Ross Clark

Credentials

Trinity Hall, Cambridge (subject unknown).¹

Background

Ross Clark is a British journalist who has written for the Spectator, the Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Sun.²

Clark regularly questions climate science in columns for the Spectator, arguing, for instance, that while “climatic observations” should be trusted, predictions should be taken with “a pinch of salt” because “the only near-certain thing is that they will all be wrong”.³

Clark has been strongly critical of climate activist Greta Thunberg, calling her a “well-crafted piece of PR”,⁴ and the activist group Extinction Rebellion, which he has described as a “wannabe Marxist revolution in disguise”.⁵ He has described a David Attenborough documentary on climate change as “propaganda”.⁶

He has also cast doubt on the link between climate change and extreme weather events and said the public should hear more about the “beneficial side of climate change”.⁷

Clark has defended fossil fuel companies as the “unsung heroes” of the modern world, and argued that criticism of them is an attempt to “palm off responsibility”.⁸

In an article for the Spectator, Clark stated that he had investments in both the oil industry and renewable energy companies.⁹

Clark also wrote numerous articles about the COVID-19 pandemic,¹⁰ ¹¹ including columns about the effectiveness of quarantining measures,¹² the accuracy of mortality rates,¹³ and the “cycle of panic” around the disease.¹⁴

Stance on Climate Change

January 21, 2023

In a January 2023 Daily Mail article, Clark wrote:¹⁵

“Climate change is a world that has come to be controlled by activists and campaigners who claim to be on the side of science and reason but who are really spinning narratives which suit ulterior motives […] We have somehow developed an atmosphere in which anyone who expresses scepticism is denounced as a ‘denier’, yet baseless narratives of doom are promoted as fact. To have succeeded in creating this atmosphere is an astonishing achievement on the part of climate activists. Their manipulation of public emotion is truly remarkable.”

The article concluded with Clark’s prediction that:

“We will look back to the prophecies of climatic doom being made today in the same way that we now look back at the 18th/19th century economist Thomas Malthaus’s predictions of mass famine, or the warnings in the 1960s and 1970s that a new ice age was on its way.”

December 3, 2019

In a column about weather events and global warming, Clark said:¹⁶

“The world is getting warmer, that much is clear. But the evidence for that needs to be dissociated from the tendency of some campaigners to try to pin every piece of adverse weather on man-made climate change.”

April 26, 2019

Clark discussed his views on the Left and the term “climate change denial” in a column for the Spectator:¹⁷

“The Left has moved on from simply using the emotive language of Holocaust-denial and applying it to climate change scepticism. Rather, they now treat climate scepticism as a medieval-style heresy.”

Later writing:

“With pressure already being put on Facebook, Twitter and the like to remove material on climate change ‘denial’, it is becoming possible to imagine a time when it really does become illegal to question the ‘scientific consensus’ on climate.”

October 8, 2018

In an article titled “Good news: we now have until 2030 to save the Earth”, Clark argued that IPCC reports in 2018, which told governments they had 12 years to avert climate catastrophe, were a good sign, as previous organisations had given a stricter deadline:¹⁸

“Phew! The dangers of global warming are receding. Admittedly that is not how most news sources are reporting the publication of the latest IPCC report this morning. But it is the logical conclusion of reading coverage of the issue over the past decade.”

He then went on to write:

“Given the failure of the world to come to an end, it is tempting to say, just as we do when religious cults and other fantasists make doom-laden predictions which fail to come to pass: well, the whole thing must be a hoax.”

Key Quotes

March 15, 2023

In a comment piece for the Telegraph, Ross Clark criticised the UK government’s plan to install 600,000 heat pumps by 2028 and ban fossil fuel based heating systems by 2035, arguing that “the Government simply hasn’t thought through its net zero strategy”.¹⁹

Clark wrote: “One day we may look back to the winter of 2022/23 as a golden age, when most of us could still afford to keep warm […] Don’t count on having that facility in future.”

January 21, 2023

The Daily Mail published an article by Clark titled: “We all want to save the planet but the Government’s barely debated and uncosted fantasy of achieving net zero by 2050 will leave us all poorer, colder and hungrier”.²⁰

The article, which featured excerpts from his upcoming book, argued that “there is virtually no ill in the world for which climate change has not been blamed” and called the UK’s Climate Change Act – which introduced the UK’s target of net zero emissions by 2050 – a “very large bomb” and “ludicrous”.

