Today I am joined by Ben Pyle, founder of the Climate Debate UK and also cabinet member on Together Association. And well, you are a climate researcher, let's say, and have recently published a paper called Clean Air, Dirty Money and Filthy Politics. Welcome to the programme, Ben. Thanks very much, Mike. It's great to be here. Let's get started. I mean the the title of the of the paper is pretty clear because dirty money and filthy politics seems to be the situation that we're in at the
moment. And and what struck me about the paper as I read it was you're you're talking about so many of the the things that that we have been covering over many, many years, C40 cities and so on. The whole city's agenda and the fact that cities are are absolutely leading the way in terms of pursuing climate, the climate agenda, the debt zero agenda, and they're using increasingly clean air as the mechanism to sort of drive that in the first place.
That's right. Yeah, we look at that, we think of that as like kind of a pretty much a symptom of the failure of
the green agenda so far in fact. So we we produced another report earlier on in the year looking at the science of air pollution claims such as Sadiq Khan's claim that 4000 people die from air pollution in in London each year which is just nonsense and and actually you can find scientists being very frank about the fact that this is nonsense and and even you know through through sort of committees that the government have convened and actually the chair of that committee is is
also the chair of Imperial College the the the the the body at the Imperial College London that sort of now services Sadiq Khan's claims with science so-called. But it's it's not peer reviewed science and it's not it's not scientific even it's just statistical modelling. But anyway, the point is what? Why? What we wanted to know really was well, why does this persist? Why do these kind of claims persist throughout public life through through politics? Why? Why? Why politics?
So sort of reluctant to accept that you know challenges to this view and sort of listen to to the critics of of of those claims. And I I think pretty I mean you know I I don't know if this report's going to tell anyone who watch you know watches this kind of show anything they
didn't necessarily already know. But we did think it was important to sort of make it in a formal to to create a very sort of formal argument about how this new form of politics works, what the kind of structures are and and and who what's dominant in it. Because it's clearly not
democratic, right. You know, it's clearly not the case that people are or ever were marching in the street demanding tighter air pollution controls and demanding that the government takes away their cars and and and restricts their access to roads. So. So where where does it come from? And you know, we discover, well, we didn't discover, we we
already knew. But we we, we, we show that the philanthropists have this undue role, this outsized role in global politics and pretty much in the case of some very big players like Bill Gates of course, and Mike Bloomberg, arguably they've just bought their way in now.
It's fine in a sense, I think, to to argue that civil society organisations and to a greater or lesser or extent sort of some intergovernmental agencies might require philanthropy to to to survive, especially in the case of charities. But we point out that it's more the case that billionaires are able to buy civil society, not just civil society organisations. What we're doing here now is civil society but but we're we're against.
We're against the dominant part of civil society which doesn't have any real connection with the public. It's all, it's all top down. It's all from these very lofty philanthropic organisations that just sort of set things up. They can just, you know conjure up organisations to suit their needs as they arise. And so that's that's kind of a departure from how we might have once understood politics.
Democratic politics in this country is mostly organised around a contest of ideas between broadly competing parties representing different interests in society. Let's look at this in a little bit more detail because you've talked about philanthropists and you've talked about civil society organisations, which we might call charities.
NGOs are another aspect of this but and then on top of that as well there are for example C40 Cities UK 100, a whole bunch of other it's a global Parliament of Mayors a whole bunch of other organizations and institutions which have been established and have really gained a lot of traction in the last 20 or 30 years which are completely outside the what people would perceive as being the normal democratic process. The majority of people probably don't even know they exist.
I mean if we took a straw poll of of people in the UK and said you know have you heard of the global parliament of Mayors. Very very few people will have heard of that or know anything about it. And so this is all going on in plain sight and and us as as as the electorate, as as people that think we live in a democracy have played no part in the establishment of these organisations and played no part in in holding them to account. So.
