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Jeremy Clarkson

Credentials

Background

Jeremy Clarkson is a broadcaster and journalist best known for the BBC motoring programme Top Gear from which he was dismissed in 2015 after a assaulting producer Oisin Tymon.⁴ ⁵

After a failed attempt to reverse the BBC decision by blog Guido Fawkes, Clarkson co-created The Grand Tour, an Amazon-released series which follows a similar format to Top Gear.⁶ ⁷

Clarkson has also written for a number of papers, namely as a columnist for The Sun and The Sunday Times and is the author of over 10 books.⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰

He is well known for his opinionated comments both on and off screen about various subjects, including lorry drivers, Mexicans, and people with special needs, which have led to numerous complaints. When asked about his responsibility as an influential journalist, Clarkson said: “I enjoy this back and forth, it makes the world go round but it is just opinion”.¹¹ ¹² ¹³

Clarkson is passionate about motoring and has owned many cars. In 2005, Clarkson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Oxford Brookes University, during which Road protestor Rebecca Lush threw a pie in his face.¹⁴ ¹⁵

Clarkson is an outspoken critic of the green movement, casting scorn on environmentalist groups including Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion.¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸

Clark has owned a farm in Oxfordshire since 2008,¹⁹ and has written about the impact of climate change on agriculture and politics based on his experiences.²⁰ ²¹

Stance on Climate Change

Jeremy Clarkson has for decades cast doubt on climate science and human’s impact on the environment – but it appears he has changed his mind.²²

November 24, 2019

Clarkson spoke to The Times about his recent trip to Cambodia to film The Grand Tour and the “graphic demonstration of global warming” that he had witnessed there:²³

“The irony is not lost on me. A man who hosted a car programme for 30 years, limited to 7mph by global warming.

It’s the first time that we’ve ever admitted to there being global warming. We were completely screwed on that trip.

It was alarming, genuinely alarming. But we don’t blame mankind for it. We’ll let Greta do that.”

January 20, 2017

In a Sun column, Clarkson wrote:²⁴

“I bet I can argue with every single point. Like, for example: Is the world heating up at all? And if it is, does man have anything to do with it?

Because let’s face it, when it cooled down and there was an ice age, there was no such thing as a Range Rover or a patio heater”.

Key Quotes

November 12, 2021

In an opinion piece for The Sun, Clarkson wrote that climate activist Greta Thunberg was “a petulant little brat who cannot possibly know what she’s talking about” and an “annoying little bucket of ego”.²⁵

After receiving backlash for his comments, particularly that “someone needs to smack her bottom,” Clarkson said that he stood by his comments about Thunberg.²⁶

December 6, 2019

Clarkson was asked by a journalist from Sky News Australia whether if he would ever “align” himself with Greta Thunberg. Clarkson responded:²⁷

“No, I would never align myself with her. She’s mad and dangerous, and she’s causing young children sleepless nights with her idiocy. I think she needs to get back to school and shut up”.

November 30, 2019

After the Cambodia episode of The Grand Tour aired, Clarkson wrote a column in The Sun about his renewed thoughts on climate change:²⁸

“So is the climate changing? It certainly looks that way. Does Man have something to do with it? Possibly. And is it necessarily a bad thing? Who Knows?”

October 7, 2016

In a Sun column titled “Drilling for gas is way forward if we want lit homes and central heating”, Clarkson wrote:²⁹

People in Lancashire are desperate fracking shouldn’t happen near them – but it won’t make a difference to their lives and will create a more self-sufficient Britain”.

July 12, 2012

Clarkson tweeted:³⁰

“If it is true that carbon emissions heat up the world, plainly we should be burning more.”

Key Deeds

January 14, 2024

In a column for the Times titled “Apparently it’s far-right to grow food”, Clarkson wrote about farmer protests in the Netherlands and Germany regarding environmental policies including restricting the use of nitrogen in farming and removing diesel subsidies for farmers.³¹

Clarkson wrote:

“I fear, however, that sinister forces and the dark arts are being mustered to make sure [the farmers’ protests] lose. Which is why, if you can actually find a report about the dispute, there’s no sympathy for poor old Farmer Giles. Because he’s being labelled as Hitler in a tractor.

