Climate denying Tories Lord Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley MP have close associations with the oil industry. The grandees have 13 years of Cabinet experience.
Left Foot Forward can reveal that two Tory grandees who have consistently criticised domestic and international efforts to abate climate change – Lord Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley MP – have close associations with the oil industry. The duo, with 13 years of Cabinet experience between them under Margaret Thatcher and John Major are on the payroll of companies directly engaged in, or associated with, the lucrative oil and gas industry.
On Monday, Nigel Lawson wrote an article in the Times titled, “Copenhagen will fail and quite right too”. Lawson said:
“The greatest error in the current conventional wisdom is that, if you accept the (present) majority scientific view that most of the modest global warming in the last quarter of the last century — about half a degree centigrade — was caused by man-made carbon emissions, then you must also accept that we have to decarbonise our economies.”
This blog has shown the errors and falsehoods of that article in a point-by-point motivations but Lord Lawson’s true motivations are now becoming clear. The Register of Lords’ Interests details that Lord Lawson chairs and has “significant shareholdings” in the Central Europe Trust (CET). He is described as a “senior advisor to clients on strategy and politics“. CET boast on their website to being, according to a quote in Forbes, “the company to call when you want to do business in Eastern Europe.” Their clients include oil and gas giants Total Fina Elf, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Texaco, and BP Amaco.
Lawson is also Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group who’s “primary purpose is to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate that is frequently distorted by prejudice and exaggeration.” They are based at 1 Carlton House Terrace SW1Y 5DB and share premises with the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining who have a Petroleum and Drilling Engineering Division, which includes two employees of the BP Exploration Operating Company Ltd.
Peter Lilley is a vocal opponent of the UK Climate Change Act 2008 and was one of only five MPs to vote against it. But as the Register of Members Interests claims to show, he is also a paid non-executive director of Tethys Petroleum Limited – a giant oil and gas exploration “focused on Central Asia“. But a look at his profile on the website reveals he’s also the Vice Chairman and – according to his biography – “was a Director of Greenwell Montagu Securities (1986-87) where he headed the oil investment department and which he joined in 1972.” Mr Lilley receives £40,000 “annual retainer” (p.94) from the company.
The Tethys website also states that he was an election observer for the 2005 Kazakhstan presidential elections, which is handy given that Tethys is “proud to be the first non-Kazakh oil and gas company listed on the new RFCA exchange in Almaty”. In 2005, the Times reported that Lilley’s British team were accused of a “Kazakh poll whitewash“:
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent 460 observers, said that the election did not meet international democratic standards. Flaws included restrictions on campaigning, interference at polling stations, multiple voting, pressure on students to vote, media bias and restrictions on freedom of expression, it said.
“There was harassment, intimidation and detentions of campaign staff and supporters of opposition candidates, including cases of beatings of campaign staff,” said the OSCE mission, led by Bruce George, the British Labour MP.
But Lord Parkinson’s seven-strong team, calling itself a “British parliamentary group”, pre-empted the OSCE report with a much more positive assessment. “The presidential election of 4 December represents a very significant advance,” said the report by his team, which also included Peter Lilley, the former Tory Trade Secretary. “The election was genuinely competitive and voters were given a real choice between candidates. We found no reason to doubt the integrity of the election process.”
70 Responses to “Oil links of Tory climate denial grandees”
Anon E Mouse
Dave Cole – The scientific consensus in 1975 was for global cooling. At the time exactly the same debates took place, although in a different forum, between people equally passionate about their side of the argument. So why were they wrong then when the “Scientific opinion” said they were right? Scientific opinion is just that and I don’t believe it. I cannot take the leap of faith that is required.
The IPCC, Feb 2007 said the warming “very likely caused by man”. That’s their opinion.
Since it isn’t the opinion of the majority of people in the UK what gives our government the right to tax working poor people more on that basis? The Tories are just as bonkers as well. If the government said for example, we have directly spent £££ – whatever on buying sections of the rain forest or planting trees or installing solar panels in public buildings OK. But they don’t. They take new taxes say on plane flights and where does that money go?
And when people ask for proof this stuff exists they get silly responses from “snake oil salesmen” such as:
“Congratulations! You are working – unpaid – for Exxon’s PR machine!… And guess what: even Exxon has stopped denying manmade climate change, now! Yuo are working, unpaid, for a PR machine that has moved on to pastures slightly less ungreen… You are a sad hangover, unaware even of your own historical occlusion… You are in the dustbin of history, and somehow you deny even _that_ to yourselves…”
That posting in this blog is by an elected council official in Great Britain and does not encourage the majority of the public to take any of this stuff seriously.
Global Cooling Deniers like that mean that I will never again vote for the Greens locally and indeed will actively suggest, again locally, that other people do the same.
Which has nothing to do with the “science” of global warming and being time poor at present I still haven’t checked your links fully but I will.
Have a good weekend fella…
Dave Cole
Anon E Mouse,
That was the opinion then. New facts have come to light. When the facts change, I review my opinions. What do you do?
I look forward to your review of the links. Bear in mind that there are several pieces of software for modelling the climate out there and the best ones need significant computing power.
One last point – why do you think all of those organisations I listed have come out to say that climate change is real, anthropogenic and dangerous?
xD.
grace the collie
Will says “…The more interesting question is whether Lilley and Lawson are motivated by the public good or private profit”. Why is private profit a bad thing?
Will Straw
@gracie the collie
There’s nothing wrong with private profit. But it should never influence public policy – especially something as important as the planet’s future.
Anon E Mouse
Dave Cole – I nearly choked om my Cornflakes whist watching Andrew Marr interviewing Caroline Lucas, the leader of Greens on BBC 1 this morning…
…when Marr quite correctly stated the planet has got colder now for over a decade, including the latest data (luckily the data hadn’t been destroyed by the CRU) Lucas stated that she agreed the planet had got colder – obviously she said the overall trend was upwards but hey ho.
So I’d like to propose Caroline Lucas for LFF’s “Progressive” of the week and (in her case at least) I will no longer call her a Global Cooling Denier because she isn’t.
Well done Caroline Lucas. Now where’s Rupert Read… 😉