeSmog uncovered that some directors of global advertising agencies had private ties to companies which serviced the fossil fuel industry. It would seem that hidden vested interests exist at every level in the advertising world. Whatever the reason for the resistance from agency CEOs, it took a significant emotional toll on employees. “I was made redundant and Im absolutely certain it’s because of the work that I was doing,” one professional told me. “On a personal level, I ended up in a very, very, dark place. After that, it took me probably at least six months to recover.” Another said that after her agency refused to stop working with fossil fuel clients she quit her job because she could no longer handle the stress of working on polluting briefs. One professional laid it out clearly to me: “We are complicit at the moment as the advertising industry. We are complicit in the delay. We target politicians and financial decision-makers to make them think that fossil fuel clients are part of the solution, like, thats in the briefs.” An Industry Transformed? Whilst change is lacking inside the industry, external pressure is mounting. For example, a recent petition backed by Chris Packham, the wildlife presenter, to ban adverts for fossil fuels, gained over 110,000 signatures, enabling the parliamentary debate in July. The result (summarised here) was mostly cross-party support, with many MPs discussing the range of benefits of banning adverts for oil and gas products and likening the move to tobacco advertising bans that have been broadly accepted as benefiting the public. It was a pivotal first stage, showing the increasing potential for restrictions on adverts that manipulate the public’s perception of the climate crisis and frustrate net zero goals. Advertising restrictions at regional level are coming in fast, with many UK councils banning adverts for polluting goods and services on their estate. Support globally is growing, with U.N. special rapporteurs calling for restrictions, following on from a call from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in 2024 which asked advertising agencies to stop acting as enablers of planetary destruction by representing oil and gas majors. The list goes on, with countries banning adverts for fossil fuels as well as fast fashion. Health organisations, cultural institutions and a swathe of European consumers all support a move away from fossil fuel advertising as well as for a range of polluting products. Specialist independent groups such as Ad Free Cities, Badvertising, Purpose Disruptors, Clean Creatives and Creatives for Climate, and many more are all working effectively at supporting the industry towards a clean transition. We’ve come a long way since Vance Packard’s head shrinkers. My sense is that we’ll look back at adverts for fossil fuels in the same way we do now for smoking, in awe that we ever encouraged it. In a worsening climate crisis and to achieve net zero goals, it is crucial that the UK government understands the power of advertising to influence behaviour and perception. It should recognise the vested interests and lack of accountability that persists in the UK advertising industry. If the lack of institutional transformation within the sector persists, then it’s much more likely that top-down restrictions, such as bans on adverts for polluting products, will be required at the national level. Change is possible. The regulator, the ASA, could update its codes to tighten up on greenwashing in fossil fuel adverts and be more proactive on the complaints it receives. The funding structure could change to allow true independence and align with ways other countries run their regulators. The trade body, the AA, could easily recognise advertised emissions. It could also propose sensible guidance for agency members to gradually disengage with fossil fuel clients, future-proofing creative jobs in the face of any potential bans. None of these interventions are all that difficult. If these steps are not taken, however, the trade and regulatory bodies will remain outdated, adrift in the climate change narrative, and grasping at unrealistic storytelling. There really is no need to continue in denialism and delay, swimming against the tide of climate science. The time has come for the UK advertising industry to ditch its vested interests, fully transform, and play a meaningful part in climate action. The post Why the UK Advertising Industry Remains in Climate Denial appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Bill Gates Gave $3.5M to Think Tank Run by Climate Crisis Denier Bjorn Lomborg
- at 11/5/25 3:05pmBill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by the Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg, according to U.S. tax records reviewed by DeSmog. The donations, which were made between 2017 and 2022, were listed on IRS 990 Forms filed by the Gates Foundation. Those donations went to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which describes itself as a “think tank that researches the smartest solutions for the worlds biggest problems, advising policy-makers and philanthropists how to spend their money most effectively.” The center was created by Lomborg, who for years has argued in op-eds, lectures, and broadcast media that there are more important global issues to prioritize than climate change, writing in April that “it is not the existential threat that some would have us believe.” Those views align closely with a controversial memo Gates recently published during the lead-up to the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in which the philanthropist, who is worth an estimated $118 billion, argued that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.” The Microsoft founder and longtime public health philanthropist claimed that a “doomsday outlook” about the future of the climate is “causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals” and that is “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Gates’ “tough truths” post came on the heels of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres noting that it is now “inevitable” that the world is on track to at least temporarily burst past the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) warming target of the Paris Agreement, with “dramatic consequences.” Gates’ arguments have drawn outcries of dismay from some of the world’s top climate scientists, who have pointed out that “this memo is already being championed by those seeking to misinform and sow doubt about climate change and delay climate progressup to and including the executive branch of the United States government.” But Lomborg is full of praise for the billionaire who has frequently donated to his think tank. “Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it,” he posted on X. Bjorn Lomborg praises Bill Gates climate memo in a tweet: Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it for Brazil #COP30 The Gates Foundation and the Copenhagen Consensus Center didn’t respond to a request for comment. “He’s read some of my stuff” In total, the Gates Foundation (formerly known as the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) has donated $3,519,491 to Lomborg’s think tank. The most recent tax filing on record includes a 2022 donation to the Copenhagen Consensus Center worth $1.25 million, which went to support “community engagement grantmaking.” Lomborg’s center credits the Gates Foundation with providing “financial support” for a 2021 report identifying development priorities for Africa. That report ranked climate solutions such as “resilience to drought” and “solar energy for unreliable grids” in the bottom third of a list of investment opportunities for the continent. The report ranked objectives such as “family planning,” “R&D for agricultural yield increase,” and “tobacco control” at the top of the list. “All other things equal, the policies producing high returns should be funded before the ones with low return,” it noted. Africa faces unfairly high costs to adapt to climate extremes, such as droughts, heatwaves, and floods, according to a 2024 World Meteorological Organization report. The relationship between Lomborg and Gates goes back at least as far as 2014. That year, DeSmog reported that Gates had published a blog post promoting Lomborg’s views. In the post, Gates argued that as rich countries “push to get serious about confronting climate change,” telling poorer countries not to rely on fossil fuels is wrong. “For one thing, poor countries represent a small part of the carbon-emissions problem. And they desperately need cheap sources of energy now to fuel the economic growth that lifts families out of poverty. They can’t afford today’s expensive clean energy solutions, and we can’t expect them wait for the technology to get cheaper,” Gates wrote. Alongside Gates’ 2014 post was a “GatesNotes”-branded video where Lomborg said it was “hypocritical” for the developed world to deny poor countries access to fossil fuels when so much of the developed world is still fueled on them. In the video, Lomborg can be seen climbing a staircase with the words “Fighting poverty with fossil fuels” painted behind him. Bill Gates was featuring the work of climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg at least as far back as 2014. This GatesNotes video shows Lomborg against a backdrop with the words Fighting poverty with fossil fuels. As recently as 2023, Lomborg co-authored a GatesNotes post with Gates arguing that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are “too much of a good thing” because they say the world is not “stepping up to fund all of them.” In response to the October 28 Gates climate memo, Lomborg told Newsweek that “Ive met with Mr. Gates himself several times. Hes read some of my stuff.” However, Lomborg did not directly take credit with influencing Gates’ views in the “Three Tough Truths about Climate” memo. Deniers Celebrate Gates Shortly after the memo’s release, U.S. President Donald Trump declared on his social media platform Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!” Trump is not alone in his celebration. Several long-time climate crisis deniers are cheering the statement from Gates, including Robert Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit that attacks renewables and criticizes decarbonization plans. Alex Epstein, who himself has cited Lomborg as an influence, said last week that “we should celebrate that Bill Gates has seen the light.” Epstein, the “fossil fuel philosopher” who helped shape the clean energy cuts in Trump’s domestic policy bill, claimed that Gates’ memo is in part a response to a Trump administration that “that is pro-fossil fuel and very anti-climate catastrophist.” Gates’ backsliding on climate is not just words, it’s money and resources. For instance, in March, he made deep cuts to the climate policy staff of Breakthrough Energy, the “clean energy” organization he founded in 2015 and whose work he touted in his October 28 memo. Explaining his “pivot” on climate change during an interview on CNBC, Gates said, “Ill let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People dont understand the suffering that exists today.” Afterwards, Lomborg took to X to praise Gates, writing, “Exactly right!” Arguments like this have garnered sharp criticism from climate leaders. Gates is wrong to frame climate change and human well-being as disconnected, zero-sum issues, argues climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. “We are nowhere near maxing out investment in & implementation of [solutions] that benefit people, health, climate and nature at the same time,” the Texas Tech professor and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy posted on Bluesky. “[The climate, pollution, and nature crises] are already actively amplifying poverty, hunger, and division.” “There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist, told CNN in response to the Gates memo. “He’s got this all backwards.” The post Bill Gates Gave $3.5M to Think Tank Run by Climate Crisis Denier Bjorn Lomborg appeared first on DeSmog.
