Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

Chimpanzees use others to get what they want, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews, the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Pyscholinguistics in the Netherlands has discovered that chimps can manipulate other chimps as tools to satisfy their own needs.

The study – published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology – presented a group of semi-wild chimpanzees with an apparatus that would release juice from a distantly-located fountain.

Cognitive skills

Any individual chimpanzee could only either push the buttons or drink from the fountain but never push and drink simultaneously. Thus, to get the desired juice, another individual was needed.

During the testing, one adult male used other individuals more than 100 times to drink juice.

He retrieved another chimp from the spacious enclosure, pushed them towards the apparatus and repositioned them. If they didn’t push the buttons, he then pushed them towards the buttons again or started begging by blowing raspberries and reaching out.

Social tools

Dr Manon Schweinfurth of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews said: “While there is good evidence that social animals show elaborate cognitive skills to deal with others, there are few reports of animals using others like physical tools.”

In contrast to physical tools, a social tool – such as another individual – needs to perform an action that cannot be fully controlled by the social tool user, i.e. releasing the tool in order to drink from the fountain.

Using this strategy, the social tool user increased his juice intake drastically, while social tools did not receive any juice from their action.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

The death knell is sounding for the government’s controversial badger culls.

The government launched its badger control policy stating that it would be science-led – but even so the estimated benefit to bovine TB incidence in cattle was small. Importantly, it was also reliant on satisfying strict licensing criteria.

A cull that delivers no benefit, or that makes the bovine TB situation worse, is not only a waste of time and money; it could also be unlawful because badgers are legally protected. The 1992 Protection of Badgers Act permits licensed culling only for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease.

Licensing changes

The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said that its culls are lawful. However, this claim has been undermined by Defra’s wrongful interference with licensing criteria and by static or worsening bovine TB prevalence in the cull zones. 

Secretary of state Liz Truss’s decision to change three of the licensing criteria led to an extensive roll-out of the culls (from three to 32 areas). 

These changes were put to the public as proposals, and views were sought in a public consultation in August 2015.

The three proposals were: to extend the culling period; to reduce the minimum cull area size; and to remove the 70 percent land access requirement. None of these changes made sense in terms of disease prevention or reduction.

Furthermore, Defra’s only ‘evidence’ (in relation to the second proposal) was swiftly and adeptly dismissed by the British Veterinary Zoological Society, which said: “We […] consider that the conclusion is drawn on the basis of unsafe assumptions and cannot be relied upon.”

Strong opposition

There were almost 1400 responses to the public consultation. The vast majority of responses were opposed to badger culling. Of those who answered the questions, and expressed opposition or support, 92-94 percent were against the proposals themselves.

The argument against the proposals was weighty and convincing. By contrast the argument for the proposals was flimsy and feeble. Respondents homed in on Defra’s ‘assumptions’ and non-existent evidence, and Defra admitted later that it had made no calculations about a resultant impact on bTB incidence.

While wildlife and welfare organisations – representing millions – voiced their opposition, many farmers and farming organisations failed to respond, and the National Farmers Union missed the deadline by two weeks.

Of the farmers who did respond, more were against reducing the cull zone size than in favour; 32 percent were against extending the cull period; and 41 percent were against removing the land access requirement.

Ignored responses

Defra produced no evidence that Liz Truss’s decision was informed by the responses.

Moreover, it’s clear from the responses that Defra did not take due account of, or give genuine and conscientious consideration to, the consultation outcome – as stipulated by the Aarhus Convention and the ‘duty to consult’ requirements under common law, known as the Sedley requirements.

It also seems that Natural England, the National Farmers Union, and some farmers had been tipped the wink about Truss’s ‘decision’ before she had even made it: why else would Natural England monitors be conducting biosecurity visits in Devon – where a licence application had been refused a few months earlier – six days before Truss had cleared the Summary of Responses to the Consultationand the revised Guidance to Natural England? 

Science was cast aside and a strategy to prevent the spread of disease was abandoned while the aim of killing badgers more easily and in far greater numbers was pursued. 

One shrewd respondent said: “Despite the veneer of the licensing process, I am very concerned that the hidden agenda behind all three of these proposals is the virtually uncontrolled killing of badgers. This is a dreadfully damaging approach, not only for badgers but for farming and wildlife as a whole.”

Institutional landowners

In 2011 – before Defra had decided to go ahead with the policy – the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) was clearly confident that the National Trust would allow culling on its land.

In a letter to Caroline Spelman (the then Environment Secretary), CLA President William Worsley said: “It would be particularly useful, if, in the first instance, licences could be granted to a number of the big institutional landowners, such as the National Trust, the Church Commissioners and the Duchies.” 

However, as it turned out, the National Trust would not play ball. It declared in its response that: “We do not support a roll out of the culls.

“Moving away from the evidence base provided by the RBCT risks making the disease more prevalent, not less […] We will not allow the extension of culling to our land. This includes not allowing it on National Trust land that is leased to tenants.” The other landowners mentioned by Worsley have neither confirmed nor denied whether they are involved.

Removed obstacles

The Bovine TB Eradication Advisory Group for England, which advises Defra ministers on bTB policy, referred to the reluctance of “institutional landowners” in its response.

It was also reported in the Farmers Weeklyon 3 September 2015 that a Devon farmer “described the sign-up process as ‘challenging’ because the National Trust – one of Britain’s biggest landowners – still refuses to allow cullers on to its land.”

Perhaps it was this reluctance by the National Trust along with the cull’s general unpopularity with landowners that led to Defra launching its consultation and removing the strict criteria – because their removal was essential to achieving an extensive cull roll-out.

