Reform UK leader Nigel Farage last night called on the U.S. to “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels as he headlined an event at a climate science denial group in Chicago, Illinois.

Farage was the keynote speaker at a 40th anniversary fundraising event for the Heartland Institute, a group that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Farage used his address to bemoan the levels of “net zero fanaticism” in the UK and U.S. – criticising yesterday’s High Court decision to block a new deep coal mine in Cumbria, north west England. He also urged the Heartland Institute to set up in Britain and Europe.

“Give us your wisdom, give us your guidance, give us your discipline. I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond,” he said.

Heartland received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil. A Union of Concerned Scientists report in 2007 alleged that nearly 40 percent of the total funds received by Heartland Institute from ExxonMobil since 1998 were designated for climate change projects.

Heartland is known “for its persistent questioning of climate science”, according to Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, and it has received tens of thousands in donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel behemoth and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.

Heartland was founded in 1984 and originally worked with tobacco giant Philip Morris to deny the harms caused by smoking. 

During his Heartland speech, Farage reiterated his support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. “Let’s get Trump back; let’s drill baby drill,” he said at the end of his address.

He claimed that the UK’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t “make any bloody difference at all”, due to the emissions produced by larger countries like China. He also repeated the misleading claim that “man-made carbon dioxide is only about 3 percent of global, annual production of carbon dioxide”.

In fact, human activity has raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 percent in less than 200 years, according to NASA.

Farage’s address was advertised at the top of the Heartland website next to a series of videos rejecting established climate science, with titles including “Media Lying About Heatwaves” and “Crops LOVE Global Warming”.

Tickets for the event started at $199 and ranged up to $50,000 for a “platinum” table that included the chance to sit with Farage during dinner.

Farage, who was elected as the MP for Clacton, Essex, in July, has a record of casting doubt on climate science. Reform UK, which he co-founded and now leads, campaigns to scrap the UK’s 2050 net zero target and increase fossil fuel extraction.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, has warned that climate action has been delayed by “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”.

As DeSmog has revealed, Farage’s party received £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, equating to 92 percent of its funding. 

“The interests of Mr Farage’s constituents would be far better served if he stayed at home and talked to them about how to manage the growing damage to households and businesses in the town from rising sea levels and more extreme weather events from climate change,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. 

As DeSmog has reported, coastal Clacton is particularly at risk from the consequences of rising temperatures, including heavier rainfall and rising sea levels. Mapping from the science-based visualisation platform Climate Central suggests that substantial parts of the constituency will be at risk of yearly flooding even by 2030.

As a result, a majority (68 percent) of voters in Clacton are concerned about the effects of rising temperatures, according to a recent poll by More in Common, and the think tank E3G.

Farage’s Heartland speech was his third trip to the U.S. since being elected to Parliament on 4 July. On 18 July, the MP flew to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to attend the Republican National Convention, saying that he wanted to “support my friend Donald Trump”. Farage campaigned in 2016 and 2020 for Trump, who erroneously claimed in a recent interview with X owner Elon Musk that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property”.

Farage was then paid £13,000 to speak at the ‘Keep Arizona Free Summit’ on 24 August, a libertarian event hosted by the AZ Liberty Network. 

Project 2025 and NatCon

Heartland is one of several groups on the advisory board of Project 2025, a radical, billionaire-funded agenda for a second Trump presidency drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a U.S. conservative think tank. 

Project 2025, which the Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from, includes plans to scrap flagship climate policies, and turbocharge new fossil fuel production. 

As DeSmog has previously reported, senior Conservative Party politicians have given speeches to the Heritage Foundation in recent years, including current Tory leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick.

Farage spoke at the Heartland event alongside Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian arts college in Michigan. 

Arnn is president and founder of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank and Project 2025 advisory board member. 

Arnn has also sat on the Heritage Foundation’s board of trustees since 2002. In a speech delivered to the Heritage Foundation and published online in 2010, Arnn suggested that climate scientists were “liars” and that “global warming is a stalking horse” for government control and regulation.  

He was also a signatory to the statement of principles of National Conservatism (NatCon), a right-wing initiative launched last year which aims to coalesce populist figures on both sides of the Atlantic and lists Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College as “supporting organisations”. 

NatCon held a conference in Brussels in April, which featured talks by Farage, former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. As DeSmog reported at the time, the event was co-organised by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank funded by MOL, Hungary’s oil and gas company. 

Farage has a long history of questioning climate science and green policies. 

In 2015, he told the libertarian website Spiked: “I think wind energy is the biggest collective economic insanity I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything more stupid, more illogical, or more irrational.”

Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”

The IPCC has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, while scientists at NASA have found that the last 10 years were the hottest on record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest since records began in 1880.

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

Reform UK, the Heartland Institute, and Larry Arnn were approached for comment.