Clark also criticised the “hysteria and doom-mongering” surrounding the climate change debate, before claiming: “If you want to reach net zero in the next few years through the curtailment of lifestyles, you are not going to achieve it without returning society to a pre-industrial level of subsistence”.

He added:

“I fear that under net zero, cars will become a luxury; we will return to the world as it was before the 1960s, with the wealthy driving around on pleasantly empty roads, but with everyone else expected to take the bus […] That is simply cruel.”

And, after criticising the “hyperbole and hysteria about the world heating up”, continued:

“Flying, too, will become a preserve of the rich, since aviation is going to be one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. Planes might even have to be relegated to museums.”

January 21, 2023

The Daily Mail published an article by Clark titled “My inconvenient truth: Ross Clark accepts that the planet IS warming. But in a new book he challenges the consensus and argues that the hysteria and doom-mongering that now surround any debate risk doing more harm than climate change ever could”.²¹

The article contains excerpts from Clark’s upcoming anti-net zero book. In one extract, Clark suggested “there might even be some benefits from a warming climate […] such as the ability to grow a richer variety of crops in Britain, but this tended to go missing from the reporting”.

In another section, Clark argued that:

“There seem to be very simple rules behind the narrative being spun to the public. First, that climate change offers nothing positive, only harm. Second, that the only way to tackle that harm is to end climate change. The idea of adapting to it is considered sacrilege.”

Contrary to Clark’s claim, climate adaptation is a major aspect of the global response to climate change.

Clark concedes that “the world is warming and there are many reasons why we should want to cut carbon emissions and adopt cleaner forms of energy”, but also argued that “some of what passes for warnings on climate is sheer flight of fancy” and “is not climate science, nor science of any kind; it is science fiction, dreamed up to serve a particular political outlook”.

A further section criticised what Clark sees as the “hysteria” around climate change. He wrote:

“Climate change is a world that has come to be controlled by activists and campaigners who claim to be on the side of science and reason but who are really spinning narratives which suit ulterior motives […] We have somehow developed an atmosphere in which anyone who expresses scepticism is denounced as a ‘denier’, yet baseless narratives of doom are promoted as fact. To have succeeded in creating this atmosphere is an astonishing achievement on the part of climate activists. Their manipulation of public emotion is truly remarkable.”

The article concluded with Clark’s prediction that:

“We will look back to the prophecies of climatic doom being made today in the same way that we now look back at the 18th/19th century economist Thomas Malthaus’s predictions of mass famine, or the warnings in the 1960s and 1970s that a new ice age was on its way.”

November 29, 2022

In a Daily Mail article titled “If Rishi Sunak caves in to the wind turbine zealots, the lights will go out in Britain… and perhaps on his premiership, too”, Clark argued that “blackouts might soon become necessary” due to wind power.²²

He wrote that “anyone remotely well-versed in the science of wind energy” understands that “a future predicated on wind energy would be disastrous”, and added:

“Wind turbines are great galumphing things that despoil Britain’s rural landscapes, pummel the prices of nearby houses and plague residents with terrible noise and light pollution […] Yet the blind insistence of eco-zealots on more and more wind power – and the weakness of our Prime Minister in potentially bowing to their demands – means we risk pursuing such a barmy policy”.

Clark referred to the policy of developing renewable wind energy as “all of this wind madness” before suggesting that “the current moratorium on fracking […] is utter madness”.

November 29, 2022

In a Spectator Australia article titled “Britain isn’t ready for onshore wind”, Clark wrote:²³

“If Rishi Sunak concedes to the demands of a group of (reportedly) around 50 MPs and lifts the moratorium on onshore wind which has been in place for seven years, it won’t take long before we find out why it was imposed in the first place. There are few places in England where you can build a wind farm of any size without either causing serious annoyance to locals or compromising valued landscapes.”

Clark also called for green-minded rebel MPs to push for “increasing investment in gas”, before concluding that the so-called “rebel MPs” should “leave [onshore wind] well alone”.