Pointless slaughter

Badgers are a native, legally protected species and yet they are being massacred in these culls in their tens of thousands. More than 34,000 have already been killed and by the end of this year another 42,000 could be gone.

Furthermore, this killing is being carried out according to licensing criteria that have been enfeebled by the government to such an extent that “preventing the spread of disease” as a purpose – according to the law – is no longer credible. Indeed, recent data have confirmed the futility of culling.

The government was warned, by a number of respondents, that changing the licence criteria would have a negative effect, wiping out any chance of achieving disease control benefits. Unsurprisingly, this prediction has been borne out.

Open letter

After analysing data released by the government in September 2018, senior vets and animal welfare experts challenged claims by the farming minister George Eustice that the culls were working.

In an open letter to the Observer, the vets and experts said: “The data upon which Mr Eustice bases his statement provide no evidence whatsoever for his claimed ‘reductions in TB cases in Somerset and Gloucestershire’.”

The letter also expressed reservations about Defra’s method of analysis. The vets and experts stated: “Put simply, there are approximately the same proportion of bTB affected herds now, as there were before culling started.

“Badger culling has not resulted in a decrease in bTB in cattle in cull zones, for the prevalence remains unchanged. Any statement made to the contrary is simply not true.”

Moreover, recent data suggest that the incidence and prevalence of infection among cattle herds in the Gloucestershire central cull zone, which has now been subject to six years of culling, is rising significantly.

Uphold the law

A wealth of evidence disputes Defra’s claim that its farmer-led culls are for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease. Getting rid of the licensing criteria that provided (an albeit tenuous) justification to cull, ignoring the warnings about the impact this would have, disregarding data that showed no benefit, and – at the same time – falsely claiming success, are the actions of a government department that has lost its moral compass.

‘Badger control’ is looking less like a policy and more like a conspiracy – with the wholesale slaughter of badgers its one and only goal.

Badgers are protected by law, and that law should be respected, observed and upheld – which is why, instead of escorting cull contractors, or sending in drones to observe protesters, police would be better advised to knock on the door of Number Ten.

This Author

Anna Dale campaigns against the English badger cull. This article is an abridged version, the full article can be read here. 

More than 100 people were arrested during a week of action across the UK as protesters demanded the government treat climate change as a crisis, reports Desmog.uk.

Thousands of people joined a mass protest that blocked roads and bridges in central London, with some gluing themselves to government buildings to draw attention to what they see as climate breakdown.

This was the birth of Extinction Rebellion, a movement calling for non-violent economic disruption and civil disobedience. It wants an end to the destruction of the environment, wildlife and the climate.

Net zero

Extinction Rebellion is working to establish campaign groups beyond the UK, with coordinators already working in the US, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Italy and Spain. But much of the movement’s international expansion is focused on the US.

For Jamie Henn, co-founder of the campaign group 350, watching events in London last week from the US had been “incredibly exciting” and embodied “a growing sense of anger and desire for radical solutions”.

Henn said he was confident Extinction Rebellion would inspire similar non-violent direct climate actions in the US over the coming months, but whether the movement was one that could endure the test of time was yet to be seen.

Sanders’ presidential campaign, which inspired Extinction Rebellion’s mobilisation strategy, has given rise to a new generation of young leaders including more women and people of colour – a trend reflected in the US’ congressional midterm elections.

Newly elected liberals, led by the 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are demanding the Democrats back a “Green New Deal” to rapidly transform the economy to 100 percent renewable energy in a decade – a target largely in line with Extinction Rebellion’s own demand to reach net zero by 2025.

Game changer

Henn said that the only way in which the Extinction Rebellion movement would take off in the US would be by “moving away from a climate movement that is predominantly made up of older, middle-class white people”.

Instead, Henn said Extinction Rebellion had “to build a multi-racial and multi-generational movement which will include young people of colour in its leadership and tackle issues such as equity and environmental justice”.

For Henn, the movement will also have to ensure it uses a universal language that inspires urgency but respects and reflects the experiences of those most vulnerable.

Referring to a banner that was dropped from Westminster bridge in central London last week and read “Climate Change, We’re fucked”, he added: “It is one thing to say such things from the safety of London, but it’s another if you are living on the frontline of climate impacts. Some people don’t have the privilege to give up”.

Margaret Klein Salamon, founder of the US grassroots group Climate Mobilisation, believes Extinction Rebellion is “a game changer” for the climate movement.

Middle-class white people

She is part of a team of dedicated activists working on Extinction Rebellion’s international expansion, ensuring it has a robust enough infrastructure and resources to give the movement the capacity and stamina to organise in the long-term.

Salamon said Extinction Rebellion was born as the climate movement was shifting away from advocating gradual change to demanding immediate action in line with the scale of the climate crisis.

In a campaigning first, she said, Extinction Rebellion would lay out the full implications of climate change on humanity and the planet’s ecosystems without shielding people for fear of being too alarming.

She added the group was advocating solutions that may have long been seen as impossible – such as reducing carbon pollution to net-zero in the UK by 2025 – but which the group believe could gather mainstream momentum.

Extinction Rebellion will need to move away “from a climate movement that is predominantly made up of older, middle-class white people”, said Jamie Henn.

A prototype

Above all, Salamon said the use of peaceful civil disobedience as a means to engage people in  “power struggles” against governments and demand meaningful change is what made Extinction Rebellion unique.

“There is so much momentum around Extinction Rebellion and what is needed is to be able to escalate the disruption,” she said, adding: “This is still a very young movement but there is tremendous enthusiasm for it.”

Extinction Rebellion’s first public action was to occupy the Greenpeace headquarters in London – a move which took the climate movement in the UK by surprise and aimed to warn environmental NGOs against becoming complacent about governments’ inaction on climate change.

