Politicians, donors, think tanks, and media outlets in the UK and US are working increasingly closely to scupper climate policies and promote fossil fuel extraction.
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Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States comes at an ever-more critical time for climate change.
Climate scientists have warned that 2024 was the hottest year on record, and without dramatic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, global pledges to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and curb the worst effects of climate change are doomed.
At the start of 2025, Trump’s “government efficiency” chief Elon Musk (who donated $250 million to Trump’s campaign), pushed grooming gangs to the top of the UK political agenda — with the help of Conservative and Reform UK politicians, and their allies in the media.
But this is not the only issue where the incoming Trump team is trying to make the political weather far beyond the shores of the United States.
As DeSmog reports today — and compiled in this interactive map — Trump and Musk are aided by a well-funded network of UK politicians, think tanks, media outlets, and political donors that are pushing a pro-fossil fuel, anti-climate agenda.
A Shared Ideology
Donald Trump is a firm friend of the fossil fuel industry. In his first term, the Republican withdrew the US from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, and has done so once again.
During his inauguration speech on January 20, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and promised to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels. His plans could add an extra four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to US emissions by 2030, according to the climate publication Carbon Brief. Trump received more than $32 million from the oil and gas sector for his 2024 campaign.
Trump’s election coincides with that of Kemi Badenoch as Conservative Party leader, who received money towards her campaign from a director of the oil major Chevron. Badenoch is a self-described “net-zero sceptic” who has warned the UK’s 2050 emissions reduction target could “bankrupt the country.”
Badenoch recently went on a tour of North America during which she rubbed shoulders with a number of fellow net zero sceptics, including Canadian Conservative leader and presumptive Prime Minister-in-waiting Pierre Poilievre, who has voted against environmental measures almost 400 times during his two decades in politics.
However, Badenoch still has a way to go before she rivals the North American network of her right-wing rival Nigel Farage, who leads Reform UK. Farage, who claims that CO2 is plant food and wants to see net zero scrapped, was part of the trusted entourage that spent election night in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Although these leaders do not agree on every policy, they share a broad opposition to net zero and support the continued expansion of fossil fuel production — at the expense of global climate ambitions.
“President Trump is promising a range of extreme policies and actions, particularly on climate change,” said Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.
“It is well known that a handful of British politicians, including Nigel Farage and Liz Truss, and lobby groups, such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation, worship Trump and his extremist agenda, and will be doing their best to promote it on this side of the Atlantic.
“But Trump’s agenda will be a disaster for America and the world.”
The Tories and the US Right
In the days after Trump’s election last November, Badenoch flew to Washington, DC, to meet with senior US Republicans.
The Tory leader had an hour-long dinner with Vice President-elect JD Vance, who has a long record of casting doubt on climate change. In 2021, Vance said he was “skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man”, and in 2024 he repeatedly attacked US climate policies as “the green new scam.”
Badenoch reportedly also met with Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (LA), who has cast doubt on the contribution of fossil fuel vehicles to climate change, and has repeatedly voted against climate policies while supporting cuts to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Badenoch’s trip also included a meeting with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who has called a belief in climate change a “religion.”
DeSantis last year signed a bill that would delete references to climate change from all state legislation, saying: “Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid [and] pursue a radical climate agenda.”
As DeSmog has reported, Badenoch’s shadow cabinet has ties to the Heritage Foundation, the US think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The 900-page document proposes reversing policies on climate action, slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the EPA.
The Heritage Foundation has extensive ties to climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests. The group received over £4.9 million between (~$6.1 million) 1997 and 2017 from groups linked to fossil fuel giant Koch Industries, a leading global sponsor of climate science denial. Advisory groups working on Project 2025 have received at least $9.6 million from Charles Koch since 2020, along with at least $21.5 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which is funded by the Mellon oil and banking fortune.
Last month, DeSmog revealed that Trump’s ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, has significant investments in oil and gas.
The Conservative Party also has extensive ties to fossil fuel money. Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the party received £8.4 million (~$10.4 million) from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and individuals who have expressed or supported climate science denial.
This may be one reason why the party is increasingly aligning its agenda with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s principal climate science denial group, with which it shares a number of donors. DeSmog revealed in September that the Conservatives received £7.2 million (~$8.9 million) over the previous two decades from funders or directors of the GWPF.
This includes Badenoch, who received donations and use of office space during the Tory leadership election from Neil Record, chairman of Net Zero Watch, the GWPF’s campaign arm. Record is also life vice president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from the oil major BP every year from 1967 until at least 2018.
