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Thursday, 3 July 2025

The UK Climate and Nature Bill

Here in Surrey, the recent spells of fine, dry and warm – sometimes very warm – weather have been most pleasant. Particularly as I am now on my way to recovery from the broken arm which I sustained back in January. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I took my camera down to my local lake, Broadwater Lake in Farncombe, to see how the wildlife was getting along this year. I was astonished!

Five years ago, there were usually 15 to 20 new goslings each summer. But since then, with three of the springs and summers having been dry and warm, the goose population has exploded. Two years ago, there were about 50 new young ones; last year, 80. And this year – well, you can see what has happened. There must be at least 60 or 70 geese in the picture. There were more behind me and to my left. And this is only one of two spots around the lake where they like to congregate. The ducks are doing almost as well, too. Warm weather is not only pleasant for humans; it’s great for the wildlife, too!

But not everyone agrees. A Liberal Democrat MP named Roz Savage is sponsoring a “climate and nature bill,” which is currently going through the parliamentary procedure. Showing the religious zeal, arrogance and recklessness typical of deep green activists, Ms Savage’s bill seeks to pose some very serious threats, if it were to become law, to the UK economy, to our energy and industrial future, and to the freedoms of all of us.

The bill’s progress

This bill was first introduced to the Commons in October 2024. It is a private member’s bill, begun in 2021, and now sponsored by the Lib Dem MP for South Cotswolds. It had its second reading on 24th January 2025, at which debate was adjourned until Friday July 11th. As I write this, that date is only a few days away.

The bill’s text

You can find the text of the bill, as submitted for the second reading, here: [[1]]. It identifies itself as a bill: “To require the United Kingdom to meet climate and nature targets. To give the Secretary of State a duty to implement a strategy to achieve those targets. To establish a Climate and Nature Assembly to advise the Secretary of State in creating that strategy. To give duties to the Committee on Climate Change and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee regarding the strategy and targets. And for connected purposes.”

Among the official parliamentary supporters of the bill (on the last page) are two Lib Dem MPs, four Labour, one Labour Co-op, two Tories, one Green, one SNP and one Plaid Cymru.

Zero Hour

This bill is the brainchild of a climate campaign group called Zero Hour. Their site [[2]] describes them as “74,505 people calling for the Government to deliver REAL change for climate and nature.” To put that number in context, it is less than a third of the current Reform UK party membership.

But they have a large number of declared supporters, some of them very influential. Among these are 190 MPs (almost 30 per cent of the Commons!). Of these, 80 are Labour, 72 Lib Dems (their entire parliamentary caucus!), twelve Independents including Jeremy Corbyn, seven SNP, five Labour Co-op, four Greens, four Plaid Cymru, two SDLP, two Tories, one Alliance and one DUP. They also have 54 peers, including seven bishops. Six mayors, including Sadiq Khan. Eight MSPs and three members of the Welsh Senedd. No less than fifteen political parties, and more than 200 “scientists.” (I give that word scare quotes, because many of them are no more than paid shills for deep green agendas, and some wouldn’t know the scientific method if it hit them on the nose.) Oh, and 35 faith leaders.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this list is the 377 local councils, at various levels, that have declared their support for this organization and its bill. These include four county councils: Cambridgeshire, Devon, Oxfordshire and Rutland. 30 borough councils, including five in Surrey: Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Runnymede, Surrey Heath and Waverley. And 27 district councils, including Mole Valley. Half the local councils in Surrey – including mine – have chosen to place themselves on this list of shame! Without even asking us.

A few details

So, here are some of the low-lights in the bill.

1)     1(2)(a). It sets a “climate target” based on the Paris agreement. It commits to reaching this target (whatever it is by then, and regardless of how unachievable it might be) in 2030, in 2035, and forever into the future. This represents a series of commitments, made by successive governments to the United Nations on our behalves, without we ordinary people having ever been consulted, or had any chance to object. And the commitment is completely open-ended.

2)     1(2)(b). It sets a “nature target” that demands that the UK “halts and reverses its overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature in the United Kingdom and overseas.” Again, this is an open-ended commitment, about which we the people have never even been consulted.

3)     2(6) sets out a whole raft of requirements:

a)     Most of all, point (d): “Ensuring the end of the exploration, export and import of fossil fuels by the United Kingdom as rapidly as possible.” That simply can’t work in the current state of technology. To give up fossil fuels when we do not have any other abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources would be civilizational suicide.

b)     Point (g): “ensuring that all activities in the United Kingdom which affect the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations and ecosystems prioritise avoidance of the loss of nature…” That sounds to me like a complete top-down takeover of the entire farming industry, likely with very serious negative effects. As happened in Sri Lanka in 2022, where government, by imposing green policies on farmers, caused a famine: [[3]].

c)     Point (h), demanding avoidance, limiting, restoring or offsetting of “adverse impacts in the United Kingdom and overseas on ecosystems and human health” of “United Kingdom-generated production and consumption of goods and services” and “all related trade, transport and financing.” This looks to me like an explicit demand to end all economic freedom for everyone in the UK.

d)     Point (i), demanding “a presumption against large scale energy products over 100MW generation capacity.” This amounts to a presumption against all nuclear power, since even small modular reactors (SMRs) average around 300MW. They want to allow “nimbys” to be able to block everyone else from access to the abundant energy supplies, which our civilization will need going forward.

4)     3(1). Requires an expert independent body to establish “a Climate and Nature Assembly… comprising a representative sample of the United Kingdom population.” This looks like an attempt to repeat the saga of the UK Climate Assembly, a travesty of democracy that was pushed by Extinction Rebellion, and about which I have already written, here: [[4]].