- — ‘Deluge’ of Disinformation on TikTok and YouTube Following Historic Flood
- at 11/5/25 5:08amYouTube and TikTok amplified disinformation that “sowed confusion” during the worst flood in Spain’s history, according to a new report. A year’s worth of rain fell in just eight hours on Valencia in October 2024, killing 237 and causing widespread destruction to buildings and infrastructure, making it Europe’s most catastrophic flooding event since 1967. False information about the flood was seen over 21 million times on YouTube and TikTok in the month following the disaster, according to the Spanish fact-checking service Maldita.es and digital investigations agency AI Forensics. This disinformation “caused panic and created challenges for emergency responders”, and “undermined or even explicitly denied” the role of climate change on the flood. Climate scientists have attributed the severity of the flooding to a weather phenomenon called ‘DANA’, an acronym of the Spanish for “isolated low-pressure system at upper levels”. Scientists have concluded that climate change escalated both the intensity and effects of last year’s DANA event since the rising temperature of the Mediterranean – as much as 5C above normal – increased the potential for catastrophic rainfall, while hotter summers reduced the ability of soils to absorb water, making flooding more likely. However, the report found that millions of people had seen falsehoods about the causes and effects of the flood on social media. Rampant disinformation “is good business for platforms that profit from user engagement,” the authors concluded – highlighting that YouTube and TikTok “algorithmically amplified” falsehoods about the flood. Their researched revealed that false content – which racked up 13 million views – was 48 percent more likely to be liked and 123 percent more likely to receive comments on YouTube than accurate content. False videos received four times more views than an average YouTube video. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); On TikTok, disinformation in relation to the flood was 85 percent more likely to be shared, viewed over 8.3 million times in the month following the event. “YouTube and TikTok’s recommendation algorithms are designed to amplify content to maximise user engagement and as a result, are known to recommend content that provokes strong user reactions. In this case, that content was dis/misinformation, which our findings suggest received amplification above and beyond more factual information,” the report stated. It also accused TikTok of failing to enforce its own moderation standards. The platform prohibits “misinformation that denies the existence of climate change, misrepresents its causes, or contradicts its established environmental impact.” Yet, the researchers discovered more than 100 videos on the platform downplaying or denying the role that climate change and DANA played on the flood, even one year after the event. They also found that TikTok did not label content containing climate disinformation, despite the company’s policy that it “may also apply warning labels” to false videos. YouTube, by comparison, does not have a specific policy to address climate disinformation, but does commit to “provide users with tools to help them make more informed decisions when they encounter online information that may be false”. However, less than one in four videos containing disinformation about the flood were given a warning label by YouTube, the report found. “Climate dis/misinformation thrives on social media platforms, fuelled by systems that want to maximise screen time, engagement, and advertising revenue,” said Carlos Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, associate director at Fundación Maldita.es. “One year after the DANA, we’re still debunking the same tired climate myths,” said Salvatore Romano, head of research and co-founder at AI Forensics. “Despite the rapid increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, which puts a growing number of lives at risk, the response from platforms continues to fall short.” This article was produced with the support of the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF). The sole responsibility for any content supported by the EMIF lies with the author(s) and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute. The post ‘Deluge’ of Disinformation on TikTok and YouTube Following Historic Flood appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’
- at 11/5/25 4:33amPlans for intensive livestock “megafarms” are omitting crucial climate impacts, it can be revealed. Campaigners last year celebrated a “beginning of the end” to polluting factory farming, after the landmark Finch Supreme Court ruling on a Surrey oil well confirmed that applications for major developments should consider all significant direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. However, a review of 35 proposed developments across the UK’s largest farming counties since the June 2024 ruling found that applications routinely ignored or downplayed the industry’s carbon footprint. The research by advocacy group Sustain, which was analysed by DeSmog and The Guardian, looked at all applications for Herefordshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, Wales and Northern Ireland which were under consideration by local councils between the 2024 ruling and September this year. Farms housing more than 900 sows, 3,000 pigs, 60,000 hens for eggs, or 85,000 chickens for meat are required to provide information on expected environmental impacts under UK law when applying for planning permission. A version of this story was published by The Guardian The applications reviewed were mainly submitted by UK-based farm companies, but some came from major meat producers — including Crown Chicken, a subsidiary of Cranswick, which is one of the largest meat companies in Europe and slaughters nearly 60 million birds a year. Cranswick was responsible for three million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2024. If these were all accepted for development, an additional 30,000 pigs and nearly five million chickens would be farmed across England, Northern Ireland and Wales — amounting to over 37 million additional animals reared in the UK each year. Intensive pig and poultry farms are high emitters of methane and nitrous oxide, potent greenhouse gases that cause around 30 and 300 times more global warming than carbon dioxide over a 100 year period. According to Sustain’s estimates, if all the applications analysed were approved this could generate an estimated 634,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions annually — the equivalent of 488,000 return flights from London to New York. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); None of the 35 applications provided figures on likely emissions from the farm, meaning local councils — which have the ultimate say on developments — are not factoring in climate harms in planning decisions. Government policies say that local planning should support the country’s goal to reach net zero by 2050. The findings come as numbers of intensive livestock farms increase across Europe. More than 1,500 industrial-scale pig and poultry farms operating in the UK. “Vital information is being kept from councils and the public,” Ruth Westcott, campaign manager at Sustain, told DeSmog.“Its clear that agribusinesses dont want to come clean about the pollution they cause because it could affect whether they are allowed to expand, and thus make more profits at the expense of our communities,” they added. “It’s an emissions scandal. ‘Devastating Councils are facing growing pressure from residents to refuse planning permission to companies which fail to robustly assess climate impacts. In April, following public pressure, Kings Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council denied planning permission for the Methwold megafarm that would have housed almost 900,000 chickens and pigs, partly due to its lack of climate assessment — making it the first-known refusal on these grounds. Breckland Council in Norfolk likewise refused planning permission to the controversial Cherry Tree Farm in October, in part because it had not provided an updated environmental impact assessment, including “project-specific carbon emissions”. The farm — which is owned by Wayland Farms, also a subsidiary of the livestock giant Cranswick — was forced to apply for retrospective approval for previously completed construction. Local residents had made major complaints over the “stench” following its expansion in 2019. In total, four of the applications reviewed have been refused so far – three of which were submitted by Cranswick. When asked by DeSmog about the lack of climate data in its applications, the company declined to comment. However, other councils in Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire have approved six farms that have not provided any specific information on the farm’s climate impacts in the last 12 months, the new research shows. Councils which responded to DeSmog’s request for comment said they had complied with planning regulations, and that they were unable to comment on individual planning applications. Farms currently seeking planning permission supply some of the largest meat producers in the country, such as Hook2Sisters and Avara Foods. Avara is estimated to have 33 million chickens in the UK at any one time and sells its products to well-known brands including McDonald’s and Tesco. The company — which is part-owned by Cargill, the third largest meat company in the world — was responsible for more than one million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2023, equivalent to those from 2.3 million barrels of oil. Over half (57 percent) of the planning applications reviewed were for major extensions and alterations, and the remainder for new farms. Jan Palmer — a resident of Methwold village in Norfolk who campaigned against the Cranswick megafarm that was denied planning permission in April — has called for greater scrutiny of impacts from proposed farms. “These are industrial developments. It’s called industrial farming, and it has industrial emissions,” she said. “If my local megafarm application hadn’t been so fiercely challenged and by so many, it would’ve slipped through the system like so many others do – quietly and without scrutiny but with devastating consequences.” !function(e,n,i,s){var d="InfogramEmbeds";var o=e.