After the shenanigans of the recent UK honours, what would a pro-planet awards system look like?
From prompt to Midjourney
Watching the grotesquerie of Boris Johnson’s departing honours list - which as the piece DeSmog notes below, is packed with fossil-fuel aligned climate deniers - got us thinking about what an alternative, pro-planet “climate Nobel” might look like.
First, the DeSmog piece:
Fossil-fuelled Honours from johnson
By Joey Grostern and Adam Barnett, DeSmog
Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list includes MPs and political advisors with ties to climate science denial and the oil and gas industry.
The former prime minister’s 45 nominees – who were approved by his successor Rishi Sunak on Friday, just hours before Johnson’s resignation as an MP – include four Conservative MPs with a history of casting doubt over climate science or policy.
Andrea Jenkyns MP, who recently joined the UK’s main climate science denial campaign group Net Zero Watch (NZW), gained an OBE, in an honours list that includes anti-climate MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Fabricant, and Priti Patel.
Figures at lobbying firm CT Group, which has lobbied for fossil fuel companies, and the head of mining giant Rio Tinto, are also nominated for honours
“Boris Johnson has lavished not only honours on his allies and cronies, but power, influence and status at the highest political level”, Caroline Lucas, outgoing Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, told DeSmog.
“For so many of those allies to have links to fossil fuels, climate denial and delay shows that Johnson always has been and always will be willing to take a wrecking ball to our planet if his own career depends on it.”
Sunak is under pressure to reverse his approval of the honours list after parliament’s privileges committee this week found Johnson had deliberately misled the House about parties at Downing Street during lockdown.
Lucas added: “If Sunak doesn’t block this list immediately following the privileges committee report, he will be an accomplice in these climate-trashing appointments.”
Ministers’ and MPs’ Climate Science Denial
Jenkyns, MP for Morley and Outwood, two weeks ago joined the board of NZW, an arm of the UK’s foremost climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). In March, she urged the UK to “ditch” its net zero targets and “use whatever resources we have under our feet”.
Jenkyns’ damehood will further boost the credentials of the GWPF, which already has a large contingent in the House of Lords including GWPF director David Frost, GWPF advisor Matt Ridley, former trustees Charles Moore and Peter Lilley, former trustees Andrew Turnbull, Emma Nicholson, and funders Nigel Vinson and Richard Cavendish.
From prompt to Midjourney
Rees-Mogg – who received a knighthood – has a long record of opposing climate action. In 2014 he claimed that efforts to limit global warming “would have no effect for hundreds or possibly a thousand years” and in 2013 he blamed high energy prices on “climate alarmism.”
Last month, at a conference on “National Conservatism”, Rees-Mogg said: “We must look at whether Net Zero by 2050 is feasible. Ultimately, ultimately, nobody gets elected on making voters cold and poor.”
Rees-Mogg is a host on broadcaster GB News. Last month DeSmog revealedone in three GB News presenters cast doubt on climate science in 2022.
A recent DeSmog investigation found that Jacob Rees-Mogg had spoken of his desire for people to “stop demonising oil and gas” in a meeting with the United Arab Emirates’ state investment firm while business secretary under then-Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is known for her hostility towards climate protestors, in 2022 accused Extinction Rebellion activists of “hooliganism and thuggery”..
Patel is a prominent ally and supporter of lobby group FairFuelUK and sits on its All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) of the same name. FairFuelUK is funded by the haulage industry, and its director Howard Cox is a climate science denier. Last August, Cox said: “I am now even more convinced man is not responsible for global warming.”
Patel also has a long association with organizations in the influential set of libertarian think tanks and campaign groups known as the Tufton Street network. It includes the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Centre for Policy Studies, which have both opposed climate policies.
Conservative MP Michael Fabricant has aired anti-climate views on Twitter. In 2014 he wrote that it was “undeniably true” that “unthinking climate change worship has damaged British industry and put up consumer bills”.
Fabricant supported Johnson’s green push during the UK’s presidency of the COP26 climate summit. But last June on GB News he said Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant he “personally would like to see a little bit less emphasis now on the zero green policies”, adding on Twitter: “it’s time to rethink green taxes”.
Ahead of COP26 Fabricant also appeared on a GB News segment on the question of a net zero referendum. In it, he questioned the virtue of decarbonisation, asking: “what is the point of doing it if we bankrupt ourselves and find that others are not joining in too?”.