Everyone from the BBC to The Guardian is saying that the farmer protests in Germany have nothing to do with fuel prices and are, in fact, a smokescreen for a resurgence of the far right. They imply that if you peer over the steaming piles of manure being left at the Brandenburg Gate, you can see lots of weird rural boys in brown shirts with daggers and suspiciously neat hair.”

Clarkson added:

“Closer to home, Suella Braverman — remember her? — tried to stop a pro-Hamas march in London and was accused of far rightery. And in all of the world’s elections this year, we’re told it’s a battle between the centrist left and the “far right”. This is the new racism and misogyny catch-all badge of disgrace, handed out by the left whenever they think they might lose a debate. “You’re far-right,” they scream.”

September 15, 2023

In a column for the Sun, Clarkson addressed migration due to climate change, writing that “in the early Eighties, when we first head about global warming, we all thought it sounded rather nice”.³²

He continued:

“But then it was pointed out to us by scientists with mad hair, and a Swedish proto-person called Greta, that actually, global warming would cause the ice caps to melt and all the coral in the sea to die.

And again, we all thought, well we don’t live at the North Pole, or in the sea, so we remain unbothered.

Now though, we are starting to see an effect of global warming that really will make our lives extremely different.

Not in a hundred years. Or even in ten. But by tomorrow teatime. Massive human migration.”

Clarkson added:

“During the day [in Mauritania], it was 50 [degrees Celsius]. It was so unbearable that many will think, “Sod this for a game of soldiers. Let’s move to Scotland”. And who can blame them?

Soon then, that trickle of boats crossing the English Channel is going to turn into a flood. And they’ll be filled not with economic migrants.

But climate migrants.

And I’m afraid that Suella Braverman can stand on the white cliffs of Dover, trying to turn them all back, but not since King Canute will anyone have done anything quite so futile.”

August 4, 2023

In a column for the sun titled “Green propaganda of weather forecasts goes against the grain in the real world”, Clarkson wrote about how an erroneous weather forecast promising heavy rains had spurred him and other farmers to harvest crops before they were ready to avoid losing them to damage from rain.³³

Clarkson stated that “weather-persons feel duty bound to jump on the [climate change] bandwagon”, writing:

“We all know that climate change must be mentioned in every movie, TV show, news bulletin and social media post. You can do your stuff about diversity and sustainability and mental health. But only if there’s a global boiling message in there as well.

So I understand that the weather-persons feel duty bound to jump on the bandwagon as well.

They feel compelled, when it’s warm, to paint their maps dark red and talk about “extreme heat”.

And similarly, to keep Greta and the snowflake army happy, they need to say when it’s a bit chilly, that we will all soon be buried under a 20-foot snow drift.”

Clarkson added that weather forecasters “see their weather forecasts now as political weapons” and “baseball bats which can be used to beat the oil companies into submission”, adding that forecasters will “mangle statistics if that’s what’s necessary”.

July 29, 2023

In a column for the Times, Clarkson wrote about his challenges farming in light of the UK’s extraordinarily hot weather in 2023. Writing about switching to growing durum wheat instead of crops that traditionally do well in the English climate, Clarkson wrote:³⁴Archive URL: https://archive.ph/DOn7k³⁵

“We’ve just had, according to some reports, the hottest June ever. Which obviously isn’t true. It was much hotter in the early Eocene era. It was so hot in fact that alligators lived in Alaska. But let’s accept that some people can be prone to a bit of climate change hyperbole and simply accept that June 2023 was lovely and warm. So lovely and warm that our durum wheat has flourished.”

Clarkson continued by saying that farmers and humans more generally should “just adapt” to climate change, while taking a shot at climate protestors:

“This, it seems to me, is the most sensible way of approaching climate change. Don’t walk slowly through the richer bits of London and don’t throw orange powder at paintings. And definitely don’t get your teenage children to appear on the world stage, snarling and raging about “stolen dreams”. Just adapt.”