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];if(window[d]&&window[d].initialized)window[d].process&&window[d].process();else if(!e.getElementById(i)){var r=e.createElement(n);r.async=1,r.id=i,r.src=s,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,"script","infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js");Proportion of intensive pig and poultry farms declaring emissions in planning applicationsInfogram Growing Legal Challenge Companies seeking permission for any large-scale developments — ranging from motorways and oil and gas extraction sites to intensive farms — are required to conduct environmental impact assessments showing the likely affects of developments on biodiversity, the climate, and other environmental factors. Applications for intensive livestock farms routinely include information on issues such as air pollutants and unpleasant smells, the review showed. However, the vast majority of applications overlooked climate impacts. Of the applications reviewed, 35 percent mentioned the farm’s operations only in passing, while 55 percent did not discuss these climate impacts at all. Large projects must assess all “significant environmental impacts” under UK planning law. Lawyers told DeSmog that few cases had so far tested the threshold for “significant” climate impacts from farms in the courts, but given the “well-documented” emissions from intensive farming, applications could face growing challenges in coming years. “Where the companies are not assessing their climate impacts, they may be open to legal challenge,” said Ricardo Gama, an environmental lawyer at Leigh Day solicitors. “Agriculture has flown under the radar on so many of these issues, but I think that is changing.” ‘Negligible’ Over the past year, six local councils have granted permission to applications without any assessment of the farms’ likely emissions, as well as one that granted permission to a farm with only passing discussion, the research shows. West Lindsey Council in Lincolnshire — the fastest growing county for intensive livestock farming — approved planning for the Happylands Farm in North Owersby earlier this year, which will see the number of pigs increase by 1,300 to total almost 4,000. The application form did not provide any information about the likely emissions from the farm. If all the applications in Lincolnshire are approved, it will see an extra 6,500 pigs and almost 13 million chickens farmed there each year. Similar applications have been approved in Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, and Yorkshire. Planning authorities have an obligation to consider all relevant environmental impacts before granting permission, according to legal experts. While applicants propose which environmental impacts should be assessed as part of planning applications, it is the council’s legal responsibility to ensure that all “significant” effects are covered and that adequate information on these is provided, before granting planning permission. “When the council or the inspector or the secretary of state is considering whether to grant planning permission, climate impacts need to be weighed in the balance,” Gama said. “I think councils’ approach will change as the public becomes more aware of the climate impact of agriculture.” Kevin Bunn, a resident of Spalding in Lincolnshire, said that companies were “so used to them [planing applications]flying through under the radar without any proper scrutiny.” “I dont believe that it should be a foregone conclusion for an authority to accept something that is so detrimental to an area,” he told DeSmog. “The council should be there to preserve and protect the environment of the local residents.” Bunn is campaigning against a planning application for a new poultry farm that would house more than half a million chickens in the village of Whaplode Drove. He said that more than 1,800 people had lodged objections against the farm during public consultations. “As single residents, people didn’t feel they had a voice, but when they came together collectively, they did.” A spokesperson for West Lindsey Council told DeSmog that each application was “assessed against national and local policy requirements, statutory provisions including where appropriate an environmental statement, and material planning considerations”. Together, these helped the council come to “a reasoned decision that carefully balances the competing issues to ensure a fair and lawful process”. Misleading Claims Applications for livestock farms which did raise general climate impacts from the wider sector repeatedly downplayed harms. More than a dozen of the applications reviewed included environmental assessments by the planning consultancy firm Harrison Pick, with near-identical statements on climate, including that “Current poultry production in the UK is responsible for a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with red meat production”. Cattle farming is the number one cause of agricultural emissions in the UK, but intensive pig and poultry farming have far higher emissions than crops. A serving of chicken has a sixth of the carbon footprint of beef, but around ten times that of tofu or beans. A spokesperson for Harrison Pick said they had “consistently complied with the scope and requirements set by local planning authorities” and that the application of the Finch ruling in livestock was an “evolving area”. They denied that their assessments “downplay” climate impacts. It was the responsibility of the local planning authority to provide additional information “directly relevant to assessing the likely significant effects of the project”, they said, adding that they had not yet received any requests requiring further information on climate change impacts. The research found that environmental assessments also repeatedly failed to discuss emissions that did not directly arise on the farms. Of the 35 applications reviewed, just one included information on the farm’s likely emissions from animal feed — the largest source of greenhouse gases for both big and poultry. The majority of pigs and chickens in the UK are fed soy, which is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in regions such as the Amazon. According to campaign group WWF, the UK’s demand for soy requires more than 1.7 millionhectares of land each year — an area larger than Northern Ireland. Other applications also contained misleading claims. An environmental impact assessment for the expansion of a poultry megafarm currently under consideration in Shropshire — which would increase its total number of birds to up to 350,000— stated that carbon dioxide emitted from the development would be offset “due to the reduction in emissions from transporting poultry meat from elsewhere”. It continued: “Increasing the amount of home produced poultry meat will reduce the need for importing meat from abroad and hence help to reduce the level of transportation required.” Transportation accounts for between just five and seven percent of total emissions from chicken reared in the UK. A Shropshire Council spokesperson said applications were processed “in accordance with [EIA] regulations”, which included taking into account direct and indirect effects of the proposed development on the environment. All councils, farm companies and meat producers referenced in this article were approached for comment. Ruth Westcott from Sustain called on local councils to reject planning permission for farms failing to declare their emissions. “The government must stop this industry from getting away with devastating pollution,” they said. “We need full environmental assessments for every facility, no new factories in already polluted areas, and proper enforcement when rules are broken.” The post Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’ appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Labour’s Big Tech Love Affair Could Blow Up Its Climate Promises
- at 11/4/25 5:09amWhen U.S. President Donald Trump landed for what he called the “exquisite honour” of an unprecedented second state visit to the UK this September, he brought along a retinue of his favourite Silicon Valley tech bosses for dinner with King Charles. Among the guests seated in the gold-flecked banquet hall of Windsor Castle: Jensen Huang, CEO of the artificial intelligence (AI) chip-manufacturer Nvidia, which has recently skyrocketed into the position of the world’s largest public company, and Sam Altman, founder and CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Recently, these two tech CEOs seem to have earned a direct line to President Trump and, unsurprisingly, the bedrock of that influence appears to be money – earlier this year, Nvidia and Altman both donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration ceremony. When they landed in London, they quickly applied their skills of political influence to Labour. Altman and Huang’s visit to the UK accompanied the signing of Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s £150 billion “U.S.-UK Technology Prosperity Deal”, an agreement which includes £31 billion in investments from American tech companies to construct fleets of gargantuan “hyperscaler” AI-ready data centres across Britain. Stargate UK, a massive AI infrastructure project from OpenAI, Nvidia, and UK AI startup Nscale, is only one of several huge new initiatives introduced via the deal. On the first day of the big visit, Nvidia threw a press conference to celebrate its pledge to invest a further £2 billion in UK AI. “This is a historic day,” Starmer rhapsodised about the Nvidia investment while standing next to Huang, lit by the glow of a towering Nvidia logo. Huang handed Starmer a framed golden Nvidia supercomputer as a gift, embossed with an inscription which Huang asked the prime minister to share. “This is the UK’s age of AI,” Starmer read out to rising cheers in the audience. “A new industrial revolution begins!” One glaring omission from Starmer and Huang’s “revolution”? Any mention of how the UK will power an explosion of water and energy-voracious AI data centres – the vast warehouses of supercomputers needed to run the likes of ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini – without completely upending the UK’s net zero commitments. Instead, on the same day, Huang declared Nvidia’s plans to power its UK AI with fossil fuels. “Sustainable power like nuclear and wind and of course all of that solar is all going to contribute, but I’m also hoping that gas turbines can also contribute,” he told The Times. Starmer has claimed that home-grown clean energy is “in the DNA” of his government, yet Labour has so far said little about Nvidia’s plans for fossil fuel-powered AI in Britain – or how it intends to hit its net zero targets while charging headlong into this big tech bonanza. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Too Much, Too Quickly Labour has already been widely accused of growing too close to U.S. big tech companies. In recent months, the government has signed wide-ranging deals with seven Trump-supporting U.S. tech giants – Nvidia, OpenAI, Instagram and Facebook creator Meta, software company Microsoft, online retail behemoth Amazon, search engine pioneer Google, and enigmatic “spy tech” company Palantir. Together, these tech firms have donated a combined $7.5 million (£5.6 million) to President Trump, a figure that doesn’t count the unspecified amounts Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir reportedly gave for the construction of Trump’s new White House ballroom. The Trump administration has pursued an anti-immigrant, anti-democratic, pro-fossil fuel agenda, which has included an eight-fold increase in weapons expenditure for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out deadly immigration raids across the country, and over $1 trillion (£760 billion) in defence spending, largely for weapons, shipbuilding, and military aircraft. Trump has so far sent National Guard troops into five U.S. cities and cut nearly $60 billion (£45 billion) in aid funding worldwide. Labour has already struck deals that would see Trumps big tech allies train the UK workforce in AI, collaborate with the British military, house the UK’s classified information, and “modernise” the NHS. These deals have prompted widespread concerns about their lack of transparency and the threats they pose to UK data security. Now, further concern is growing that Labour is encouraging American AI companies to run roughshod over the UK’s renewable energy transition. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, as he attends an event in London in September 2025. Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) “Starmer’s investment deals with U.S. big tech threaten to give them priority access to Britain’s resources – be they energy, water, or personal data – rather than using these resources to meet public need. They will drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments,” Nick Dearden, director of campaign group Global Justice Now, told DeSmog. That threat revolves around the government’s efforts to aggressively woo U.S. big tech to ramp up multi-billion pound AI data centre investments at its designated AI “Growth Zones”. To date, several big tech firms have heeded the call. In the past few months, Microsoft has invested £22 billion, Google’s parent company Alphabet has pledged £5 billion, and Amazon – the biggest owner of data centres in the world – has promised £8 billion for UK AI development. Oliver Hayes, head of policy at campaign organisation Global Action Plan, agrees with Dearden’s concerns. “By striking deals with U.S. tech companies that are gung-ho about gas-fired data centres, ministers are opening yet more doors for lobbyists, exposing bill-payers to greater pain, and jeopardising UK climate targets,” he told DeSmog. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all already watered down or wholly abandoned their sustainability pledges in the last year due to the surging energy demands of their AI businesses. OpenAI hasn’t even created one. This summer, the firm hired as its energy chief a former Trump-administration natural gas evangelist who promoted exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “One way of looking at AI is that its main use is as a vehicle to give the fossil fuel industry one last reason to expand,” wrote American environmentalist Bill McKibben in response to the hire. Meanwhile, many of the people running these tech giants have veered into outright climate science denial. Take Palantir, which builds AI-based spy tech software and has a pre-existing £330 million NHS contract. Its chairman Peter Thiel has claimed climate science is “fake science,” has called climate activist Greta Thunberg the “anti-Christ,” and funds a science journal that publishes climate denial. Microsoft’s Bill Gates made headlines last week for making what he called a “strategic pivot” on climate change, claiming that it “will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future”. His words contradict the position of hundreds of leading climate scientists across the world, who when surveyed by The Guardian said they expect that the earth will warm by at least 2.5C by the end of the century, which the UN’s climate agency has reported would lead to “catastrophic climate breakdown”. Trump’s Tech Bros vs. Climate Change Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is not the only American tech boss with a proclivity for powering data centres with natural gas. Nearly all of the companies partnering with Labour have already embraced it. Fossil gas as an AI energy “solution” is an import from Trump’s U.S. – the world’s top producer of liquefied natural gas. In July, Trump lauded the idea of powering data centres using fossil fuels while flanked by oil and gas executives. A growing cadre of U.S. tech giants – including OpenAI, Oracle, Meta, xAI, and Microsoft – are installing gas turbine generators at their data centre sites in the U.S. and Ireland to provide energy to their supercomputer complexes. Amazon previously applied to build one, though eventually withdrew its plans. At the end of October, Google joined the list, announcing its investment in a gas plant with carbon capture for its data centres in the U.S. Midwest. And many big tech companies are not shy about claiming that these projects are just the beginning. Microsoft’s vice president for energy, Google’s chief investment officer, OpenAI’s Altman, Amazon’s vice president for global data centres, and Nvidia’s senior director of corporate sustainability have all publicly supported the idea of their companies relying on natural gas as an energy source for AI data centres. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Credit: WSJ / YouTube Now, several of these tech giants have set their sights on powering the UK AI boom with gas. In a June meeting of the government’s newly formed AI Energy Council, which includes Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, Labour ministers were pressured to consider that “temporary on-site generation, including natural gas fuel cells” could be an “interim measure” to avoid delays in connecting data centres to the UK’s notoriously backlogged energy grid. The Tony Blair Institute, a think tank with a strong influence on Starmer’s government and deep ties to Trump-supporting American billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, has added its voice to this chorus. The institute argued in a report published in July that dedicated gas power sources will be needed to provide reliable energy to UK data centres as a “bridging measure” to give time for the country’s renewable energy networks to develop. Campaigners are quick to point out that powering data centres with gas would decimate the UK’s climate targets. “Off-grid gas plants are a climate catastrophe which could lead to hundreds of millions of tonnes of additional carbon emissions from the tech sector. They would delay the phase out of fossil gas in Europe when we need to speed up the transition to renewable energy,” Jill McCardle of renewable energy campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels told DeSmog. This fact doesn’t seem to have deterred the big tech elite. Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, and Altman have all said, in one way or another, that the AI boom will be worth its skyrocketing emissions because artificial intelligence will help to solve the climate crisis. “I don’t want to say this because climate change is so serious and so hard of a problem,” Altman said in a 2023 interview, “but I think once we have a really powerful super intelligence, addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a system like that.” Schmidt has argued that pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a supercomputer as smart or smarter than a human – is the best way to solve the climate crisis, because “we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway”. Bill Gates told journalists last year that “data centres are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to global energy needs] but probably only 2 percent to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly.” Critics say – nonsense. “The fact is that the climate crisis is not primarily a technological problem: we have most if not all of the tech we need to fix it,” Adam Becker, science journalist and author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, told DeSmog. “Tech oligarchs think that they can burn fossil fuels with impunity and clean it up later with a magic wand given to them by a machine god. But that isn’t going to happen. The reality is that we need to save ourselves from the machinations of these cruelly myopic billionaires.” Starmer’s Silence Will Labour regulate the climate-destroying impulses of these tech behemoths? “This AI frenzy needs to be regulated or big tech will burn dirty fossil fuels to power it,” McCardle warned DeSmog. Hayes of Global Action Plan added: “Ministers should immediately and unequivocally announce that data centres will not be permitted to connect to the gas grid. Silicon Valley has money to burn, so if they want to put enormous demands on the UK’s energy system, they should pay for new renewables to supply it.” However, Labour ministers haven’t yet put the kibosh on gas-powered AI. During the president’s state visit in September, Starmer and Trump – whose administration has reversed American climate policy so dramatically that some experts are now calling the U.S. a “petrostate” – held a press conference for the Technology Prosperity Deal. With the camera rolling, Trump addressed Nvidia’s gas-embracing CEO directly. “AI is taking over the world. You’re taking over the world, Jensen [Huang]. I don’t know what you’re doing here. All I can say is we both hope you’re right.” Through the whole exchange, Starmer sat with folded hands next to the American president, chuckling. Labour’s Tech Courtships: A Primer Microsoft Microsoft, which has donated $750,000 (£560,000) to Trump and recently rolled back its “moonshot” sustainability goals amid a surge in its AI emissions, already operates several data centres in the UK and currently has plans to build a £106 million AI-ready hyperscaler data centre in Leeds. During Trump’s state visit, and as part of the new U.S.-UK Technology Prosperity Deal, Microsoft announced its plans to invest $30 billion (£22.5 billion) to “power [the UK’s] AI future”. Microsoft’s links with Labour go deeper than this huge infusion of Trump-affiliated cash. It has partnered with Labour on a number of projects, including joining Amazon in training millions of workers in AI skills, and signing a deal to provide Microsoft’s AI software at a discount to the UK public sector. Though the company still pays lip service to its commitment to sustainably-powered AI, it is working with fossil fuel companies – selling its AI services to fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron – and actively embracing fossil fuel-based energy options. As for gas-powered AI, Microsoft’s Vice President of Energy, Bob Hollis, told CNBC in March that powering more data centres with natural gas paired with carbon capture was “not off the table”. Microsoft already operates a data centre campus powered by off-grid gas generators in Ireland, and had been slated to build a data centre next to a coal plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin until local opposition stopped the project. Google Labour’s deal-making with Google, which gave $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration and quietly deleted all sustainability targets from its website in September, has been extensive. Labour has granted Google a £400 million defence contract to use its cloud services for “classified information sharing”, has signed a partnership with the firm to help the government – including the NHS and local councils – to “modernise”, alongside an agreement for the company to help “upskill” British workers with AI. Google’s parent company Alphabet – which opened a £735 million data centre in Hertfordshire with Chancellor Rachel Reeves earlier this year – announced a £5 billion investment in UK-based AI research and infrastructure in September to coincide with Trump’s visit. Google – whose carbon emissions soared by nearly 50 percent between 2019 and 2024 – claims it has signed a deal with Shell to supply “95 percent carbon-free energy” for its UK investments. However, this claim is called into question by the company’s planned hyperscaler data centre in Essex, which will belch out 570,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. The company has also begun advocating for the use of fossil fuels to meet data centre energy demands. In August, Google’s Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat praised a speech by the U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in which he pushed to expand the use of fossil fuels for powering data centers. Porat called Burgum’s comments “fantastic” – “[b]ecause I think it is very clear that to realise the potential of AI, you have to have the power to deliver it.” A Google policy brief has also detailed the company’s intention to pursue “accelerating innovation and investment in affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies, including geothermal, advanced nuclear, and natural gas generation with carbon capture”. Meta Meta, which donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration fund, is currently building “Hyperion”, three massive gas-powered data centres in Louisiana larger than the size of Manhattan. The firm is also pursuing a “titan cluster” of data centres in Ohio dubbed “Prometheus”, powered by its own gas plant. It is also currently working on a $1 million (£750,000) initiative with Labour to provide “government-owned” AI tools for “high-security use cases like language translation for national security” and “speeding up the approvals process for house building”. At the end of January, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was Meta’s president of global affairs at the time, hosted a dinner with former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair where tech entrepreneurs met with government investment ministers. It is unknown whether Meta currently has plans to invest in UK data centres. Palantir Palantir, a mysterious spy tech company that builds databases of personal information, is run by a Trump-supporting climate science denier. However, that hasn’t stopped Labour from working with the firm. In September, the government announced a £1.5 billion “strategic partnership” to “boost military AI and innovation”, in which Palantir will collaborate with the UK military to “develop AI-powered capabilities already tested in Ukraine to speed up decision making, military planning and targeting.” The partnership comes on top of Palantir’s ongoing five-year £330 million NHS contract, awarded in 2023 by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, to create a data platform for personal health information that has spurred fears over the privacy of patient medical records. The company’s co-founder and chairman, Peter Thiel, is a long-time Trump donor, having given at least $1.75 million (£1.31 million) to Trump campaigns from 2016 to 2020. Big Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir. Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0) OpenAI OpenAI is not hiding its intention to embrace off-grid gas as the energy source for its data centre construction frenzy in the UK, or its cosy relationship with Trump. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, is closely aligned with both Trump and several climate deniers, having donated $1 million (£750,000) to the president’s inauguration. Nevertheless, in July, Labour deepened its relationship with the creator of ChatGPT – signing a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI to “turbocharge” UK AI. The government is already using ChatGPT in “Humphrey”, a Whitehall tool designed to “speed up the civil service by taking away admin burdens”, as well as “Consult”, an AI tool which “speeds up the policy making process by automatically sorting public responses to consultations.” OpenAI has already started powering data centres with gas. Its U.S. Stargate Project site in Texas, slated to become one of the largest data centre sites in the world, is installing off-grid gas turbines to power its operations. The firm has chosen not to disclose the carbon footprint of ChatGPT-5, its most advanced AI model to date, despite the fact that researchers told The Guardian it uses “significantly more energy than GPT-4o”. The company, which is rapidly expanding across the globe, does not have publicly announced climate or sustainability targets. These choices are reflected in the views of Altman, who said in a U.S. Senate hearing in May that “in the short term, I think [the future of powering AI] probably looks like more natural gas.” Altman has also said that he thinks AI will solve climate change, despite the technology’s ever-expanding demand for power. Altman’s history with climate deniers goes back to the beginning of his career when Thiel served as his mentor. The OpenAI CEO also previously donated $32,000 (£23,000) to climate denier Michael Shellenberger’s failed 2022 campaign for Governor of California. Shellenberger has made extensive claims denying the severity of climate change, including that “humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction’”, “the Amazon is not ‘the lungs of the world’”, and “climate change is not making natural disasters worse”. Shellenberger is well known for his nuclear energy advocacy, which aligns with Altman’s own long-held positions. In a 2015 blog on Altman’s personal website, he argued,:“The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy.” Nvidia Nvidia’s ties to Labour go well beyond its role in the freshly-announced Stargate UK data centre project. The supercomputer chip company, which donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump in January, has pledged to invest £2 billion to develop the UK AI sector and to deploy 120,000 advanced computer chips across the UK. Earlier in the summer, the government also announced that it would collaborate with Nvidia on training the UK workforce via a “nationwide AI talent development pipeline”. An agreement was also forged for Nvidia to provide AI resource tools to UK universities. Amazon In June, Amazon, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and is the biggest owner of data centres in the world, pledged to invest £40 billion in the UK over three years, which includes a £8 billion investment in UK data centres. It is also part of a Labour government initiative to provide. AI training to UK workers. The UK government’s reliance on Amazon goes well beyond its Labour-era deals – it has won £1.7 billion in UK government contracts since 2016. Though Amazon announced a plan in 2019 to eliminate or offset all company carbon emissions by 2040, its emissions spiked by about 40 percent by 2023, around the time that it stopped reporting its electricity usage. It has also recently come under fire for obscuring the full extent of its data centre water consumption. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Credit: Daniel Oberhaus (CC-BY-4.0) The company has since expressed interest in running its data centres on gas. Amazon Web Services (AWS) applied for planning permission in 2024 to build a gas-powered data centre in Oregon, but eventually withdrew the plans. At an energy summit this April, Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centres, announced to a room of oil and gas executives that “to have the energy we need for the grid [to power data centres], it’s going to take an ‘all of the above’ approach for a period of time.” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, dreams of a world powered by ever-expanding energy consumption, including AI data centres powered by solar in space. “Everybody on this planet is going to want to be a first-world citizen using first-world amounts of energy, and the people who are first-world citizens today using first-world amounts of energy. We’re going to want to use even more energy,” he told the audience at a private event at the exclusive Yale Club of New York City in 2019. To achieve this grand energy expansion, Bezos envisions a solar system populated by a “trillion” people living on space stations. “[We] don’t want to face a civilisation of stasis if we just stay on this planet – that’s the long-term issue. You have to capture more of the sun’s output,” he said. Science journalist Adam Becker called Bezos’s space station utopia “a distraction from solutions to the climate crisis here and now”. He added: “It’s sad to see one of the wealthiest people in the world waste his power and influence on something so pointless instead of actually helping with the biggest problem that humanity has ever faced.” The post Labour’s Big Tech Love Affair Could Blow Up Its Climate Promises appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Revealed: Prince William’s Climate Prize Hired PR Firm Tied to Brazilian Fossil Fuel Industry
- at 11/3/25 1:59pmA Portuguese version of this story was published by Climainfo. Prince William’s prestigious climate prize hired a Brazilian public relations firm that was also under contract to the country’s state oil company Petrobras, which is facing criticism for its plans to drill in the Amazon basin, DeSmog can reveal. The Earthshot Prize, backed by celebrities including naturalist David Attenborough and former England football captain David Beckham, worked with this PR agency, LLYC Brasil, to publicise Earthshot’s annual award ceremony, scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday. At the same time as it worked with Earthshot, LLYC Brasil held a contract with Petrobras to help run communications in the event of a reputational crisis, according to contract details published by the oil giant under Brazil’s transparency laws. LLYC Brasil says on its website that it has a team that specializes in “oil and gas, and energy generation and distribution industries,” and lists two other Brazilian fossil fuel producers as former clients. A growing movement of activists, industry insiders, political and civic leaders, and scientists is demanding that the advertising and public relations industry cut ties with fossil fuel clients such as Petrobras, arguing that sophisticated messaging campaigns promoting the interests of major polluters are clearing the way for new oil and gas projects adding fuel to climate breakdown. Brazilian regulators last month approved Petrobras’ plans to drill an exploratory well in the Foz Do Amazonas, a vast stretch of water with rare coral reefs off the coast of the Amazon rainforest, despite years of opposition by environmentalists and Indigenous groups to the plan. Brazil’s oil industry is ramping up production to record levels — on track to rise from the seventh-largest to the fourth-largest oil producer in the world by 2030. “An initiative as influential as the Earthshot Prize could be sending the right signal and driving positive change by choosing suppliers that can deliver on its message with integrity, but its doing the opposite,” said Lucy von Sturmer, executive director of ad industry campaign group Creatives for Climate. “More than any other client or brand out there, this is a massive missed opportunity.” Brazil’s government has also faced criticism for choosing New York-headquartered Edelman — the world’s largest independent PR firm, and a longtime major partner of the fossil fuel industry — as its communications agency for the latest annual round of U.N. climate negotiations starting in the Brazilian city of Belém next week, known as COP30. LLYC Brasil declined to respond to questions on the nature of its relationship with Petrobras, saying it does not comment on client contracts. LLYC Brasil added that it only works “with organizations that explicitly uphold [environmental, social, governance] standards and share our commitment to respecting and promotingsustainability, and environmental protection.” In response to a detailed list of questions from DeSmog about its relationship with LLYC Brasil, an Earthshot Prize spokesperson said: “We only partner with organisations with strict corporate commitments to sustainability.” Prince William’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Petrobras declined to comment on the details of its relationship with LLYC Brasil, beyond pointing DeSmog to the contract details published on its website. The work that PR agency LLYC Brasil did for Prince Williams Earthshot Prize charity overlapped with a contract to provide reputation management emergency communications consulting to Petrobras — Brazils state oil company, which is poised to do exploratory drilling off the Amazon coast. (Credit: Sabrina Bedford/DeSmog) Driven by Profit The Earthshot Prize is one of Prince William’s highest-profile projects. At the ceremony, a star-studded 13-person judging panel that includes actor Cate Blanchett and Jordan’s Queen Rania will award £1 million prizes to five winners proposing solutions to the world’s biggest climate challenges. Prince William has framed the award ceremony as a curtain raiser to COP30. “I think Brazil really epitomises where the prize needs to land. The culture of Brazil, the fact weve got COP30 there,” William said in a video announcing Brazil as the location of this year’s award ceremony. The video also featured the Prince’s celebrity friends such as Beckham celebrating Brazil’s unique Amazonian region and its Indigenous communities. Christiana Figueres, chair of the board of Earthshot trustees and an architect of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, told the BBC, that to have the prize come in just before COP brings attention to Earthshot. It is win-win for both COP and Earthshot. LLYC Brasil has handled Earthshot’s publicity in Brazil since at least April, according to social media posts from Earthshot’s communications team. LLYC Brasil’s contract with Petrobras ran from 2019 until July 29 this year, overlapping with the PR firm’s work for Earthshot by at least four months. LLYC Brasil has provided “reputation management” services to Petrobras since at least 2009, according to employee LinkedIn profiles, industry award listings, and articles in the PR industry trade press. The firm also lists oil and gas producers Carmo Energy and Origem Energia as former clients on its website. Both companies plan to increase fossil fuel production four-fold by 2030. Campaigners said the fact that LLYC Brasil was under contract to Petrobras and Earthshot at the same time was “in direct opposition” to Earthshot’s values. Their criticism reflects wider concerns that public relations agencies are escaping scrutiny for their work burnishing the image of polluters, even from their own climate-focused clients. “Companies are driven by profit, and theres nothing more profitable than working for both sides of a battle,” said Brazilian geographer and climate influencer Bruno Araujo. Petrobras has sought to ward off criticism in the run-up to COP30, by hiring a squad of climate and science social media influencers to burnish its green image — despite the company’s plans to invest more than $97 billion in its oil and gas business in the next four years. There is no suggestion of any link between LLYC Brasil and the influencer campaign. The Right Choices In some instances, green-minded organisations have walked away from agency contracts because of climate conflicts. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative abruptly ended its relationship with New York-based Havas Red in September 2023, after news broke that its French parent company, Havas, had won a major contract with Shell. The following year, B Lab, the project that oversees a responsible business certification known as B Corp, stripped four Havas agencies of that certification over the Shell contract. Clean Creatives, an advocacy group, has documented more than 1,000 contracts between fossil fuel companies and firms across the advertising and public relations industry. Subsidiaries of the global conglomerates that dominate the industry, such as London-based WPP and New York-based rival Omnicom, held a large proportion. Many leaders of smaller independent agencies are adamant that their firms can succeed without working for the fossil fuel industry, however. Clean Creatives says 1,500 agencies have signed its pledge not to work with oil and gas clients. “The climate transition is humanity’s greatest contemporary challenge,” said Rodrigo Cunha, CEO of Brazilian public relations agency Profile, as well as “a moment that will demand coherence and the right choices.” Profile has said it will not work with the fossil fuel industry. “It’s important to investigate agencies portfolios to understand what they are promoting.” Prince Williams announcement that the 2025 award ceremony would take place in Brazil featured many famous figures involved with the charity, such as (L to R) conservation activist Robert Irwin, former English footballer David Beckham, and Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister of New Zealand. (Credit: The Earthshot Prize) Broken Pledge U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on advertising and public relations agencies to drop their oil and gas clients, describing industry executives as “Mad Men fuelling the madness”. Guterres has also said governments should ban fossil fuel advertising. Big agencies have said they would be more careful about the projects they take on in recent years, but their climate-friendly rhetoric hasn’t always been backed by action. A DeSmog investigation revealed that staff at New York-based Interpublic Group, one of the world’s biggest communications companies, believed their employer had broken its “industry first” climate pledge through its work for state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco. LLYC Brasil’s sustainability policy says it is “committed to contributing its strategy and business” to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, the 2015 global pact that will guide the negotiations at COP30. Scientists have warned that any new fossil fuel development is not compatible with the temperature targets enshrined in the deal. So campaigners have questioned how LLYC Brasil can maintain this policy — and promote Earthshot’s aim to “fix our climate” — while working with oil and gas clients. “The fossil fuel industry and its enablers have shown repeatedly that they have no intentionto pursue a fossil fuel phaseout,” said Patrick Galey, head of fossil fuel investigations at campaign group Global Witness. Public relations groups “play a key role in advancing the agenda of fossil fuel producers,” he said, “greenwashing their reputation and ultimately prolonging the social licence for their planet-wrecking business models.” Reputation Management The parent company of LLYC Brasil, LLYC, offers reputation management and lobbying services for the mining industry across its Latin America offices. According to the website of LLYC’s Argentine branch, its clients include Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss mining and oil and gas giant. LLYC’s mining team published a report in 2023 that explained how its consultants could “help the [mining] industry manage its social license to operate” in Latin America — industry jargon for pursuing business as usual — in the face of public concern about mining’s social and environmental impact. For at least the past three years, the Earthshot Prize has also contracted a London-based LLYC sister agency, FGS Global, for promotional services in the UK and worldwide, according to press releases and social media posts reviewed by DeSmog. FGS Global has worked with at least 11 clients in the fossil fuel sector since 2021, including BP and Shell, according to research by DeSmog. Although officially separate businesses, FGS Global clients have access to communications experts in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world through the LLYC agency network, according to FGS Global’s website. FGS Global did not respond to a request for comment. Additional reporting by Juliana Aguilera. The post Revealed: Prince William’s Climate Prize Hired PR Firm Tied to Brazilian Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on DeSmog.
- — The Labour MP Rubbing Shoulders With the Far-Right
- at 10/30/25 10:07amLabour is facing pressure after one of its MPs joined forces with a far-right group in attacking the party, DeSmog can reveal. Over recent months, Graham Stringer – who has been the MP for Blackley, Manchester since 1997 – has been cosying up to individuals and groups involved in spreading radical anti-migrant, anti-abortion, anti-climate views. In September, Stringer signed an open letter drafted by Great British PAC, a group founded by former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib, who has called for the mass “repatriation” of legally-settled migrants. The letter said that the Labour government’s decision to hand over the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius is a “deliberate act of strategic self-harm that threatens both British and American security”. The letter, signed by Stringer, added that the decision was “an act of self-sabotage” and a form of “surrender”. Meanwhile, a fortnight ago, Stringer spoke at the Battle of Ideas Festival – a right-wing debating forum – and shared a stage with James Orr, a newly-appointed senior advisor to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Orr does not think abortion should be allowed at any stage of foetal development, including pregnancies resulting from rape. “Labour MPs are losing the whip for resisting savage benefit cuts for the disabled and families in abject poverty but there is tolerance without limit to those who share platforms with the far-right, anti-abortionists and climate change deniers,” said Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project. “This is a party that has not so much lost its moral compass as wittingly thrown it into an industrial shredder and sold the proceeds for scrap.” Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Stringer is a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s foremost climate science denial group. The GWPF has stated that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels. The GWPF is run by Conservative peer Craig Mackinlay, while its board members include former Conservative MP John Redwood, and ex-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch, is chaired by Tory donor Neil Record, while its board includes Conservative peer David Frost. Stringer has increasingly been echoing right-wing, anti-Labour talking points in recent months, claiming in an interview with Sky News on 15 October that it’s “pathetic” for the government to be blaming some of the country’s economic problems on Brexit. The Chagos Letter The Chagos Letter was organised by Great British PAC, a far-right campaign group whose senior figures have advocated for the mass removal of legally-settled migrants. The group’s advisory board includes far-right YouTuber Carl Benjamin (also known as Sargon of Akkad). Benjamin has advocated for the mass deportation of migrants, including those with formal legal status, has said that the UK is experiencing a “Muslim takeover”, and has suggested that British-born MP Zarah Sultana should be deported because she’s a “Pakistani Muslim communist”. In 2016, Benjamin speculated on Twitter about whether he would rape Labour MP Jess Phillips – a post that was investigated by the police in 2019 when Benjamin stood as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate in the European elections. Signatories of the letter included a number of notable voices from the British right and far-right. They included Nick Tenconi, the current leader of UKIP. Tenconi has called for “millions” of people to be deported, including British-born Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, has said that Islamophobia “isn’t a thing”, and that anti-racism campaigners are “democratic terrorists”. “My government would lock them up or deport them to North Korea,” he claimed. Other signatories included Reform MP Danny Kruger, former Reform MEPs Alexandra Phillips, John Longworth, and Jonathan Bullock, Heritage Foundation director Nile Gardiner, and Tory politicians Suella Braverman, Steve Baker, Mark Francois, Daniel Hannan, and Grant Shapps. No other Labour MP signed the letter. Great British PAC’s CEO Claire Bullivant said it was “nonsense” for the group to be labelled far-right and instead described it as “mainstream”. In a statement to DeSmog, she added: “As for comments made by individual PAC members, supporters, and advisors, we don’t all have to agree on everything. We’re not a political party, we’re a group of patriots representing people from every party and every walk of life. That diversity of thought is exactly what free speech and democracy are about, and it’s something we champion wholeheartedly.” Habib formally launched a new party, Advance UK, in September 2025. The party claims that “mass migration is eroding our culture and destroying our economy”, while Habib has advocated for the “mass repatriation” of migrants who are legally settled in the UK. In July, far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) announced he would be joining Advance UK. The party has received the backing of far-right tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is reportedly paying Robinson’s fees for multiple legal cases. Advance UK’s “college” includes Paul Burgess, the former environment spokesperson for the now-defunct far-right For Britain movement, and Kathryn Gyngell, the founder of anti-climate website TCW Defending Freedom and a former GWPF director. In a comment to DeSmog, Burgess previously claimed that For Britain was not a far-right party – despite its history of fielding former members of the far-right British National Party as candidates, as well as those that have expressed racist views online. Burgess said that he has never been associated with the BNP, “the motives and aims of which I deplore.” Advance UK and Habib declined to comment. Battle of Ideas Festival Stringer also spoke on several panels at the Battle of Ideas Festival in London on 18 October. The festival is run by the Academy of Ideas, a group fronted by former Revolutionary Communist Party member Claire Fox and closely associated with the radical right-wing Spiked magazine. Fox became a peer in 2020 following a nomination by former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In one session, “Who’s afraid of the populist revolt?”, Stringer shared the stage with Reform UK senior advisor James Orr, and