Citing inspiration from grassroots movements such as Gandhi’s independence marches, the Suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement and Occupy, Extinction Rebellion wants to rally support worldwide around a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown.

Robin Boardman, a coordinator with Extinction Rebellion in the UK, said the week of action that took place across the country was “a prototype for what a global resistance could look like”.

Religious groups

Pointing out that the UK is responsible for only 1% of current global emissions, Boardman added: “What happened in London is a drop in a pond compared to what could happen worldwide in months to come.

“Like in the Arab spring, Tunisia started the uprising but it was not until it spread to Egypt that the whole movement gripped the Middle East,” Boardman said.

Inspired by US Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, Extinction Rebellion wants to export its non-violent rebellion model and ambition of widespread system change, while allowing for autonomous campaign groups to organise independently across the world.

“It is up to local groups as to whether people should be taking up action and what direction they move in. It’s about doing something different and shifting what is acceptable in the context of the climate crisis. When society is ready to lose its sense of fear in the face of state authority, then everything crumbles and change can happen,” Boardman said.

To its broad church, Extinction Rebellion has attracted much support from religious groups, including Christian Climate Action, which had several of its members arrested in the UK last week.

Ramp up pressure

Caroline Harmon, from the Christian Climate Action, said that her group has received messages of support from Christian communities across the world, who have been inspired by last week’s actions.

The first Extinction Rebellion action on the African continent was held earlier this month in front of a church in Accra, Ghana, where dozens of climate activists carrying Extinction Rebellion placards told churchgoers about the global climate resistance being born in the UK.

Mawuse Yao Agorkor, a grassroot social activist from Ghana and the general secretary of the West African Vazoba network, said the launch of Extinction Rebellion in London was “an exciting moment” and that he was hoping larger protests would “hit the streets of Ghana soon”.

The Vazoba network has long campaigned against deforestation, the use of toxic chemical and mining in the region and now hopes to use its organising tools and contacts across West Africa to spread Extinction Rebellion’s tactics.

Agorkor said he was not afraid of using civil disobedience as a means to ramp up pressure on his government. “I have been working on the ground for six years, and getting arrested for protesting in the interest of our planet is something that my group is not afraid of,” he said.

Agorkor is well aware that if the movement is to spread through Africa, it will have to adapt in places where police brutality is common and protesters could be met with open fire. But for now, Agorkor believes the organising capacity of both Vazoba and Extinction Rebellion constitute “a good starting point”.

This Article

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK.

If you have detected a distinctly American flavour to the rampant lobbying in Westminster corridors over a Brexit deal, there is a good reason why.

A close look at the transatlantic connections of the London-based groups pushing for the most deregulated form of Brexit reveals strong ties to major US libertarian influencers.

These include fossil fuel magnates the Koch brothers — known for funding climate science denial around the world — and the man who bankrolled Donald Trump’s campaign, Robert Mercer.

Political activities

At the heart of this network lies a little-known power couple, Matthew and Sarah Elliott. Together, the husband and wife team connect senior members of the Leave campaign and groups pushing a libertarian free-market ideology from offices in Westminster’s Tufton Street to major US libertarian lobbyists and funders.

Collectively, the network aims to use Brexit as an opportunity to slash regulations in the UK, paving the way for a wide-ranging US-UK free-trade deal that could have disastrous consequences for the environment.

The current draft withdrawal agreement appears to try and provide some protection for the current level of environmental regulation — at least in principle. But politicians associated with this transatlantic network are lobbying hard for the draft deal to be scrapped, along with those protections.

This DeSmog UK investigation reveals the strength of the ties between Matthew and Sarah Elliott, UK lobbyists and politicians, and US groups with vested interests in fossil fuels keen to profit from deregulation.

It shows how organisations with strong ties to the Koch Brothers and Robert Mercer increased their political activities in the UK immediately before and after the Brexit referendum.

Lobby group

And it uncovers US libertarian spending patterns that show increased resources flowing into Europe prior to and around the time of the Brexit referendum, as pro-Brexit groups with ties to the Elliotts in the UK saw their budgets balloon.  

1. A Transatlatic Power Couple: Who are Matthew and Sarah Elliott?

2. Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica and Data Wars

3. The ‘Kochtopus’, US Libertarians, and Brexit

4. The End Game: Environmental Deregulation

Matthew Elliott has been credited for being “the brains behind Brexit” and “one of the most formidable political strategists in Westminster”. Sarah Elliott is a vocal Trump supporter, with a long history of working for US libertarian figureheads such as fossil fuel magnates, the Koch brothers.  

While Matthew Elliott has attracted public attention as the founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, his wife Sarah Elliott has only just started to make public appearances.

Together, they form a bridge between the UK’s pro-Brexit lobby groups based in and around offices in Tufton Street and major US libertarian influencers.

Low Tax

A long-standing libertarian, Matthew Elliott rose to prominence on the UK political stage through the Vote Leave campaign. Yet his campaign efforts advocating a small state and low regulation go back much further, and were largely influenced by American neo-conservative politics.

He was a member of the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF), a controversial Tory party affiliate which made the news after one of its alumni, Mark Clarke, was accused of bullying young activist Elliott Johnson, who took his own life. Clarke denied the allegations.

The now-defunct group’s radical views earned it its reputation as a “Tory madrasa” used to teach young Conservatives political “dark arts”.

In 2004, Matthew Elliott founded the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a campaign group pushing for low tax and low regulation. He told DeSmog UK that he has “had no formal involvement with the TaxPayers’ Alliance” since he stepped down as a director in 2015.