5)     3(4). The involvement of the CCC does not bode well for the impartiality of such a body. The CCC has persistently peddled extremism about the climate change scam, and over decades has failed even to try to produce an objective, unbiased cost-benefit analysis of nett zero policies. Nor does the involvement of JNCC, which says it “focuses on turning robust scientific evidence into action for nature conservation and recovery.” [[5]].

The parliamentary debate - 1

Hansard has done its usual thorough job of recording the parliamentary debate, which took place on January 24th. It is in two parts: [[6]], [[7]].

Ms Savage started by talking about “the intertwined climate and nature crises.” Even though, for those of us who look at the evidence, there is no climate crisis. At least, not one caused by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. As I recently documented, here: [[8]].

She denigrated what she perceives as the direction of travel of our industrial and fossil-fuel civilization, calling it “a strip mine next to a rubbish tip next to a shopping mall.” We must hope that her strip mine was not one of those producing lithium for EV batteries! And she identified the drafters of her bill as “world-leading climate scientists, ecologists and conservationists.” Not exactly unbiased parties, then.

The “State of Nature” report

She referenced a 2023 “State of Nature” report, here: [[9]]. It is produced by “a collaboration of over 60 partners.” These include Friends of the Earth, the afore-mentioned JNCC, and the World Wildlife Fund. Again, hardly unbiased. Prompting thoughts such as: Is this report peer-reviewed? If so, by whom? And where is the raw data, to allow those who so wish to replicate the work? Even the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) maintains at least a pretence of having some science behind their reports. But here, I see nothing.

I took the, perhaps unwise, step of skim-reading this report. Without ever quite being explicit about it, the tone suggests subtly that we humans are not natural (as we obviously are), but are in some way separate from “nature” and hostile to it. The report says, for example: “Nature needs space to live and flourish, but around the globe we humans have decreased and diminished those spaces.” (Prompting a retort, “if you want an easy way to cap the impact of humans on nature in the UK, why don’t you stop taking in all those immigrants?”)

Then I saw that “Goal A of the Global Biodiversity Framework commits parties to halt human-induced extinctions of threatened species.” I was reminded that I have many times asked environmentalists to name even one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and to say exactly what I did to contribute to that extinction, and approximately when. I have never gotten an answer to this; not even one. Are we, perhaps, being denied over these issues our basic human right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?

I will mention, in conclusion, that the phrase “climate change” occurs in the report no less than 101 times. And I will offer the following as a perfect example of propaganda without even a microgram of proof or science: “Climate change is accelerating and the negative impacts on nature are likely to increase.”

The parliamentary debate - 2

To return to Ms Savage. “Through the global biodiversity frame-work, the Government have committed to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.” So, 30 per cent of the UK land and sea area – our land and sea – is to be out of bounds to human beings, permanently? Who will own and manage it? And how can this be anything but a giant land- (and sea-) grab?

Next: “we cannot go wrong in moving away from fossil fuels, given the implications for air quality as well as for the climate.” I see a giant red flag here; for I know a lot about the “science” and history of air pollution toxicology in the UK. Due to lack of space, I will have to leave that story for another day. But it’s not one that reflects well on UK governments.

She moaned about “expanding deserts.” (No: places like the Sahel are actually greening). “Melting ice caps.” (Not really: Greenland’s will take 20,000 years to melt, and Antarctica is gaining ice). “British moorlands on fire.” (Nothing new: I remember 1976.) And “rainfall, which is becoming increasingly heavy as climate change kicks in.” (Prove it, Madam!)

Then we had the old chestnut about seeing far less bugs on car windscreens now than 60 years ago. That may be true, but the main reason is not any lack of the bugs themselves, but the aerodynamic shape of modern car windscreens. Take a long journey on the upper deck of a double-decker bus in high summer, and you will see more splatted bugs than you could possibly wish for. (I did in August 2023).

Clive Lewis, Labour MP and one of the bill’s official supporters, talked of “climateflation.” He described this as “the stubborn inflation where the basic staples of life, such as food and water, increasingly become more costly.” Now, this phenomenon is indeed real. But it is not caused, as Mr Lewis claims, by “the climate crisis.” Its cause is actually the green political policies, such as “nett zero,” that have been put in place by successive governments. When energy is unnecessarily expensive, everything becomes unnecessarily expensive.

To his credit, the Tory shadow minister, Andrew Bowie, responded with relative sanity. “It is clear that we should not support the damaging measures the Bill would require.” “Aligning to the targets, which the Bill would oblige the Secretary of State to achieve, would require even more drastic action to reduce emissions.” And: “we cannot say that we want to protect farmland and the great British countryside while seeking to approve at pace large-scale renewable projects that would do the exact opposite.” I wonder why Mr Bowie was not trumpeting these points from the roof-tops a year ago, when his party was still in power?

Tory MP Greg Smith was even more forthright. He even had the guts to state the blazingly obvious: “Fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come.” But unfortunately, his credibility as a truth-teller, along with all other Tories elected before 2024, is less than absolute zero, given that he co-operated with Johnson and Sunak in what they did to us when in power.

The debate was adjourned at 1:53pm, to be resumed on Friday 11th July.

In conclusion

This would seem like an opportunity for Reform UK to make some waves. For example, by inquiring:

1)     Why the United Nations is being allowed to control UK government policies – and has been for more than 30 years, regardless of which party has been in power.

2)     What specific evidence there is of the “degradation of nature” that we, the people of the UK, are accused of having caused, and that implicates us as individuals in causing it.

3)     Why a private member’s bill is being used to introduce “by the back door” policies as radical as ending the use of fossil fuels, taking over farming, destroying economic freedom, and establishing a presumption against nuclear power.

4)     How these policies could possibly be in the interests of the people of the UK in the current economic situation. Or, indeed, at any other time.

5)     Why the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party have expressed unanimous support for illiberal policies, that undemocratically go against the interests of the people of the UK.


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