Mathias Corvinus Collegium Brussels director Frank Füredi, who co-founded Spiked alongside Fox, who moderated the discussion. MCC is a Hungarian think tank and lobby group closely tied to Viktor Orbán’s government and funded by the country’s national oil company MOL. Its head of policy Jacob Reynolds is an associate fellow at the Academy of Ideas. However, there wasn’t universal agreement between the panellists. According to the New Statesman, when Stringer voiced concern about the presence of Nazis in Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), Orr responded: “As far as I know, it’s a group of egghead economists. No doubt along the way they’ve picked up some unsavoury types, but look how they’ve been treated.” University of Cambridge academic and Reform UK senior advisor James Orr. Credit: MCC Brussels / X The AfD was officially deemed a “right-wing extremist” organisation by Germany’s domestic intelligence services in June. Orr, a close friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, is a hardline conservative and a critic of Europe’s pro-Ukraine policies. As revealed by DeSmog, Orr accused the West of having “Ukraine brain” at MCC’s festival in August and praised Hungary’s Putin-friendly approach to the war, which he has repeatedly labelled a “regional Slavic conflict”. The New Statesman also reported that one Battle of Ideas speaker, GB News commentator Charlie Downes, said that Bob Marley was “more British” than former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “by virtue of having an ethnically British ancestor”. Downes is the campaign director for Restore Britain, an activist group fronted by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe that has proposed entirely abolishing the asylum system and doubling “the annual departure of legal migrants”. Festival of Ideas “partners” included the GWPF and GB News, while its “supporters” featured Together – a conspiracy theory group that has campaigned against mandatory vaccinations. Stringer, the Labour Party, James Orr, and the Academy of Ideas were approached for comment. The post The Labour MP Rubbing Shoulders With the Far-Right appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Major American LNG Exporters Habitually Break Air Pollution Laws, Report Finds
- at 10/29/25 3:38pmDuring the past five years, all seven of the fully operational LNG export terminals in the U.S. violated the Clean Air Act, America’s cornerstone law on air pollution, a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) finds. The report comes as the Trump administration has moved to accelerate the approval of new export terminals to sell more U.S. LNG around the world, particularly to Asia and Europe. Several major terminals rarely, if ever, managed to spend a full quarter in compliance with environmental laws over the past three years, the report found. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Among the seven terminals that were fully operational by the end of 2024, publicly traded companies appeared among the most consistent violators, with the Cheniere (NYSE:LNG) Sabine Pass terminal and Venture Global (NYSE: VG) Calcasieu Pass Terminal violating the Clean Air Act every single quarter from October 2022 to July 2025, EIP found. A third, the Cameron LNG terminal, faced “high priority” violations 11 out of the past 12 quarters. The companies that exhibited patterns of violations were also the largest emitters of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Cheniere’s Sabine Pass, the largest polluter, reported releasing 6.9 million tons of greenhouse gases during 2023, EIP found, and the company’s Corpus Christi LNG terminal ranked second, with emissions of 3.3 million tons. Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass terminal was third, with 3.1 million tons, and Cameron LNG ranked fourth, producing 2.9 million tons that year. All told, the seven terminals pumped out about 18.2 million tons of greenhouse gases — about as much as adding 3.9 million new cars to the roads. “These trends are especially concerning because all but one of the LNG terminals examined in this report are planning major expansions,” the EIP report noted, citing five projects announced this year, in addition to those already under construction or planned before Trump took office. “If all 33 projects are built, U.S. LNG exports could triple over the next decade.” Five of the seven operating LNG terminals also violated the Clean Water Act at least once during that time period, the report found, racking up nearly 70 permit violations for discharging pollutants like oil and grease, metals, and “suspended solids.” Venture Globals Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal in Cameron, LA, on Oct. 10, 2024. Credit: Julie Dermansky Environmental regulators have hit LNG terminal operators with over $1 million in penalties for violating air pollution laws during that time, EIP found. But in some cases, state regulators in Texas and Louisiana responded by relaxing their standards, allowing three major terminals to modify or amend their permits to allow more pollution. “One example is the Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal in Cameron, Louisiana,” EIP wrote. “After reporting hundreds of permit deviations during its first year of operation, the LDEQ approved a major permit modification that increased emissions limits collectively by approximately 17 percent,” referring to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Texas regulators with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) declined to comment. LEDQ officials did not respond to a request for comment. “The government is not working for the people, they are working with the industry hand-in-hand,” James Hiatt, a former refinery operator and executive director of For a Better Bayou, a Southwest Louisiana environmental group, said at a press conference. “At what point is enough enough?” ‘Routinely’ Violating the Law The report describes a widespread pattern of permit violations by LNG terminals, ranging from minor to serious. “While violations ranged in severity — from failed performance tests to significant emission events — a review of EPA and state enforcement records reveals that LNG terminals routinely violate environmental laws designed to protect the public against dangerous air pollution,” EIP wrote. Freeport LNG, for example, suffered a massive explosion on June 8, 2022, and has so far drawn $493,804 in penalties associated with that catastrophe. “That represents around half of formal enforcement actions taken and two-thirds of penalties assessed against all LNG export facilities in the U.S. over that time period,” EIP wrote. “An examination of state records shows that the Freeport LNG terminal had a poor track record with environmental compliance long before it exploded, and that the company continues to struggle with consistent compliance.” RELATED: Louisiana Communities Already Vulnerable to the Climate Crisis Worry That the Expansion of the LNG Export Industry Could Be Catastrophic Environmental enforcers rely heavily on the LNG industry to self-report permit violations, Hiatt noted. EIP’s report also described incidents where companies breached their permits but failed to notify state regulators. “In some cases, LNG companies failed to properly notify regulators when their plants malfunctioned or released excess emissions in violation of their permits,” the report said, citing incidents involving Venture Global, Cameron LNG, and others. An LNG carrier at Cheniers Corpus Christi LNG terminal on June 20, 2024. According to a new report, the terminal emitted 3.3 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Credit: Julie Dermansky Venture Global, Cheniere, and Cameron LNG did not respond to a request for comment on the report. The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database failed to reflect the full number of violations the seven terminals had racked up, the report shows — meaning researchers had to turn to state records to reveal the full extent of violations. The industry’s plans to expand come as the Trump administration has significantly reduced or eliminated enforcement of environmental laws, the report notes. “Environmental enforcement has plummeted during the first six months of the Trump Administration, with far fewer civil judicial cases filed and concluded against polluters compared to the same period under the Biden Administration,” EIP wrote. Last week, the Department of Energy issued a key approval for Venture Global’s CP2 project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, the latest in a rapid series of approvals for LNG projects issued by the Trump administration, which has cited an “energy emergency” as it greenlights expanded fossil fuel exports. RELATED: DOE Study Finds LNG Exports Don’t Just Hurt the Climate – They Hit Americans in Their Pocketbooks A total of 33 LNG projects are currently planned or in expansion in the U.S., the report notes, meaning the country’s LNG exports could triple over the next 10 years. “There is no ‘energy emergency,’” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement accompanying the new report. “And fast-tracking approvals for LNG terminals puts the health of local communities, ecosystems, and the climate at risk.” Venture Globals Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, LA, on Sept.30, 2023. Risky Business Despite the administration’s support, the LNG business can be a risky one. Venture Global has suffered a series of setbacks, including a loss in a major arbitration case with BP, one of its customers, earlier this month. Venture Global has seen its stock price decline over 60 percent since it first went public earlier this year. “As the U.S. doubles down on fossil fuels, pushing allies to buy its LNG, China is seizing the low-carbon mantle through EV and solar dominance, plus aggressive renewables deployment,” energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie’s Vice President Prakash Sharma said today, as WoodMac released its Energy Transition Outlook 2025-2026, which predicts the world is now on track to see 2.6°C of global warming. Emissions at LNG terminals are only one portion of the climate-altering pollution created as natural gas is produced, transported, and burned for fuel. An October 22 report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) found that natural gas companies and governments are failing to respond when alerted that satellites have detected major pollution incidents at a startling rate. “Responses to alerts issued by UNEP on major emissions detected via satellites have increased twelve-fold in just one year,” the UN’s Eye on Methane report found. “This is real progress, yet it also underscores the gap that remains: Almost 90 per cent of satellite-detected emission events flagged by UNEP still go unaddressed by governments and companies.” RELATED: See How Louisiana’s Growing Fossil Fuel Industry Threatens Climate and Justice Promises The impacts of failing to act on climate change are increasingly apparent. Heat-related deaths have surged 23 percent since the 1990s, reaching 546,0000 per year, the Lancet’s Countdown on Health and Climate Change report, also released today, concludes. “Climate change is already causing massive death and economic suffering from heat exposure, drought, natural disasters, and flooding,” Paul Reed, a professor at Australia’s Charles Sturt University and director of the Future Emergency Resilience Network, said in a statement accompanying the Lancet report. “The health impacts, I would argue, are the proper outcome metrics of human flourishing, but the economic costs are already far surpassing earlier estimates and now represent US$1 trillion and 1% of global domestic product.” “The worlds poor, young, and elderly are the most impacted,” Reed concluded, “whereas the wealthier countries and the richest within those countries are least affected, whilst most to blame.” The post Major American LNG Exporters Habitually Break Air Pollution Laws, Report Finds appeared first on DeSmog.