Taxpayers’ Alliance was modelled on a similar campaign in the US —  Americans for Tax Reform.  In a 2017 speech to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a US right-wing think tank, Matthew Elliott told the Michigan audience he felt like he was “coming home”.

Political research

He revealed that he had been coming to the US “for over 14 years to learn my campaign techniques and to learn how to set up a new taxpayer group from Grover Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform”.

Norquist is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. While the group does not disclose its donors, Norquist is known to have received money from a network of major Republican supporters including Koch Family Foundations, which are funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The brothers are co-owners of one of the US’s largest energy companies, Koch Industries, and are known for funding climate science denial. Americans for Tax Reform has also repeatedly opposed a carbon tax and promoted climate science denial, arguing that the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing a “global cooling”.

During his time working with Americans for Tax Reform, Matthew Elliott met Sarah Smith, his future wife. Now known as Sarah Elliott, she is an American citizen who spent many years lobbying for hardline Republican values in Washington DC. The couple now lives in London.

Norquist introduced the pair when Sarah Elliott was managing political research at the Americans for Tax Reform between 2005 and 2008.

To the right

A Tea Party supporter from Virginia, Sarah Elliott is the current chairwoman of Republicans Overseas, a political organisation that aims to support and represent the interest of American citizens living in the UK.

She is an ardent defender of the Trump administration, a keen Brexit supporter, and an advocate for a US-UK free-trade deal. She told DeSmog UK that Republicans Overseas “has had nothing to do with Brexit”.

In 2005, Sarah Elliott worked for the Republican National Committee’s major donor programme — building relationships with some of the biggest funders of the Republican party in the US.

She later spent three years managing fundraising affairs for Americans for Prosperity, a US right-wing libertarian campaign group co-founded and funded by David Koch.

Americans for Prosperity has long been seen as the organisation at the heart of the Koch brothers’ political network, and has been widely credited with pushing American politics to the right.

Fascinating

Between July 2014 and July 2018, Sarah Elliott worked in London as the managing director of the American European Business Association (AEBA), which aims to “enhance commerce and transatlantic cooperation”. She told DeSmog UK that AEBA “did not take a position on Brexit, and that she did not work on Brexit as part of her work with AEBA”.

Describing her job to the Conservative Book Club, she said she would “bring together a select group of senior transatlantic executives over lunch to meet with global business leaders in an off-the-record setting eight to 10 times a year” — strengthening her connections on both sides of the Atlantic.

From an early stage, Matthew Elliott has been influenced by Republican lobbying strategies, learning political campaigning techniques from Norquist — one of Washington’s most successful lobbyists.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2010, Matthew Elliott said he was keen to replicate the far-right American Tea Party movement in the UK:

“You could say our time has come … We need to learn from our European colleagues and the Tea Party movement in the US… It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?”

Right-ring organisation

During that time, Matthew Elliott founded and supported a number of organisations and campaign groups charged with advancing this ideology: Big Brother Watch, which campaigns against state surveillance; Business for Britain, a group of businesses pushing for the UK to leave the EU; and the Conservative Friends of Russia.

He also serves on the advisory board of the New Culture Forum, a right-wing think tank which aims to challenge contemporary cultural debates in the UK and was founded by Ukip Assembly Member Peter Whittle.

The New Culture Forum argues that the right has won the economic argument but that the liberal left still dominates the cultural space, with its website saying the group was created to “challenge the dogma and relativism of the establishment and redefine the parameters of the cultural and political debate”.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, Big Brother Watch, Business for Britain and the New Cultural Forum operate out of offices close to Westminster on Tufton Street. Desmog UK has repeatedly reported the networks of climate science deniers and opaquely-funded libertarian think tanks working in and around 55 Tufton Street.

Those Westminster offices have been a hub for right-ring organisations such at the Institute of Economics Affairs (IEA), the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, all of which work to shift mainstream Conservative ideology further to the right.

Environmental protection

Through Matthew Elliott and a host of other right-wing lobbyists, Tufton Street has more recently become a cradle for hard-Brexit political campaign groups such as Leave Means Leave, the Economists for Free Trade, and IFT (previously the Institute for Free Trade).

It is also the home of the climate science denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), set up by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Last week, the Taxpayers’ Alliance conceded that it had coordinated with eight other Tufton Street organisations, including the GWPF, to push a free-market ideology and for a hard Brexit in the media.

This was part of an employment tribunal case involving BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni. The Taxpayers’ Alliance said the concession had been made “on pragmatic grounds” but that it did not “denote any agreement or acceptance of any facts or allegations” made by Sanni.

These groups have called on the government to cut red tape for businesses, including environmental protection, to ensure a US-UK free-trade deal post-Brexit, with Matthew Elliott and Sarah Elliott playing a leading role.

Matthew and Sarah Elliott told DeSmog UK that they disagreed with the characterisation of them as central figures in this network.

Brexit Bridges

Over the past couple of years, the couple has acted as a bridge between the hard-Brexiters in the UK and the transatlantic network of US private interests eyeing lucrative deals resulting from a US-UK free-trade deal.

As chair of Republicans Overseas, Sarah Elliott has strong ties to senior politicians and officials in both countries.

In July this year, she invited invited International Trade Secretary Liam Fox to Republicans Overseas’ 4th of July party in London — praising Fox’s efforts to push for a US-UK free-trade deal.

In February 2017, Sarah Elliott also met with a Number 10 government relations team to see how Republicans Overseas could work to strengthen political and cultural ties between the UK and the US.

While Sarah Elliott was promoting the “special relationship” that she claims to be “living out every day” through her marriage, Matthew Elliott was working to make Brexit a reality — creating the circumstances in which a highly deregulated US-UK free-trade deal could be struck.