Johnson’s honours list also includes a seat in the House of Lords for Shaun Bailey. The former Conservative candidate for mayor of London ran in 2021 on a promise to scrap a proposed expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), a clean air initiative launched by Mayor Sadiq Khan, which has drawn attacks from many anti-climate groups.
Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
Johnson’s former deputy chief of staff, David Canzini, received an OBE. Until 2022 Cazini worked as a director of the lobbying firm CT Group, which was set up and run by Australian political lobbyist Sir Lynton Crosby, who ran Johnson’s 2008 mayoral campaign.
CT Group offers advice to oil and gas companies, and its clients have included the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association and BHP, which has mining and oil assets. The firm also orchestrated a PR campaign for coal company Glencore in 2019.
In early 2022, Canzini reportedly influenced the UK government’s opposition to a windfall tax and to the development of onshore wind power. “The public deserve to know if Lynton Crosby is lobbying Boris Johnson on behalf of gas and oil fat cats,” Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said at the time.
Last month environmental groups raised concerns over the secondment of Canzini to work on communications at the upcoming UN COP28 climate summit in the UAE, given his links to CT Group’s pro-oil and gas lobbying.
William Warr, former health advisor to Boris Johnson between 2019 and 2022, who worked as a campaign strategist for Lynton Crosby, received an OBE for “political and public service”.
Samantha Cohen, Johnson’s chief of staff and director of the Prime Minister’s office between April and September 2022, is also received an OBE. Cohen is currently chief of staff at Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant which has been embroiled in various scandals over its operations, including the destruction of a site of historical indigenous importance in Western Australia, and a failure to bring its lobbying activities in line with its own climate targets.
Sunak has yet to approve his immediate predecessor Liz Truss’s resignation honours list, which is reported to include Mark Littlewood, director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank, which has called for the UK’s net zero target to be scrapped, and received funding from BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018.
The members of Johnson’s honours list named in this story were contacted for comment.
Original DeSmog piece published here - reproduced under Creative Commons
Prompt to MidJourney
A Gong for Saving the Planet?
So if you accept that honours and awards can be part of public life, whether at a national, continental or global level - and some don’t - what would climate/pro-planet awards, at the level of the UK status (maybe less archaic than its “knights” and “lords”) look like?
We already have a long list of environmental awards, handily collated by Wikipedia. Ironically, given its British-monarchical locus, one of the most recent and high-status is the Earthshot Prize. This grants £1m a year to five individuals notable for their contribution to climate activism and science, and was set up by Prince William’s Royal Foundation, with the iconic environmentalist David Attenborough fully on board.
The Nobel Prizes for Science are, some would say belatedly, beginning to recognise the power and urgency of climate research in this area. 2021’s winners in Physics were two climate scientists, Syukuro (Suki) Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”, as well as “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems”.
One could easily imagine an award for “understanding complex systems” to go way beyond the strictly hard-scientific realms, into areas of wholistic understanding of human, social and artificial system. In any case, this Scientific American article notes that Nobels are only given to experiments that are verifiable in the here and now - while much climate science is about predictions that often require decades to be verified. (By which time, it may be too late…)
It should also be noted that King Charles’ Honours list in 2023 features many figures that are notable in the world of climate action and sustainability. As this blog from Edie reports:
Appointed Dame and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) was Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. Dasgupta published, in February 2021, a landmark review of the ways in which policy and economic decision-making can be used as tools to conserve and restore nature. The review was dubbed as influential as the Stern review on climate and economics, which informed the UK’s original Climate Change Act in 2008…
The youngest person to receive an honour this time around is Dara McAnulty, aged 18. McAnulty was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his tireless work to raise awareness of the importance of nature conservation and restoration, and also on the need for better support for autistic people. He has published books including ‘Diary of a Young Naturalist’ and ‘Wild Child: A Journey Through Nature’.
Also including:
Tanya Steele – chief executive, WWF UK
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debra, for services to public health (campaigner on air quality)
Martin Dorey – founder, 2 Minute Beach Clean
Matthew Frith – urban ecologist and director of policy and research, London Wildlife Trust
Maxwell Ayamba – founder, Sheffield Environmental Movement.