March 21, 2021

The Metro reported that during a trailer for his new Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm, in which Clarkson would buy a 1,000 acre plot of land and attempt to manage it himself, he was criticised by a local resident who condemned the environmental impact of Clarkson’s lifestyle, stating: “This is global-warming and you race about all your life racing vehicles.” Clarkson replied: “Unbelievable horse s**t.”³⁶

March 1, 2021

Clarkson was quoted in The Daily Express, stating that he had felt “alarmed” by a BBC weather report that forecasted extreme heat. He went on to joke that there was nothing “extreme” about the unseasonably warm February weather: “I’d call it: ‘Lovely weather for the time of year…But I guess that wouldn’t sit well in the BBC plan to mention climate change in every single show,” adding: “They haven’t managed it on Antiques Roadshow yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”³⁷

October 16, 2020

Clarkson wrote an article for The Sun entitled, “Without insects we could all be dead in 50 years – we need to save them,” which acknowledged the causal link between climate change and depleting insect numbers, stating that it was “the biggest threat, by far, to our long-term future on Earth.”³⁸

However, the article also castigated “serious people” who had warned against the dangers of climate change, stating that “to make matters worse, some of the serious people were seriously annoying. Whenever Greta Thunberg popped up on television, I was overcome with the urgent need to buy another patio heater. When Meghan Markle told me to leave the car at home, I wanted to shoot a polar bear in the middle of its face.”³⁹

September 11, 2020

Commenting on Extinction Rebellion’s attempt to prevent the distribution of Murdoch-owned newspapers, Clarkson swrote: “Blocking a highway is against the law. Preventing the free press from operating is even worse. And I’d have recognised that and armed my officers with bulldozers and tasers and permission to use both.”⁴⁰

April 24, 2020

In an article for The Sun, Clarkson compared the consensus on climate change to eugenics, stating:

“…today, we are told that all of science is agreed on global warming. We hear it IS happening and it IS our fault. No argument is allowed. History has taught us that this is dangerous. A hundred years ago, someone came up with a new idea called eugenics.”⁴¹

March 22, 2020

In an article for The Times entitled: ‘My old age is cancelled, society’s about to collapse and the greens just can’t stop smiling’, Clarkson argued that environmentalists welcomed the COVID-19 pandemic as a solution to overpopulation, stating that, “of course, we could explain to our idiotic green friends that thousands and thousands of people are dying. But let us not forget that ‘eco-ists’ have been calling for a Thanos-level cut in the world’s population for years. In 2018, their spiritual leader, Sir Attenborough, said ‘our population growth has to come to an end’. Clarkson also stated: “so, a virus that kills 10% or 20% of us? That’s something the greens would welcome. Especially if it’s essentially a cull of the old and the sick.”⁴²

August 11, 2019

Clarkson spoke about his distaste for cyclists in London and argued that cycle lanes aren’t good for the environment. He claimed that cycle lanes will soon be thought of as a bad idea, using the example of the U-turn on diesel cars.⁴³

March 1, 2017

In a Sun column, Clarkson called the proposed ban on diesel cars in the city centres of Paris, Madrid and Athens as “draconian”. He went on to say, “one day we will learn to ignore the messages of doom from climate ‘scientists’”.⁴⁴

January 28, 2017

Clarkson criticised the London air pollution warning issued by London mayor Sadiq Khan and the subsequent media coverage, suggesting that “the air was so clear and so fresh and so beautiful that I even went for a walk”. In the same piece he claimed that Prince Charles had “loony climate-change mates running amok”.⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

October 30, 2012

Clarkson expressed his views on the “BBC2 iceberg show”, likely to be Operation Iceberg, a documentary presented by Chris Packham which explores the unknown world of icebergs. Clarkson tweeted; “Amazing. The BBC2 iceberg show managed 44 minutes without bringing fucking climate change into it. Good show, now ruined.”⁴⁷

January 9, 2010

In what looks to be a Top Gear Live panel show sponsored by Shell V-Power, Clarkson was asked about why he thinks Australia is dangerous when the UK has “arctic weather”. Clarkson blamed the weather on “too many green people in the world, not buying enough Range Rovers, to warm it up”.⁴⁸