Refusing to collaborate

As a then-senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, Matthew Elliott worked with Shanker Singham — a dual British-American national, and an influential Westminster lobbyist — setting out what a trade deal with the US would look like well before the EU referendum in June 2016.

Singham joined the IEA earlier this year and helped turn the think tank into Tufton Street’s most prominent voice on Brexit. He was at the heart of allegations earlier this year that the IEA was offering access to pro-Brexit UK ministers in exchange for funding from the US.

The IEA has previously denied the allegations, and did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Matthew Elliott went on to head the Vote Leave campaign and become editor-at-large of Brexit Central.

In July, the Vote Leave campaign was fined £61,000 and reported to the police by the Electoral Commission, which accused it of refusing to collaborate in its investigation into allegations the campaign breached electoral spending rules.  

Prove the contrary

Last month, openDemocracy reported that the Met Police still hadn’t launched any criminal investigation into Vote Leave and its youth arm BeLeave, citing “political sensitivities”.

The string of investigations into both Vote Leave and Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU’s activities during the EU referendum campaign led to a host of allegations over the way in which American billionaire and Trump benefactor Robert Mercer attempted to influence Brexit through the now-defunct data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

Extensive investigative work by journalist Carole Cadwalladr alleged that Cambridge Analytica worked for the Leave.EUcampaign by scraping masses of data from Facebook profiles to target voters with political advertising.

Cadwalladr wrote that the role Mercer and Cambridge Analytica played in British politics “reveals the elephant in the room: Britain tying its future to an America that is being remade — in a radical and alarming way — by Trump”.

Cambridge Analytica has repeatedly denied doing paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU. Instead, both parties told the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that only preliminary discussions took place. The ICO found no evidence to prove the contrary.

The Mercer family did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Legal entity

The Vote Leave campaign — of which Matthew Elliott was CEO — used the services of another small Canadian-based data analysis company known as Aggregate IQ (AIQ).

Following the referendum vote, AIQ’s website held a quote from Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings, stating: “We couldn’t have done it without them”.

AIQ accounted for 40 percent of Vote Leave’s account budget, according to The Observer.

According to Cadwalladr, there is evidence of a strong working relationship between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Elections (SCLE), connecting both Vote Leave and Leave.EU’s data firm to Mercer.

A document obtained by the Observer shows that there was an “exclusive” agreement for all of AIQ’s intellectual property to be used by SCLE.

Misleading picture

In a report published earlier this month, the ICO found that “while there was clearly a close working relationship between the two entities” it said there was “no evidence that AIQ has been anything other than a separate legal entity”.

It concluded that it found “no evidence of unlawful activities in relation to the personal data of UK citizens and AIQ’s work with SCLE”.

“To date, we have no evidence that SCLE and CA were involved in any data analytics work with the EU referendum campaigns”, it added.

The Observer’s coverage of the involvement of Cambridge Analytica and SCLE in the EU referendum is subject to a legal complaint on behalf of both companies.

In a statement to The Observer, the companies’ lawyers said the stories contained significant inaccuracies and that the coverage was a “sustained campaign of vilification designed to paint a false and misleading picture of their clients”.

Both Vote Leave, led by Matthew Elliott, and Leave.EU focused much of their resources on online campaigning. This was a very deliberate strategy, according to Matthew Elliott.

Speaking to the Mackinac Center a year after the referendum, Matthew Elliott admitted that Vote Leave had been more successful online than on traditional media platforms. “Broadcast was terrible for us, print was better and online is where we pushed things out”, he said.

Matthew Elliott has shown a strong interest in using data in political campaigns both before and after the referendum.

In 2012, he was one of the founders of WESS Digital, a company that used data as a political campaign tool.  

Together with Guido Fawkes’ editor Paul Staines, former Labour digital strategist Jag Singh and digital specialist Andrew Whitehurst, they worked on a political campaigning tool which would use the Metis database to create social media profiles and targeted political ads.

Matthew Elliott remained a shareholder of WESS Digital until 2014. By 2015, all shares were transferred to Whitehurst.

Whitehurst worked as co-director with Thomas Borwick, Vote Leave’s former chief technology officer, who now runs Kanto Systems — a digital political consultancy that claims to “connect the dots between people, data and technology”.

Together with UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, Borwick also runs another campaign communication management company, Disruptive Analytica.

While it is unclear whether Kanto Systems and Disruptive Analytica work for the organisations based on Tufton Street, Carswell has ties to the groups that operate out of the offices.

In 2016, the IEA co-hosted the Atlas network’s Europe Liberty Forum – a free-market umbrella organisation based in Washington DC – less than a fortnight before the EU referendum.

Speaking at the event, Carswell said: “Think tanks should make life of all established political parties uncomfortable,” adding that the the digital revolution “is important in empowering consumers and promoting free markets”.

More recently, Matthew Elliott was involved in another digital campaign firm called Awareness Analytics Partners, known as A2P, which focused on US clients. He was the only British partner, and was listed on the company’s website until early 2018 when his name was removed.

A2P describes its expertise as “understanding and utilizing influence, enhancing online messaging and delivering groundbreaking social media advertising results”.

It is run by Sean Noble, who has strong ties to the Koch brothers, and Samantha Ravich, who was part of President Trump’s national security transition team.

According to Open Secrets, A2P’s clients are all based in the US and include the “No Tax on Jobs” campaign in Seattle; Arizona’s Republican candidate for Congress Steve Smith, who was repeatedly named a “friend of the taxpayer” by the Koch-funded group, Americans for Prosperity; and House Freedom Action, one of the most conservative groups in the US, which also receives funding from Koch Industries.

