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”. But to keep spiked free we ask regular readers like you, if you can afford it, to chip in – to make sure that those who can’t afford it can continue reading, sharing and arguing.

Most disturbing of all is what that money goes towards. It often ends up funding groups that buy up coal-fired power stations in developing countries only to close them down. Basically, it’s a way of depriving developing countries of a cheap form of power, but it’s dressed up as if it were some great, philanthropic gesture. The elites’ preaching is annoying, but far worse is the fact that they’re prepared to impoverish the world’s poor and prevent them from developing. 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”. 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.” The thing that made the biggest impression on me is that in the rush to achieve Net Zero, it’s almost inevitable that enormous costs are going to be placed on those least able to bear it. If you give over a lot more land to tree planting and rewilding rather than agricultural production, food prices are going to go up. Relying exclusively on renewables, given the cost of storage and the intermittency problem, will push up energy costs even further. Running an electric car is going to be a lot more expensive than a petrol car. Heat pumps will be more expensive than gas boilers. The list goes on. It dawned on me that there is a real a risk that the push to achieve Net Zero creates a two-tier society where the wealthy can still afford to fly, drive and not shiver, but the poor increasingly cannot.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.” 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 prettyextreme.” 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. 44 Ross Clark. “ The boiler ban fiasco and the true cost of net zero,” The Spectator, 25 May 2021. Archived June 1, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/qRlL7 Ross Clark. “ 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,” Daily Mail, January 21, 2023. Archived January 23, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.is/d7zG3

Clark arguedthat schoolchildren involved in the climate strikes were “traumatised” by documentaries “stitched together to give the impression of impending doom”. 65 Ross Clark. “ School climate strikers should answer these two questions,” Spectator, September 20, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. I think that, in most people’s minds, it was as simple as: climate change is bad, something needs to be done about it, Net Zero is something, let’s do that. My thoughts on it had amounted to little more than that, to be honest. Clark describedreports 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”. 88 Ross Clark. “ Waving while drowning,” Spectator, September 25, 2010. Archived April 4, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. Affiliations 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”. 40 Ross Clark. “ A windfall tax on oil and gas is just Left-wing populism”, The Telegraph, April 28, 2022. Archived August 2, 2022. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/JvFiT Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet), Swift Press, 2023Clark, Ross (2007). The Road to Southend Pier: One man's struggle against the Surveillance Society (1sted.). Harriman House. ISBN 978-1905641444. Having considered these points, and many others that Ross makes in his book, I started to think more broadly about the state of the ‘debate’ on climate change, and that was the most alarming thing in some ways. I noticed that it has become increasingly difficult in ‘polite’ circles to even mildly question a certain narrative: namely, that there is an immediate catastrophic climate crisis that necessitates the adoption of draconian policies to prevent the earth being consumed in a fiery furnace in the very near future, and that these policies must be driven through at all costs, and democracy – and any other consideration – be damned. In a Spectator columntitled “Climate change isn’t responsible for Australia’s hailstorms”, Clark wrote: 25 Ross Clark. “ Climate change isn’t responsible for Australia’s hailstorms,” Spectator, January 21, 2020. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. 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 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.”

This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view. ( November 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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: 66 Ross Clark. “ How renewable energy makes power cuts more likely,” Spectator, August 10, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog.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.” Clark, Ross (2023) Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won't Even Save the Planet) Forum Press ISBN 978 1800752429 https://swiftpress.com/book/not-zero/

In an articletitled “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”. 72 Ross Clark. “ The trouble with Greta Thunberg,” Spectator, April 23, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog.

He lives in Reach, Cambridgeshire. In 2011 he was elected to be a member of the village's parish council. [14] Books [ edit ] 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 Ross Clark. “ Just admit that Britain isn’t ready for heat pumps,” The Telegraph, March 15, 2023. Archived March 15, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/bBFHR Clark, Ross (2017). War Against Cash: the plot to empty your wallet and own your financial future - and why you must fight it. Harriman House. ISBN 978-0857196255.