November 9, 2022

In a Spectator article titled “Britain would be wrong to pay climate change reparations”, Clark wrote:²⁴

“Would Britain be right […] to pay reparations to developing countries on the basis that the industrial revolution started in Britain and we, therefore, have high historic carbon emissions? Absolutely not, and for several reasons.”

He also called evidence linking weather-related disasters to manmade climate change “lazy”, and said that it was based on “debunked data” that “wouldn’t stand up in court”.

According to his article, requests for loss and damage payments from countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are “spurious claims”.

January 21, 2020

In a Spectator column titled “Climate change isn’t responsible for Australia’s hailstorms”, Clark wrote:²⁵

“We should never take too seriously anyone who says that if we keep carbon emissions to x million tonnes, we will limit the rise in global temperatures by y degrees”.

“Greta’s fantastical claim at Davos that we only have eight years to save the Earth is nonsense. We should trust climatic observations; but take all predictions with a pinch of salt. The only near certain thing is that they will all be wrong”.

October 10, 2019

Clark defended oil and gas companies in a Spectator column:²⁶

“While an increasingly extreme climate lobby seeks to deny it, fossil fuels have been the fundamental ingredient of the industrialisation which has changed life for nearly all of us vastly for the better over the past two centuries.”

He went on to write:

“Oil and coal companies are the unsung heroes of the greatest period in the improvement of global living standards the world has ever known.”

He concluded the article by suggesting that blaming oil and gas companies for climate change is an attempt to “palm off responsibility”:²⁷

“It is merely an attempt by the left to seize the issue of climate change in order to promote its anti-capitalist agenda.”

September 2, 2019

In an article about hurricanes, Clark wrote:²⁸

“Anyone who claims that Dorian, or any other hurricane, is a product of climate change and asserts that it would not have happened, or would have been less damaging, without man-made climate change does not have science on their side. On the contrary, it is they who are denying the evidence.”

April 17, 2019

In a Spectator column, Clark wrote about how Extinction Rebellion have been given an “easy ride” by the government and commentators, and that their protests were “attempting to bypass democracy”.²⁹

Clark went on to describe Extinction Rebellion as:

“A continuum of the anti-globalisation movement, which has leapt upon climate change as a vehicle with which to further its battle against capitalism. It behaves as if it owns the issue of climate change – that no-one thought of trying to cut carbon emissions until they did – and is being allowed to get away with this pretence.”

“Extinction Rebellion is no group of visionaries – just a left-wing mob determined to disrupt the lives of the rest of us. They need to be treated as such.”

January 11, 2018

In an article about oil and gas companies in New York City, Clark said:³⁰

“I am not a stooge of the oil industry, or receive any payment from it. I have a balanced portfolio of investments which includes shares of renewable energy companies as well as oil companies, and according to an analysis of my portfolio I am under-invested in the latter relative to the market as a whole.”

Key Actions

November 23, 2023

A DeSmog analysis of over 2000 opinion pieces published in The Telegraph found that Ross Clark had written 27 which attacked or sought to undermine climate science, policy efforts, or pro-climate campaign groups during six months between April-October 2023, the highest number of any columnist during this time.³¹

February 2, 2023

Clark’s most recent book, Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet), in which he argues the UK government’s policy to reach net zero by 2050 is a “terrible mistake”, was published.³²

In a review of Clark’s book, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, wrote that Clark’s writing “is an extended polemic that recycles the arguments put forward by [GWPF founder Nigel] Lawson 15 years ago”, and points out that data supporting Clark’s concerns about solar farms on agricultural land and the cost of improving British homes’ energy efficiency “seem to have been cherrypicked or misconstrued to fit Clark’s thesis”.³³

December 8, 2022

In an article titled “Britain should embrace new coal mining” written after Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove greenlit Britain’s first deep coal mine in 30 years, Clark wrote:³⁴

“To hear today’s reaction to the news that Michael Gove has granted permission to build Britain’s first deep coal mine for a generation is to step through the looking glass into a bizarre world where a Conservative government is considered evil for helping to create mining jobs in a de-industrialised region – and the ‘enlightened’ position is to eradicate the very last traces of the coal industry.”