Matthew Elliott told DeSmog UK that neither WESS Digital nor A2P “worked on Brexit”.

The ‘Kochtopus’, US Libertarians, and Brexit

A2P isn’t the only Elliot-affiliated organisation with links to the Koch brothers.

In fact, many of the organisations involved in the network pushing for a deregulated post-Brexit US-UK free-trade deal are supported by Koch Family Foundations — one of the largest funders of libertarian causes and climate science denial in the world.

The Koch’s influence is so far-reaching that the network the brothers support has been dubbed the ‘Kochtopus’. Through its network, the Koch brothers have been accused of backing movements that have “undermined American democracy and have helped wealthy elites block progress on problems such as climate change and income inequality”.

The Atlas Network

Atlas is a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation that works to support more than 450 organisations in more than 90 countries promoting individual liberty and free-market ideals. The Charles Koch Foundation is a major donor.

Matthew Elliott is listed as one of Atlas Network’s mentors, with the task of helping others build free-market institutions all around the world. Many of the organisations in the UK pushing for a hard or no-deal Brexit are part of the Atlas Network, including the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, Open Europe and the IEA as well as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Big Brother Watch — with the latter two founded by Matthew Elliott.

Many of the network’s members have supported climate science denial and campaigned against efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides capacity-building, the Atlas network also acts as an influential funding stream with millions coming into Europe every year, with very little transparency over how the money is spent.

Atlas is registered as a 501(c)(3) organisation, which is exempt from federal income tax and is meant to act exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, or educational purposes — similar to organisations like the IEA in the UK, which is registered as an “educational charity”.

Atlas’ status also means it has to file public tax returns.

However, the tax returns do not provide much detail on precisely how organisations like Atlas spend their money outside the US. Instead, Atlas only has to declare how much money it spent across regions, such as Europe, without any specifics.

The records show that Atlas increased its spending in Europe fivefold between 2015 and 2016, the year of the EUreferendum — with spending increasing from $340k in 2015 to $1.7 million the following year.

Atlas did not respond to a request for comment regarding the details of its European spending, or the nature of the network’s interest in Brexit.

Atlas’ money comes largely from US mega-donors, including the Koch brothers. In 2016, the Charles Koch Foundation donated $101,658 to Atlas, up from $82,426 in 2015.

The Charles Koch Foundation did not respond to a request for comment regarding its interest in Brexit or its European spending.

The Donors Trust, a Koch grantmaking vehicle described by Mother Jones as the ‘dark money ATM of the conservative movement’, also gives significant sums to Atlas.

In 2016, the Donors Trust more than tripled its donations to Atlas giving the network $1,308,390 across 20 donations, including a single $990,000 donation — up from a total of $339,250 in 2015.

Donors Trust told DeSmog UK that it had no specific interest in Brexit, and retained no control or influence over how it’s grantees spent the funds. A spokesperson said:

“DonorsTrust does not take nor advocate for specific policy positions, and certainly we have not engaged in any policy work focused specifically on the Brexit referendum. We make grants at the request of our account holders, and we have no involvement with any of the activities of our grantees.”

“As far as we know, the only purpose with the $990k contribution in 2016 was to support Atlas programs focused on its partners in Chile.”

The Atlas network is a close partner of the UK’s IEA through its US fundraising arm, the American Friends of the IEA. The IEA is one of nine organisations reported to be coordinating a campaign to push for a hard Brexit in the media from the Tufton Street offices.

Public tax records and 990 Forms show that Atlas is listed as a “related tax exempt organisation” to the American Friends of the IEA, with both organisations registered under the same Washington address. In 2016, former Atlas director Alex Chafuen was the officer registered on the Americans Friends of the IEA’s financial records.

Donors Trust has also previously donated directly to the American Friends of the IEA, although there is no record of a donation since it gave $10,000 in 2014.

According to an Atlas network briefing form shared with DeSmog UK, the AFIEA works to “improve public understanding of the foundations of a free and harmonious society” sometimes in coalition with organisations such as the IEA.

The brief stated that an American donor wishing to support the work of the IEA would have to specify to the AFIEA that the money be given to the IEA. It added that the AFIEA is controlled by a board of directors independently from the IEA, “with grant decisions made at their sole discretion”.

Epicenter: The IEA’s European Outlet

One of Atlas’ key European assets is the European Policy Information Centre, known as Epicenter, which was launched in 2014 to “provide a free market perspective in the European policy debate”.

Comprising nine European libertarian think tanks that are all part of the Atlas network, Epicenter claims to be “an independent initiative” that is “politically independent”. However, Epicenter is in fact funded entirely by money, staff and resources from the IEA, according to the EU’s Transparency Register.

Epicenter’s funding address is registered at 2 Lord North Street in London, which is the IEA’s address. The IEA’s 2017 financial statement describes Epicenter as “our European network of think tanks” and was allocated a budget of £220,000.

Shanker Singham, director of the International Trade and Competition Unit at the IEA and an influential Brexit lobbyist, is a prominent Epicenter author. Epicenter’s CEO Christina Stewart-Lockhart also acts as the director of outreach, education and programmes for the IEA in London.

Online pictures of the network’s young interns appear to have been taken looking down Lord North Street in London rather than in Brussels, where Epicenter is registered.

Epicenter’s activity shows how the IEA helps to disseminate and push Atlas’ libertarian agenda across Europe.

A spokeswoman for the IEA told DeSmog UK that Epicenter was a network of nine think tanks from all over Europe, which was launched by the IEA and five other European think tanks in 2014. She did not respond to DeSmog UK’s questions about the IEA’s influence in Europe and its access to funding.