Farage’s Network
At the close of 2024, as party leader Nigel Farage and treasurer Nick Candy traveled to meet Elon Musk in Florida, there were reports that Trump’s right-hand man was looking to donate £100 million (~$124.5 million) to Reform UK.
This donation has yet to materialize, but Reform’s existing backers are closely aligned with Trump’s anti-climate agenda. As DeSmog revealed in June, Reform received £2.3 million (~$2.8 million) from fossil fuel interests, polluters, and climate deniers between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, amounting to 92 percent of its funding during the period.
This included £500,000 (~$600,000) from Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners had more than £108 million (~$134.4 million) invested in the energy sector at the close of 2021, two-thirds of which was in the oil industry, along with millions in coal and gas.
Hosking previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.”
Farage has traveled to the US on five separate occasions since his election to Parliament in July, and he has an extensive network of anti-climate allies across the Atlantic.
In September, he was the keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary fundraiser of the Heartland Institute — a group that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. Speaking in Chicago, Farage echoed Trump’s call to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels, and attacked “net zero fanaticism.”
This alliance evolved last month, when Heartland launched its new UK-EU branch with the help of Farage. The group’s launch event was also attended by Candy and former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss.
Heartland UK-EU will be run by ex-UKIP leader and PR executive Lois Perry, who founded the anti-net-zero lobby group CAR26. Perry is a frequent pundit on GB News, the right-wing broadcaster modeled on Fox News that also employs Farage. A DeSmog investigation found that, in 2022, a third of GB News hosts had spread climate science denial on air, while half had attacked climate policies.
GB News is co-owned by hedge fund millionaire Paul Marshall, who last year bought the influential Spectator magazine. As DeSmog has reported, Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace had £1.8 billion (~$2.2 billion) invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023, including in oil and gas giants Chevron, Shell, and Equinor.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
Paul Marshall is also the sponsor of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) alongside the Dubai-based investment firm the Legatum Group, which co-owns GB News. Marshall gave £1 million (~$1.2 million) to ARC in 2023 via his charity, the Sequoia Trust.
ARC is run by Conservative Baroness Philippa Stroud, and is fronted by Canadian author and climate science denier Jordan Peterson, who publicly endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.
Badenoch gave a speech to ARC’s annual conference in 2023, as did then-Tory Cabinet minister Michael Gove, who now edits The Spectator. Trump’s other “government efficiency” chief (alongside Musk), Vivek Ramaswamy — who has called climate change a “hoax” — is on ARC’s advisory board and spoke at ARC’s 2023 conference.
Spectator associate editor Douglas Murray spoke alongside Peterson at ARC’s 2023 event, attended Trump’s election party in November at Mar-a-Lago, and is an ARC adviser.
Murray has suggested that climate policies will “impoverish” Brits, and has argued that “terrifying our children with doom-mongering propaganda on climate change is nothing less than abuse.”
Peterson is a leading opponent of climate action. He has written in The Telegraph that “eco-extremists are leading the world towards despair, poverty, and starvation,” and has regularly promoted notorious climate crisis deniers to his more than 8 million YouTube subscribers.
Other ARC advisory board members include Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Tory peer and GB News director Helena Morrissey, Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw (TX), Tory MP Danny Kruger, and former Tory MP and current GB News host Miriam Cates.
National Conservatism
Pro-Trump forces have also convened around National Conservatism (NatCon), a group run by the Edmund Burke Foundation that holds conferences in the US and Europe.
Speakers at these conferences have included Farage, JD Vance, former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
As DeSmog revealed, NatCon’s event in Brussels last year was co-sponsored by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank funded by the country’s state oil company MOL.
According to the investigative outlet Follow The Money, MCC “plays a key role in spreading the ideology of the Hungarian government.”
Another NatCon event in Washington DC in July 2024 was sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, among other US organisations.
Areeba Hamid, joint executive director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Donald Trump has wasted no time paying back the Big Oil backers who helped bankroll his campaign, but shredding climate legislation and tearing the US out of the Paris Agreement will not make the climate crisis go away.
“From the Los Angeles inferno to devastating floods here in the UK, the extreme weather of recent weeks is a portent of things to come if we let Trump and Big Oil dictate our future. Now is the time for leaders in the UK and beyond to fill the climate leadership void. We need our leaders to make the fossil fuel industry pay for the chaos they’re causing so we can build a safer, greener future for generations to come.”
This story by Adam Barnett was originally published by DeSmog and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