Clark continued: “In the minds of Deben [chair of the government’s Climate Change Committee], Sharma and others, only one thing seems to matter: lowering Britain’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. All other considerations, such as jobs and national prosperity, seem to go out of the window.”

November 12, 2022

In a Spectator article titled “The true cost of renewable energy”, Clark wrote that “the price of green energy is a form of terrible segregation, where the rich will have access to light and heat, and those who need it most, the poor, will shiver in the dark”.³⁵

November 7, 2022

In a Daily Mail article titled “Has anyone caused as much damage to the British economy as Ed Miliband?”, Clark criticised Miliband, who is Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero and former leader of the Labour Party, for committing a future Labour government to making loss and damage payments to developing countries especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.³⁶

Clark called the payments “caving in to demands” to cover loss and damage that was “supposedly” caused by climate change, and criticised Miliband for having “fallen for” the calls of developing countries “hook, line and sinker”.

He also claimed that “no one really has any idea of how Britain can reach this [net zero] target without crashing the economy” and that “thanks to the Climate Change Act, our economy now has a very large weight attached to its feet”.

November 1, 2022

In an article for The Spectator titled “What BP’s soaring profits tell us about our dependence on oil”, Clark criticised former Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s prediction that “once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late”.³⁷

Clark wrote: “Those, like Carney, who saw a grim future for oil were swung by their Panglossian belief in a green future, failing to see the bigger picture”.

Clark also described Britain as “carpeted” by wind and solar farms, and added the disclaimer:

“For the benefit of climate activists who live under the delusion that anyone who fails to share their belief must be in the pay of big oil, I am not part of the bonanza – I have avoided investing directly in fossil fuel companies for several years specifically so that no one can level that claim at me.”

August 8, 2022

Clark began a Spectator article titled “How did climate doomsters get the Great Barrier Reef so wrong?”, by saying:³⁸

“We are, of course, in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and the ‘sixth mass extinction’ of life on Earth. It is just that one of the iconic victims doesn’t seem to be playing ball just at the moment.”

Clark wrote that despite concerns from scientists about continued bleaching events affecting the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science “reveals that coral cover has not only recovered but across two-thirds of the reef it is now at its highest level in 36 years of observations“. Clark wrote that “the environmental movement can [not] quite bring itself to celebrate the result of the latest survey”, and that media coverage of the report was “an object lesson in how environmental news is driven only by misery”.

However, the report stated that while “region-wide hard coral cover” had recovered and reached “the highest level recorded in the past 36 years of monitoring” in two regions of the GBR, the reefs “continue to be exposed to cumulative stressors”, and that “while the observed recovery offers good news for the overall state of the GBR, there is increasing concern for its ability to maintain this state”.³⁹

June 17, 2022

In a Spectator Australia article titled “The truth about Britain’s ‘record-breaking’ heatwave”, Clark argued that:⁴⁰

“The reason we keep having ‘record-breaking heat is not so much because of climate change – although rising global temperatures are slightly increasing the chances of records being broken – but because there are so many records to break.”

He added: “it won’t mean ‘climate chaos’ if some of these fall – it will simply be an inevitable result of ‘record temperatures’ having become a debased currency”.

April 28, 2022

In a Telegraph article comment piece titled “A windfall tax on oil and gas is just Left-wing populism”, Clark argued: “When Starmer calls for a windfall tax what he is really saying is: I want to cut your pension to feed yet more government expenditure”.⁴¹

He questioned why Government ministers “can’t summon the intellectual confidence to challenge the left wing conceit that profit is a dirty word”, and added:

“If the Government wants to encourage investment in native oil and gas production – and it should – it needs to […] give the industry reassurances that it is not going to be regulated out of existence by net zero commitments”.

April 18, 2022

In a Spectator Australia article titled “Do we really need a GCSE focused on saving the planet?”, Clark wrote that the new GCSE in natural history is likely to be “yet another fashionable, soft subject which is designed to indoctrinate rather than educate”.⁴²

He continued:

“Children will be taught, for example, the ‘impact of diet choices for land usage and environmental impact’ […] That isn’t educating children to think for themselves; it is trying to train them to be the next generation of environmental activists.”