Cato Institute and Free-Trade Deals

Another prominent US think tank, the Cato Institute, also works as a bridge between US libertarians and the UK’s pro-Brexit lobby groups.

The Cato Institute has a mission to “originate, disseminate, and increase understanding of public policies” based on libertarian principles.  

The Cato Institute was the lead US author of an “alternative” plan for a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal. The IEA, Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), Adam Smith Institute and Centre for Policy Studies — all of which are also members of Atlas — were listed as the UK authors of the plan, published in September 2018.

In 2016, Cato more than doubled its donations to Europe to $329,417, up from $130,000 in 2015, despite its overall donations across the world decreasing by more than $200,000 in 2016.

In 2016, $75,417 was donated for stipends for senior fellows and adjunct scholars, $250,000 was given to a Danish winner of a prize for “advancing liberty”, and $4000 went to the winner of a video contest.

The Cato Institute was founded in January 1977 by three men, including Charles Koch. The Charles Koch Foundation remains a major donor to the Cato Institute, donating more than $2.5m in 2016. The Mercer Family Foundation also gave the institute $300,000 in both 2015 and 2016.

The Mercers also donated $2,250,000 to Donors Trust in 2016, having donated nothing to the organisation in 2015. The Donors Trust is a prominent Cato Institute funder.

When approached for comment about its interest in Brexit, the Cato Institute pointed to its previous work outlining its case for a new “genuinely liberal” US-UK trade deal.

Tufton Street Revenue Boost

These US organisations do not have to detail where their European grants go. And many of the UK organisations are registered as think tanks and private limited companies, which means they do not have to declare their funding sources.

But at the same time that US libertarians were increasing their European spending, a number of UK organisations within the Tufton Street network that are closely linked to Matthew Elliott saw their revenues increase.

The IEA saw a 22 percent increase in donations between 2016 and 2017, according to Charity Commission documents — up to £2 million in 2017, from £1.6m in 2016.

The IEA’s Brexit activity also notably increased in 2017 — setting up a Brexit Unit in 2017, and hiring Shanker Singham to lead its International Trade and Competition Unit.

Singham and his unit were responsible for publishing the IEA’s widely criticised “alternative” Brexit plan in September 2018, which recommended slashing regulations to encourage free trade.

Singham and the IEA’s Director General Mark Littlewood were approached by undercover reporters for Greenpeace’s Unearthed suggesting the organisation was willing to have some aspects of its research directed by funders and offering access to ministers in return for funds. The IEA has denied the allegations.

Other organisations with close ties to the Elliotts also saw their revenues increase significantly in 2016 and 2017, around the time of the Brexit referendum.

Business for Britain, founded by Matthew Elliott as a campaign group for business leaders supporting a referendum on the UK’s membership in the EU, saw its capital and reserves increase fourfold to reach £300,199 in 2017, up from £73,188 in 2016. A number of people who supported the group went on to lead the Vote Leave campaign, including Dominic Cummings, Stephen Parkinson and Daniel Hodson.

Matthew Elliott told DeSmog UK that Business for Britain received no funds from organisations outside of the UK, including the Atlas network and the Cato Institute.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, also founded by Matthew Elliott, saw its funds increase to £358,896 in 2017, up from £299,790 in 2016, and £260,437 in 2015.

The IFT, which was listed as the lead UK author on the alternative trade deal published with the Cato Institute, had £188,645 of assets on its first accounts, which were filed in January 2018. The IFT was set up after the Brexit referendum to promote free-trade deals between the UK and other countries.

Another organisation listed as an author on the alternative trade deal plan, the Centre for Policy Studies, had a turnover of £863,087 in 2017, up from £734,818 in 2016.

The End Game: Environmental Deregulation

What do these lobby groups and think tanks do with these resources? Brexit negotiations have created a policy vacuum at the very top of the UK government, leaving space for think tanks and other policy organisations on both sides of the debate to push their ideology and visions for a post-Brexit UK.

As a result, powerful private lobbies have strived to fill that vacuum and advocated to slash regulation and environmental protection post-Brexit in order to strike trade deals. This includes the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and the Atlas network which, as shown above, have strong ties to Matthew and Sarah Elliott.

If these groups have their way, there could be significant consequences for the environment.

The Koch family has spent more than ExxonMobil to fund organisations and projects questioning mainstream climate science. Greenpeace estimates the Kochs have given over $88 million to 80 groups denying climate change since 1997.

In 2015, DeSmog UK revealed that the Kochs had officially begun to lobby European regulators on issues as diverse as energy, climate action, environment, agriculture and rural development, competition, customs, and taxation.

A DeSmog analysis found that, collectively, the Mercers have also given at least $22 million to organisations that promote climate science denial while blocking moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  

Meanwhile, the Mercers back the far-right media organisation Breitbart, which regularly makes false claims about climate change, often through the work of infamous climate science denier James Delingpole.

While climate science denial might not be as blatant in the UK as it is in the US, the push for deregulation has become the battleground to roll back environmental protection.  

The prospect of a looming Brexit deal has done nothing to slow down lobbying efforts.

Two days after the cabinet reluctantly agreed to press ahead with the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement, three hard-Brexiters, including former Brexit minister David Davis MP, climate science denier Owen Paterson MP and IEA lobbyist Shanker Singham shared their views on the prospect of a US-UK free-trade deal at the libertarian think tank the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC.

In its alternative “Plan A+” Brexit plan, Shanker Singham — Matthew Elliott’s former colleague at the Legatum Institute — wrote that if the UK continued to strengthen its regulatory environment after Brexit, it would lead to “wealth destruction” and “push people into poverty”.

