Bojo Now Bleats Green, But Guardian Shows That His Climate & Environment Record Is Just Awful
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But can he be trusted and can he deliver? On that question, almost all the evidence – from parliamentary voting records and donations from climate sceptics to his newspaper columns and performance as mayor – says no. Although Johnson has repeatedly called for reduced emissions, he scored zero out of 100 in the Guardian’s climate scorecards last year based on his rejection of actions that would achieve this in five key parliamentary votes. This includes opposition to onshore wind subsidies, emissions-based vehicle taxes and carbon capture and storage.
He was also shown to have declared donations of £5,000 from Michael Hintze and £25,000 from Terence Mordaunt (via First Corporate Shipping), who fund the climate science sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation. The Conservative party says the Guardian cherry-picked votes and failed to recognise Johnson’s support for the net zero emissions target. The Guardian stands by its methodology, [link:http://|which can be read here].
Other broader data sources confirm the prime minister’s woeful record on parliament. The parliamentary watchdog They Work for You notes that Johnson has “almost always voted against measures to prevent climate change” with one vote in favour, eight against and six absences (the latter largely due to his period as mayor of London).
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Johnson’s newspaper columns provide copious proof that he does not “get” climate change. In 2012, he described wind farms as “white satanic mills”, supported shale gas fracking and urged readers to “ignore doom merchants” who warn of the dangers of emissions. On three occasions, he blithely – and completely wrongly – claimed global heating was primarily caused by solar activity. “Whatever is happening to the weather at the moment, it is nothing to do with the conventional doctrine of climate change,” he wrote in 2015, citing the debunked claims of the climate sceptic Piers Corbyn – the brother of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He was scoring points against a political opponent by dismissing the consensus view among scientists that the climate crisis is driven by human activity.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/07/can-boris-johnson-be-trusted-to-act-on-climate-the-crisis