He criticised the new GCSE – an academic qualification in a particular subject taken by secondary students in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – as “green propaganda”, an “introduction of political spin” and “the latest manifestation of the old Marxist trick of trying to advance your politics by drumming them into the impressionable young”.

January 1, 2022

In a Telegraph comment piece titled, “Myopic politicians are wilfully blind to the truth about green energy”, Clark wrote:⁴³

“It has been a received wisdom among many in government, opposition and in the great green blob that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy would make us better off. How laughable that claim seems now.”

After arguing that Britain’s energy crisis “has been made much worse by energy policies which for a decade and a half have doggedly pursued the objective of cutting carbon emissions without any regard to the costs”, Clark also claimed that the Government had “deprived Britain of what could have been by now a very productive native shale gas industry”.

Downplaying the risks associated with fracking, Clark added: “The government folded in the face of environmentalists who were determined to squash the nascent industry by ramping up fears of ‘earthquakes’ or rather minor tremors, most of which cannot even be sensed by humans on Earth’s surface”.

November 3, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph headlined “I’m no fan of the Chinese Communist Party – but on the environment, they’ve got it right,” which claimed that while western countries like the UK are “ramping up the alarmist rhetoric in the hope of extracting carbon-cutting pledges,” countries like China, Russia, India will not be “making their people poorer in the name of a greener future.”⁴⁴

Clark also wrote that COP26 would contribute to China becoming the world’s main economic superpower and that it would continue to be the investor of choice for “developing countries in Africa.”

May 25, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Spectator criticising the government’s proposals to ban the sale of new gas boilers after 2025 as part of a net zero decarbonisation strategy to be implemented by 2050.⁴⁵

Disputing the efficacy of renewable technologies, Clark wrote: “The government’s problem is that it is now legally-committed to a zero carbon policy which cannot be met without vast cost – and even then can only be met with technology which has yet to be invented,” adding: “Even a well-insulated home with an electric heat pump powered by wind farms and solar panels is not really going to be zero-carbon – not when we have no economic means of producing steel, cement or bricks without emitting carbon.”

April 6, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Daily Mail criticising the government’s plans to replace 600,000 gas boilers with heat pumps by 2028 as part of an attempt to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.⁴⁶

He wrote: “Homeowners face being thrown to the wolves to meet these ill-thought-out targets — spending hard-earned savings on refurbishments that may or may not cut carbon emissions,” adding: “Indeed, the only certainty is these new rules will make a lot of Britain’s homeowners much poorer.”

April 5, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph questioning the costs of the government’s decarbonisation policies, intended to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Arguing that net zero “could yet prove a devastating hostage to fortune,” Clark said: “Voters, aligned in principle with climate campaigners, may well have a different view when they realise they could end up paying many thousands of pounds, or even face losing their homes.”⁴⁷

Commenting on the government’s decision to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, Clark wrote: “The switch to electric vehicles promises to make life easier for elite motorists, who will enjoy emptier roads, while pricing ordinary drivers off the road.” He also described plans to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 as “just the latest indication of the massive costs that are going to be dumped on ordinary people.”

March 5, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph which argued that the government had misled the public about the cost of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.⁴⁸ This followed revelations that the Treasury had sent an email to then-chancellor Phillip Hammond, published after a two year freedom of information dispute, describing the £70 billion estimated annual cost of decarbonisation from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as “more realistic” than the government-backed £50 billion estimate from the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Clark argued that: “if it involved any other subject, the news that the Government hid estimates of the true cost of one of its policies would be a scandal.”

Clark described net zero decarbonisation as a “ruinously expensive policy,” stating that: “even the Government’s higher estimate of £70 billion a year cost to achieve net zero by 2050 is likely itself to be an under-estimate.” He concluded: “the real deniers are those who claim that we can achieve a unilateral policy of net zero by 2050 without serious costs to the UK economy, if not an outright diminution in living standards.”⁴⁹

February 26, 2021

Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph which criticised a report by climate science journal Nature Geoscience, which had claimed that changes in the Atlantic current system could lead to parts of Europe experiencing much colder winters by the end of the 21st Century.⁵⁰

Describing such claims as “hysteria” and “scaremongering,” Clark wrote: “much of the claims about us succumbing to ever wilder and more extreme weather is just hyperbole – lazy and contradictory assertion fed by our failure to remember that the weather always has been and always will be pretty extreme.”

