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Charles Moore

Credentials

Background

Charles Moore is a journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, and The Spectator.⁴

Moore was a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s most prominent climate science denial campaign group, between 2015 and 2023.⁵

Moore was appointed to the House of Lords in July 2020 by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in an honours list for which the Prime Minister was criticised for “cronyism”. The list included several prominent climate science deniers and critics of environmental regulations.⁶ ⁷ ⁸

In 1984, after working for a number of years as a political correspondent, Moore became the editor of The Spectator where he stayed in the role till 1990. At the time, the magazine was owned by oil tycoon John “Algy” Cluff, who moved his company’s headquarters to 55 Tufton Street in October 2019. The building houses a number of free market, pro-deregulation think tanks and lobby groups.⁹ ¹⁰

Two years later, Moore was appointed editor of The Sunday Telegraph, and soon after became the editor of The Daily Telegraph.¹¹

Moore retired from his role at The Daily Telegraph in October 2003, a few months after former Labour MP George Galloway took legal action against the paper. The Telegraph had falsely claimed that Galloway had received a share of oil earnings worth £375,000 a year from the Saddam Hussein regime.¹²

Moore is a long-time critic of the BBC. Guest editing a BBC Radio 4 morning show at the end of 2019, Moore said the broadcaster “preaches” about a number of issues like a “secular church” and accused the BBC of biased reporting.¹³ ¹⁴

Moore allegedly voted to leave the European Union on referendum day twice. In a piece for The Spectator where he discussed the “relaxed feeling in the polling stations”, Moore described how he was able to vote in London and Sussex, two places he is legally registered to vote, in the same day. This led to an inquiry by the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but the case was closed shortly after. ¹⁵

Following the Church of England’s 1992 decision to allow women to be ordained, Moore converted to Roman Catholicism. He is the founder and chairman of the Rectory Society, an organisation created in 2006 that seeks to encourage the appreciation and maintenance of rectories, vicarages and parsonages.¹⁶ ¹⁷

He is also known for his autobiography of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which he released in three volumes.¹⁸

Stance on Climate Change

December 6, 2018

Appearing as a guest on the panel of BBC’s Question Time, Moore said:¹⁹

“One of the things that makes me sceptical about a lot of climate change talk, is that people keep predicting catastrophe and then changing the prediction about when it’s going to happen.²⁰

What is true about this? I honestly think it’s very very hard to figure out what’s true because there’s so many different imponderables in it.²¹

I do think a lot of people obsessed with climate change have a sort of project fear, and they’re trying to make us do things because everything’s about to collapse. It’s a problem but the human race is very adaptable”.²²

June 21, 2013

In a Spectator column, Moore wrote:²³

“As I write, the Met Office is meeting in Exeter for an unprecedented summit to work out why it has predicted for the past 13 years that the British climate will get warmer only to find, in 12 out of the 13, that it has got colder. No one is admitting, of course, that the end of the world is not nigh, but one does notice much self-exculpatory talk of how weather is affected by ‘a host of other factors’.”²⁴

Key Quotes

November 22, 2019

In a Telegraph article, Moore wrote about Extinction Rebellion:²⁵

“Not only is it anti-Western and anti-capitalist, XR is also a sort of death cult. It protests at extinction, yet is in love with death for the cause”.²⁶

In The Guardian, Moore and his brother Rowan, architecture critic at The Observer, discussed a number of current issues. Rowan asked his brother what he thought of climate change, Charles responded:²⁷

“On climate change, I resist what I see as a political viewpoint masquerading as “the science”. The aim of the large numbers of alarmists is unprecedented government control and the relative impoverishment of western societies. Cheap energy is one of the greatest emancipations produced by our civilisation”.²⁸

October 26, 2019

In a Spectator article on David Attenborough, Moore wrote:²⁹

“There is a small but growing number of people, myself included, who are fed up with the latter (Attenborough)… Now the exotic creatures he presents to us have all become unpaid, co-opted actors in his unending propaganda melodrama against the growth of the human race”.³⁰

January 26, 2019

In a Spectator article, Moore wrote:³¹

“One of the annoying features of greenery is that it involves rich and powerful people telling poorer, less powerful people to get poorer still”.³²

October 13, 2018

In a Spectator article, Moore criticized the IPCC:³³

“Final call to halt “climate catastrophe”’, said the BBC’s website, covering the ‘special report’ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after its meeting in South Korea. It won’t be the final call, though. Every IPCC conference is the ‘last chance to save the planet’, according to its promoters.”³⁴