- — What Is Alberta’s Oil Wealth Paying for? Not Better Education
- at 10/29/25 11:43am“I miss recess,” said Asher, a Grade 5 student when asked for comment by CityNews on the Alberta’s teachers strike, adding that he even missed math class. “It’s fun. I get to learn more skills.” Adults are supposed to ensure students like Asher have an opportunity to learn, that teachers are properly paid and that kids have a stable well-funded education system to realize their potential. Instead, the United Conservative Party under Alberta Premier Danielle Smith just passed back-to-work legislation and invoked the nuclear option of the notwithstanding clause, ensuring this labour dispute will metastasize well beyond Alberta’s educators. How did we get in this mess? Some kids like math, but the math on Alberta’s oil-dependent finances is definitely not fun. Smith’s single-minded fixation on the oil and gas industry has left the province dangerously dependent on highly cyclical oil revenue. A yawning chasm between UCP oil enthusiasm and what is happening in the real world may soon devastate Alberta’s ability to provide basic services like education and health. Despite Smith’s constant cheerleading for additional bitumen extraction, an eye-popping global oil glut of up to 4 million barrels per day in excess supply is projected for the coming year. Some of this is part of normal price volatility, but a growing portion of the global surplus is due to the structural decline in oil demand due to rapid electrification in China and the developing world. A fiscal plan tabled by Alberta in February details the disconnect between Smith’s pro-oil hype and the ton-of-bricks reality soon to be crashing through her optimistic assumptions. Smith’s government projected the average price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for the current fiscal year to be $68 per barrel, rising to $71 for the budget tabled next spring and $71.50 for 2027. Last week WTI was below $57 and recent projections from the U.S. government expect crude to plunge to an average $48.50 in 2026. Similar grim projections show little improvement for 2027. Every dollar drop in the price of WTI crude puts a $750 million hole in the provincial budget. A rough calculation shows that Alberta may face a staggering budget shortfall of over $16 billion in 2026 and another $16 billion in 2027 based on current price projections. This is on top of a $6.5 billion updated deficit for the current year. Declining Student Funding Smith never seems to miss an opportunity to lobby, leverage or issue decrees for additional oil production. Her mandate letter just issued to Energy Minister Brian Jean directed him to increase Alberta crude production by 50 percent in 2030 and double it by 2035. The underlying conceit is that increased oil production somehow results in increased prosperity. If that’s true, why has per-student spending plunged in the last decade while bitumen production has almost doubled? A recent report from the right-leaning Fraser Institute documented how Alberta education spending per student is the lowest in the country. But isn’t that because Alberta has a growing population and needs to build more schools? Nope. The Fraser report also looked at per student spending minus capital costs. Alberta is still last; 28 percent below what New Brunswick spends per kid on education. But what about long-term policy choices? The Fraser report helpfully looked at the scenario where “the inflation-adjusted, per-student spending levels [had] been maintained from the 2012/13 base year.” Almost all provinces chose to substantially increase spending per student in the last decade, with a 10 percent average increase nationally. Alberta was again dead last, showing a decline by over 15 percent since 2013. Is that what prosperity looks like? Alberta bitumen production increased over 90 percent since 2013 while automation eliminated over 25,000 oil and gas sector jobs between 2014 and 2021. Those job losses are projected to accelerate, wiping out about 30 percent of the remaining oil patch workforce by 2040. And if oil prices plunge to levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, expect companies to curtail production as they did during the pandemic, no matter how many pipelines Smith would like to imagine. Norwegian Nest Egg Norway produces one third less oil with roughly the same population as Alberta. Strange that those woolly-headed socialists somehow managed to spend 44 percent more per student on education in 2019 while socking away almost CAD$3 trillion in their sovereign wealth fund and counting. For a depressing contrast, compare this with the Alberta debt clock proceeding the opposite direction almost as fast. The average increase in this massive Norwegian nest egg since 2015 is about $170 billion per year, meaning Norway could pay for the entire Alberta education budget with about three weeks of investment income. The ugly fight unfolding with Alberta teachers was entirely avoidable had Alberta not so spectacularly mismanaged the province’s vast resource wealth. Despite decades of boom-bust bombast, Smith and the UCP seem to be as willfully blind to the global energy transition as ever. Why can’t the richest province in one of the world’s richest countries afford to pay teachers a living wage? Maybe Asher’s Grade 5 class can help the premier with the math. The post What Is Alberta’s Oil Wealth Paying for? Not Better Education appeared first on DeSmog.
- — Timeline: How the Tories Copied Reform’s Anti-Climate Policies
- at 10/29/25 4:36amFour years after Boris Johnson’s Conservative government hosted the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the party has ditched its environmental credentials – declaring that it would scrap the UK’s net zero emissions targets and repeal the flagship Climate Change Act. As DeSmog has reported previously, this dramatic change has coincided with the party coming under increasing pressure from anti-climate media outlets, lobby groups, and U.S. political interests. But among the biggest factors has been the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has led the charge against clean energy policies, calling for renewable power subsidies to be scrapped and for a renewed era of fossil fuel exploration. Following the Conservative Party’s annual conference earlier this month, the party’s climate agenda now reflects Reform’s, with little separating their two platforms. To track exactly how this has happened, DeSmog has catalogued the climate policy announcements of the two parties – showing how the Tories have been stealing Farage’s homework since 2022. Net Zero TimelineInfogram The Policy Pipeline At the Conservative Party’s annual conference in October, party leader Kemi Badenoch announced that a Tory government would repeal the Climate Change Act, the UK’s landmark climate law passed in 2008 and made legally binding in 2019 by her predecessor Theresa May. The Act included establishing the target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, which climate scientists say would avert the most catastrophic climate impacts, such as mass displacement and poverty, and allow global temperatures to stabilise. This was acknowledged by Boris Johnson during the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. “The clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines,” he said, “with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster – quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2, raising the temperature of the planet with a speed and an abruptness that is entirely man made.” However, over recent years the 2050 target – and the science behind it – has been fiercely attacked by a well-funded anti-climate ecosystem. At the forefront of this campaign has been Reform UK and Nigel Farage, who in 2022 launched a campaign for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero, which his deputy Richard Tice pledged to scrap in 2021. As Reform has gained in the polls – Farage’s party stands at 30 percent against the Conservative Party’s 15 percent – and against a media drumbeat of attacks on net zero, the Tories have abandoned their climate agenda. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); In September 2022, during her short-lived tenure as prime minister, Liz Truss lifted the ban on fracking for shale gas. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, reversed the decision, but pursued a number of policies hostile to climate action. In September 2023, he delayed the phaseout of gas boilers and petrol vehicles, and approved roughly 100 new oil and gas licences. His government also adopted increasingly adversarial rhetoric in relation to net zero – pledging to “max out” the UK’s North Sea oil and gas reserves while claiming that the UK’s climate policies were “losing the consent of the British people”. Badenoch became Tory leader in November 2024 after welcoming donations from Neil Record, the chair of the Net Zero Watch climate science denial campaign group, as well as from a director of the oil major Chevron. Soon after, she proceeded to hire advisors with a history of attacking net zero. This February, after a policy retreat at Record’s Gloucestershire estate, Badenoch publicly shunned the UK’s 2050 net zero target, despite having championed it when she was a government minister. In March, she declared that the 2050 target was “impossible” and that the Tories no longer support it. This was followed by a pledge to repeal the Climate Change Act announced at the Conservative Party conference in October. Badenoch has doubled down on her party’s support for oil and gas, promising in August to maximise North Sea extraction. This was in keeping with Farage’s campaign, which echoes U.S. President Donald Trump’s slogan to “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels. At this year’s Tory conference, Shadow Energy Secretary Clare Coutinho said the Tories would remove carbon taxes on energy bills – mirroring Reform’s call for an end to “green levies” in its 2024 general election manifesto. She also said the Conservatives would “scrap Ed Miliband’s rip-off wind farm subsidies”, a copy of Reform’s manifesto, which promised to “scrap renewable energy subsidies”. Farage’s party also vowed to block wind and solar projects during May’s local elections campaign. Badenoch has yet to adopt Reform’s policies of lifting the ban on fracking or opening new coal power plants, but did not rule these out when asked by The Telegraph in March, saying the party was still working on its plans. Reform’s Climate Denial Behind Reform’s anti-climate campaign is a belief that climate change is not a problem, and is not caused by humans. In February, Tice told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.” He has also claimed that “CO2 is not poison; it’s plant food”. As DeSmog has reported, 92 percent of Reform’s donations between the 2019 and 2024 general elections came from climate science deniers, fossil fuel interests, or major polluters – a total of £2.3 million. Farage has repeatedly blamed climate change on “sunspot activity” and “underwater volcanoes” – false claims that have long been debunked by experts. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in February, he said it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. In the year following his election to Parliament, Farage received £400,000 from GB News, an anti-climate broadcaster whose co-owner Paul Marshall (who also bankrolls ARC) had £1.8 billion invested in oil and gas via his hedge fund as of June 2023. Reform’s mayor for Greater Lincolnshire, former Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns, said in an interview with Times Radio in July: “Do I believe that climate change exists? No.” By contrast, in one of the few current areas of divergence between the Conservatives and Reform on climate, Kemi Badenoch has described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic”. Even so, the Tories have received significant donations from climate science deniers. As revealed by DeSmog, the party has accepted at least £7.2 million from funders and directors of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group, over the past two decades. The post Timeline: How the Tories Copied Reform’s Anti-Climate Policies appeared first on DeSmog.
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