February 19, 2021

Clark wrote an article in The Telegraph commenting on power outages that had occurred in Texas following an ice storm.⁵¹

He argued that efforts to decarbonise the economy had contributed to such events, stating: “We invest in more and more intermittent forms of energy such as wind and solar while the provision of energy storage lags well behind, resulting in several close shaves recently as the wind dropped and the sun went down.”

He also stated: “In America as in Britain, debate is becoming fixated on decarbonising energy without thinking enough about resilience.”

December 9, 2020

Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph criticising the Climate Change Committee (CCC)’s advice to the government to ban gas boilers by 2033, referring to it as “yet another pointless eco-catastrophe.”⁵² Clark added:

“It is right to build new homes to high energy efficiency standards, but it is sadly all too easy to predict the result of a rushed scheme to retrofit all existing homes to make them zero carbon. Homeowners will be fleeced, left with damp, chilly homes. Worse, the costs are bound to fall disproportionately on the lowest- income homeowners.”

November 16, 2020

In an article for The Daily Mail, Clark commented on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030, disputing the efficacy of electric cars in reducing carbon emissions. Clark wrote: “Manufacturing electric cars also creates far more carbon emissions than making petrol or diesel ones. So even if they are powered by ‘green’ electricity, you will have to drive thousands of miles before you actually save any carbon.”⁵³

October 29, 2020

Writing for Spectator Life, Clark disputed whether the oil industry would be supplanted by renewable energy, questioning its efficacy in achieving carbon neutrality in comparison to carbon capture and storage (CCS). Clark argued that:⁵⁴

“For one thing, the ambition of many countries to go carbon-neutral by 2050 does not necessarily mean that it will be achieved. Such a vast change to the economy relies on a combination of new technologies becoming economic on a commercial scale by that date. We still don’t know, for example, how we are going to store energy generated by intermittent wind and solar farms.”

The article concluded that, “we are still a long way from efficient CCS, but there is nothing to say that it can’t outflank technologies such as hydrogen and battery storage, to become a large part of a transition to zero carbon. So, no, it is not a foregone conclusion that oil companies will be brought down and their assets stranded – even if Greenpeace would very much like them to be.”

July 4, 2020

Clark wrote an article in The Spectator criticising Hope Not Hate, an activist group which had campaigned to make climate science denial a hate crime. He stated that “the very use of the word ‘denial’ is an attempt to put anyone sceptical of climate alarmism in the same pigeonhole as holocaust deniers,” adding: “Climate change is becoming the next woke battleground.”⁵⁵

Clark also cited an article written by Michael Shellenberger for Forbes Magazine advocating for the development of nuclear energy as opposed to renewables, which has since been removed.⁵⁶

June 16, 2020

In an article for the Daily Mail entitled, ‘From Ethiopian girl bands to Kenyans listening to toads….how staff at DFID spent YOUR millions’, Clark stated that, “as residents along the Rivers Wye and Severn found in February, the Government may not have much of a plan on how to protect British homes against flooding, but it is nice to know £29m of taxpayers’ money has been allocated to ‘building urban resilience to climate change’ in Tanzania”.⁵⁷

Clark also suggested that taxpayers’ money would be used to fund “offshore wind turbines to support China’s transition to a low-carbon economy”, and “a project to install £11.3m of solar panels to promote green energy” in Nigeria.

June 10, 2020

In an article for The Spectator, Clark disputed whether the British energy system lasting for two months without coal would end the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, writing: “the coal hard reality is that we are still a long, long way away from ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The contribution from wind and solar, in particular, is hugely inflated in the popular imagination.”⁵⁸

February 17, 2020

Clark argued that Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been allowed various privileges by police powers due to having “deep tentacles inside the establishment” in a column for the Spectator.⁵⁹

Calling the group a “bunch of anarchists”, Clark went on to agree with the Counter Terrorism Police’s suggestion to put XR on the terror watch list saying, “it was hardly an unreasonable thing to do.”