The plan singles out environmental protection rules as one of the areas where EU regulation is “moving in an anti-competitive direction” — a claim that has long been rebuked by environmental campaigners who argue that environmental protection can lead to investment, job creation and growth.

But the authors of the plan add that while environmental regulations are “sometimes valid attempts to deal with real environmental problems”, “frequently they are disguised methods of protectionism”.

The IEA — the Tufton group with the strongest ties to the US’s Atlas network, and which has become the most prominent voice for deregulation for the Tufton Street network — has repeatedly made the case for cutting red tape to allow for a US-UK free-trade deal post Brexit.

Writing for The Times, IEA Director General Mark Littlewood called for a “bonfire of regulation and red tape” and urged the government to align the UK’s regulatory environment with countries that may have lower standards in order to strike trade deals.

In his words: “To over-simplify, trade talks essentially come down to sitting across a table, brandishing your regulatory rulebook and then seeing what you can agree to alter, remove or align to have a smoother trading relationship with the other side before you leave the room.”

Undercover reporting by Greenpeace’s Unearthed revealed how big American agribusiness interests were keen to shape the UK’s Brexit debate, lobbying the IEA for a weakening of the regulatory framework that could open the UK to American exports. Unearthed’s investigation also confirmed the extent of influence this Tufton Street network has with some cabinet members, including environment minister Michael Gove.

The threat Brexit poses to the UK’s environmental regulation has not gone unnoticed in parliament.

MPs from the Environmental Audit Committee warned that the UK could be left with gaping holes in environmental laws, allowing polluters to go unpunished and depriving wildlife of vital protection after Brexit.

The committee report found that the government had still not committed to replacing around a third of all environmental rules governing air, water, chemicals and waste disposal that cannot be copied over into UK law from the EU. It added that the lack of clarity about a large chunk of environmental regulation was “deeply worrying”.

That UK-based think tanks are not compelled to reveal their funders has cast a veil of opacity over the Brexit policy debate, with huge private interests being presented as the defenders of free-market ideology.

But the US libertarian influence on Brexit is not only a battle of ideas and ideology but is backed by millionaires and billionaires with fossil fuel interests who saw the referendum as an opportunity to open up the UK market to US exports.

These mega-donors’ influence has been channeled to the UK through networks such as Atlas and individuals such as Matthew and Sarah Elliott, who wield power through their connections — all in the name of pushing for deregulation post-Brexit, which would put profits before the environment.

This Article

Mat Hope is editor of Desmog.uk where this article first appeared.

Poland’s energy ministry has come out fighting for the coal sector, ahead of UN climate talks in Katowice next month.

Krzysztof Tchórzewski’s ministry defended the country’s heavy reliance on the polluting fuel, in a statement published on Monday. In 2017, coal generated 78% of electricity.

Yet a spokesperson for the Cop24 presidency, which sits in the environment ministry, said in a terse email that did not represent the Polish government position.

National economies

The conservative Tchórzewski is already locked in dispute with the prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the government’s “war on smog”.

Morawiecki and technology minister Jadwiga Emilewicz are promoting tougher quality standards on coal used in home heating, to clean up polluted air. But Tchórzewski has frustrated their efforts, watering down the proposals and delaying action.

The energy minister is also a strong advocate for Ostrołęka C, a controversial new coal plant proposed in northeastern Poland.

In the latest statement, Tchórzewski’s ministry declared its opposition to raising EU ambition on climate change, arguing this would harm the Polish economy.

At an international level, it said the fight against climate change should “preserve the competitiveness of national economies and their sovereignty in shaping energy mixes”.

Coal to renewables

While noting the potential of renewables, electric vehicles and nuclear, the statement maintained “clean coal” and “low-carbon” natural gas had a continued role.

“The minister of energy is in favour of the evolutionary transformation of the power sector, instead of drastic restrictions on the use of fossil fuels,” it said, citing energy security and affordability concerns.

Others see a greener future for Poland’s energy. Think-tank Forum Energii has mapped out four scenarios, ranging from maintaining coal dominance to 73% renewable power by 2050.

Over the period studied, the whole-system costs were similar, with renewables delivering slightly cheaper electricity. Diversifying into renewables would also reduce reliance on fuel imports, the study found.

A poll commissioned by Greenpeace Poland last year showed clean energy was popular, with 74 percent supporting a shift from coal to renewables. 

Host city

“Investing in renewables is the only way to keep energy bills low for Poles,” said campaigner Paweł Szypulski. “Staying with coal is absolutely not in line with the Paris Agreement and not in line with scientific knowledge and not in line with what Polish people would like to see.”

The EU needs to phase out coal power by 2030 to meet the temperature goal in the Paris Agreement, according to Climate Analytics.

The European Commission is due to release its proposal for a long-term climate strategy next week. Ten member states have called for this to include a pathway to net zero emissions by 2050. There is also a live debate over whether to strengthen the 2030 emissions target in the coming year.

Warsaw has long been the most vocal opponent of climate regulations in Brussels, backed by the Visegrad Group of central European countries. However its traditional ally Hungary has signalled plans to shut its last coal plant by 2030 and replace it with a clean energy hub.

Michał Kurtyka, a junior energy minister appointed to preside over Cop24, has highlighted the transition already under way in host city Katowice. The region is home to two coal mines, down from 14 in the industry’s 1980s peak.

He has a mammoth technical task to oversee at Cop24: the completion of detailed rules to implement the Paris Agreement.

Kurtyka is also expected to promote three political statements. These will focus on the role of forests and electric vehicles in tackling climate change, and call for “a decent future” for fossil fuel workers affected by the shift to a low carbon economy.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.