June 1, 2018

Moore spoke of “green hysteria” in the Telegraph and wrote:³⁵

“The great paradox of greenery is that it is a boom phenomenon: only when a society is awash with dosh does it start believing it wouldn’t mind getting poorer”.³⁶

April 28, 2017

Writing in a Telegraph column, Moore argued:³⁷

“It is time to shift the subject-matter of environmentalism… Climate change is often a highly speculative debate about what might one day happen. Pollution, on the other hand, is often a problem about something which is making millions of people ill right now. Tories should look coolly at the former and turn up the heat against the latter”.³⁸

July 11, 2013

In a Spectator article on fracking and shale gas, Moore wrote:³⁹

“One great advance for the environment is shale gas, though for some reason Greens do not see it that way. It will make us – and has already made America – far less dependent on high carbon-emitting sources of energy”.⁴⁰

Key Deeds

September 23, 2020

The Telegraph reported that Moore had withdrawn his candidacy for the BBC’s Chairman role citing family commitments, following reports he was Boris Johnson’s favoured candidate.⁴¹ ⁴²

September 21 2020

The Daily Mail reported that Moore would be considered by the Prime Minister as a potential candidate for the BBC’s Chairman role. Moore had written earlier in the year that the BBC “could not carry on as before”, and “must start to decolonise”.⁴³

July 31, 2020

Moore was appointed to the House of Lords by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.⁴⁴

May 15, 2020

In a Telegraph article, Moore argued that environmental commentators and academics wanted the coronavirus pandemic to continue “forever” due its benefits to the environment. Moore went on to write that the phrase “climate emergency” had been “invented to persuade government to coerce public opinion”, and used COVID-19 to downplay the dangers of climate change and criticise the UK’s 2050 net-zero emissions target:⁴⁵

“The Covid experience ought to have shown us the difference between a real emergency – a fell plague besetting the world – and a speculative one. Even in the Covid crisis, there is fierce debate about whether such action was necessary. Those doubts should be infinitely stronger in relation to Net Zero. Its entire edifice is based on models – we keep seeing how models can mislead – which make worst-case assumptions about the distant future. Problem, perhaps; emergency, no.”⁴⁶

Moore also referenced a webinar hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.⁴⁷

February 25, 2020

Moore referred to GWPF reports, which claimed that the government’s 2050 net-zero target would cost over £3 trillion, in an article for the Telegraph. Under a subheading titled “Time to come clean about the cost of going green,” Moore wrote that the government’s official advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, “avoids” working out costs of net-zero “accurately”.⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

The GWPF reports and subsequent coverage were strongly criticised for being misleading.⁵⁰

January 25, 2020

Moore wrote an article for The Spectator titled “Do alarmists know the difference between weather and climate?”, where he agreed with Donald Trump’s “prophets of doom” comment at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos.⁵¹

December 28, 2019

Moore had the opportunity to curate an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme as a guest editor where he discussed the “biased” reporting of the BBC on issues like climate change. Speaking to presenter Nick Robinson he opened the programme by arguing that climate change is among the things that; “we are getting preached at by the BBC every day”.⁵²

As curator, Moore invited a number of prominent climate sceptics on to the show. Guests included Michael Kelly and Matt Ridley, board of trustees member and advisor respectively to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which Moore is also a trustee.⁵³

In his concluding comments, Moore said:⁵⁴

“The BBC has decided to be a secular church, and it preaches, and it tells us what we ought to think about things. It tells us we shouldn’t support Brexit and that we should accept climate change alarmism … this is not right”.⁵⁵

January 29, 2017

In a Spectator column, Moore criticized green policies and the “politics of climate change” that will “eventually turn, partly because the policies are often so un-Green in their effects”.⁵⁶

He went on to write about wind farms:⁵⁷

“By their nature, wind farms require lonely, often beautiful sites of great environmental interest. Their supporters are killing the thing they think they love”.⁵⁸

October 2, 2016

Moore wrote about an upcoming lecture by writer and fellow GWPF associate Matt Ridley in a Spectator column. He argued that Ridley does not deny climate science. Moore further suggested that Ridley “studies it, and questions some of the conclusions advanced by some warmist zealots”.⁵⁹

May 18, 2015

Moore joined the Board of Trustees for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.⁶⁰