January 22, 2020

Clark wrote that Extinction Rebellion grew out of anti-globalisation movements “whose unashamed purpose was to try to bring down the economic system as we know it and replace it with a kind of primitive socialism”. He also said the activists were open in “wanting to destroy you”.⁶⁰

January 17, 2020

Clark claimed that David Attenborough has “become a Greta of the third age”.⁶¹

Describing the broadcaster’s documentaries as a “tired old trick Al Gore has used”, Clark argued that we would become poorer if policies were to follow the “alarmist narrative” conveyed by the likes of Attenborough, Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion.

December 29, 2019

In an article for the Telegraph, Clark criticised the charity Christian Aid for blaming “everything on man-made climate change”, suggesting they should “drop the climate rubbish”.⁶²

Clark also used the example of damage done by snow and freezing temperatures, as opposed to heatwaves and wildfires, to undermine a rise in global temperatures.

This was later reshared by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s most prominent climate science denial group.⁶³

December 23, 2019

Clark agreed with comments by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, claiming that climate change was unrelated to the country’s bushfires.⁶⁴

November 28, 2019

In a Spectator column, Clark described the various tree planting pledges by British political parties as looking like a “Monty Python sketch”.⁶⁵

He went on to argue that the UK would struggle to plant the number of trees they had planned as land space was scarce and they need to make sure to plan on land “which does not seriously encroach on good quality farmland”.

September 20, 2019

Clark argued that schoolchildren involved in the climate strikes were “traumatised” by documentaries “stitched together to give the impression of impending doom”.⁶⁶

Expressing his scepticism on the scientific knowledge of the child strikers in a Spectator column, Clark challenged headteachers to set their children climate research essays, writing “I would genuinely be interested in reading the results”.

August 10, 2019

In a Spectator column, Clark claimed that Britain’s growing reliance on renewable energy will make power cuts more likely, criticising wind power in particular. He concluded by writing:⁶⁷

“We shouldn’t allow energy policy to be dominated by generation alone, as it has been for years – we have had subsidies galore for power generators with rather less investment in the grid. It is no use generating large quantities of green power if we don’t have the infrastructure to cope with it. That way lies only mass power cuts.”

July 15, 2019

In an article criticising Extinction Rebellion, Clark wrote:⁶⁸

“Extinction Rebellion is quite different in that it openly advocates lower living standards. It actively wants to reverse economic growth. It is, as a result, an indulgence on the part of people who feel divorced from economic forces and who don’t feel they need to engage with what would be the realities of a shrinking economy: mass unemployment and millions struggling to feed and clothe their families.”

July 4, 2019

Clark criticised the National Trust’s decision to divest £45 million from oil and gas companies, describing the action as a “claim for environmental brownie points”. He also wrote:⁶⁹

“Divestment is nothing more than a pathetic case of virtue-signalling, carried out by people who know full well that we rely on oil and gas companies to keep the economy going and will do so for a long time yet.”

June 20, 2019

Clark argued that politicians are “pathetically in thrall” to Extinction Rebellion and expressed his frustration that the group and its demands have been “indulged”. He also wrote that if MPs were to follow the demands of the protest group, they would “ruin the economy while simply exporting Britain’s carbon emissions to countries which have not burdened themselves with legally-binding targets”.⁷⁰

June 18, 2019

In a Spectator column, Clark agreed with Boris Johnson’s proposals to build a new Thames Estuary airport rather than a third runway at Heathrow.⁷¹

Justifying his position, Clark said that the new airport could be “marketed as a green solution” by doubling up as tidal barrage.

June 15, 2019

Clark argued that the 2019 Conservative leadership candidates were “falling over themselves to say the same thing on climate — only louder than their rivals”. Clark accused the politicians of “greenwashing” as the “national mood moves towards mass panic”.⁷²

April 23, 2019

In an article titled “The trouble with Greta Thunberg”, Clark wrote that he was tired of the “fawning attitude” the media was taking towards the climate activist. He argued that Thunberg is a “well-crafted piece of PR” and that she is being used as a speaker for the climate movement because no-one “will dare criticise a 16-year-old with Asperger’s”.⁷³

April 20, 2019

In response to David Attenborough’s BBC documentary Climate Change: The Facts, Clark wrote an article arguing that the broadcaster “cannot be allowed to get away with the propaganda element of his latest piece”. He wrote:⁷⁴

“It is little wonder that terrified kids are skipping school to protest against climate change. Never mind climate change denial, a worse problem is the constant exaggeration of the subject. I had thought David Attenborough would be above resorting to the subtle propaganda which others have been propagating, linking every adverse weather event to climate change. But apparently not.”

February 15, 2019

Clark wrote a column for the Spectator claiming schoolchildren who attend climate strikes “may be suffering from trauma”, as they are “victims of the hyperbole they have been fed”.⁷⁵

Describing quotes from two child climate strikers as “disturbed statements”, Clark blamed “climate change alarmism” on “the traumatising power of watching frightening films at an impressionable age”.

November 21, 2018

In a column for the Spectator, Clark argued that Extinction Rebellion is “not a mass movement for better environmental policies – it is a wannabe Marxist revolution in disguise.”⁷⁶

October 3, 2018

Clark suggested that the reason many people in Britain would describe the majority of the world’s population as living in poverty is partly due to the “fantasy” that wealthy lifestyles in the West is fuelling climate change.⁷⁷

January 20, 2018

Clark wrote an article for the Spectator where he argued that if governments look at ways of decreasing single-use plastic bags then they should also look at other materials and ‘bags for life’ and said that environment policymaking “tends to dart between fashionable issues, ignoring complexities”.⁷⁸

September 22, 2017

Clark described the term ‘climate denial’ as a “rather oddly-expressed phenomenon” and criticised The Guardian’s conclusion “to show that you are proportionally more likely to be sceptical of climate change if you are of Caucasian appearance and in possession of a willy”.⁷⁹ The Guardian article Clark was talking about actually wrote, “it is, however, deeply unfair to tar all elderly white men as reckless and egotistical.”⁸⁰

Clark also wrote, “an awful lot of the people who bang on most about climate change being an ominous threat to Mankind look pretty white and male to me… I can’t recall ever seeing a young black female propounding on climate change”.⁸¹

August 20, 2017

Clark described a short-lived interview he had with former US Vice President Al Gore who was in the UK to promote his documentary An Inconvenient Sequel. Upon Clark questioning how big of a problem climate change is, Al Gore called him a “denier”. In the article Clark describes Gore as “an obstacle to serious debate”.⁸²

November 2, 2016

Clark defended GM technology in an article for the Spectator saying:⁸³

“When the subject is climate change, the green lobby never stops telling us that we must all accept the weight of scientific opinion, and that failure to do so is equivalent to being a flat-Earther. Yet change the subject to GM foods and the green lobby doesn’t want to know about the science at all. They still expect us to believe that GM crops will make us ill and ruin the environment – in spite of the vast weight of scientific work establishing that they are safe.”

July 1, 2015

Clark claimed that the then hottest July day on record registered at Heathrow was deliberately obtained at an international airport, where there are “huge concrete aprons and planes spewing out large quantities of hot air” giving airports their own “microclimate”.⁸⁴ ⁸⁵

November 28, 2014

In an article titled “Why don’t we hear about the beneficial side of climate change?”, Clark wrote of the “endemic” “scaremongering” in the way organisational bodies disseminate climate science. He argued that climate change reports “dwell on the negative” and described the lack of balanced critique as “propaganda”.⁸⁶

This was later reshared by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.⁸⁷

December 16, 2013

Clark argued that the 2008 Climate Change Act will do “untold damage to British industry”.⁸⁸

September 25, 2010

Clark described reports published by the UK government’s official advisor the Committee of Climate Change as documents that “trot out the familiar scary predictions and somewhat dubious statistics”.⁸⁹

Affiliations

The Spectator – Columnist.
The Telegraph – Columnist.
Policy Exchange – Former writer.

@RossjournoClark on Twitter.

Publications

According to a search on Good Reads, Clark is the author of a number of books including:

Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet), Swift Press, 2023
How to Label a Goat: The Silly Rules and Regulations That Are Strangling Britain, Harriman House, 2007
The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against the Surveillance Society, Encounter Books, 2009
The Renewal of Government: A Manifesto for Whoever Wins the Election, Policy Exchange, 2010
A Broom Cupboard of One’s Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership, Harriman House, 2012