So how has this happened and how has this crept up on us and what do you think the steps are that we need to take to to to deal with it? Well, I think there are a number of hypothesis about the genesis of this kind of what would you call it, philanthropic industrial complex. You know, and I think Vivek Ramaswamy's book, I think it's called Woke Inc, does shed some light on that.
Perhaps being a system that kind of developed under Obama whereby there was, I believe tax breaks or some such thing for philanthropic gestures. And. And that pushed a lot of money into causes that were, you know, more or less aligned with the Democratic Party's sort of consensus or ideological priorities, what have you. So I think, I think that was probably the shot in the arm over the last sort of one of the Obama era and since.
But this is a this is a longer thing and and and you know people what would you say veterans of the climate wars I suppose you would say have known that this has been going on since the 19 sort of 60s that very powerful people very rich people have variously or you know, not not all of them by any stretch of the imagination but a nucleus of them certainly began to sort of believe in the 1960s in this Malthusian principle and and and to try and reinvent the work of Thomas Malthus that that
was sort of aimed to restrict the human fertility. They spent billions on trying to reduce population in in the
developing world. So they're kind of gripped by this idea and they were very they were able to set themselves up through the United Nations through the you know this this was an oil tycoon, Maurice Strong and that really established environmentalism in the UN and and and that the United Nations Environment Programme very much led by Strong and and his you know fellow philanthropists.
These billionaires like the Rockefellers and and it's kind of snowballed since then and I I think it's it's very global politics is very attractive to national politics so so you know someone like we are our favorite demon Tony Blair he he's much more drawn to the glamour and the and what have you of of a global institution of these enormous sort of political structures rather than just the sort of slightly boring day-to-day stuff that characterises domestic UK
politics. So you know, so there's been attempt to rebuild to to to sort of build political institutions at the global level going on since the foundations of the United Nations here. It's the first days or even before if you take the League of Nations as representative of the
same same effort. It's always been a dream of of of global government for for good and bad reasons and and that that a lot of people have invested their philanthropy in it and their and their hopes for for a different form of politics the the one we're we're sort of used to.
So I think these these kind of things coincide and or align and so so the, you know, the United Nations cannot be a can't be dominated by a form of politics for example, that characterises the ideologies of the early early 20th century.
You know, if it's left wing or right wing as such then then then there's going, you know, the the, the, the, the, the political project is not going to be able to sustain itself because it will obviously rub against democratic principles where people choose that, what kind of ideologies that their governments or what the organising principles of the
governments are. So the United Nations has to sort of it sort of present itself as above ideology and and people for some reason have have sort of come to believe that environmentalism isn't ideological. That this idea about how society must be organised in order to save the planet is just a technical matter, not a matter of of you know of of ideologies such as those that characterize that you know the the early 20th century.
But it is right. It is just as ideological because it says we must be organised in this way. The whole of society, the whole of the economy must be radically reorganised in short order. And then of course it just so happens that the people who benefit from that are global technocrats are billionaires and and and you know that's how they can their their interests are going to be served in in this in this sort of green utopia that they designed for us.
None of them. They're not going to you know they're not going to they're not going to be losers in this this in in the green utopia. So I I mean there's so those are the two main strands is you know this development of the United Nations and the development of philanthropy as a sort of a political force in and of its own right, probably probably the more recent part of that. Yes.
And I mean, you know, an example of what you're talking about is Mr. Starmer himself, when he was asked whether he prefers Parliament or the World Economic Forum and the answer was the World Economic Forum, that was sort of my next question. I mean, you know, we've talked about NGOCSOS, we've talked about bodies like C40 cities and and Global Parliament of Mayors and so on. But where do you see bodies like the World Economic Forum or the Bilderberg Group or the CFR?
These types of organisations fitting into all this, are they just part of the puzzle or or do they have a bigger role? Or in fact, following on from that, do you think the role of the World Economic Forum is overstated? I do and that tends to annoy people. But I don't. I I don't, I don't want to think of it as a as a sort of yes, no true false kind of kind of
thing. There are there are dozens of or at least a dozen organisations like the WEF and the the Bloomberg Bilderberg and and I think they've got an interest in overstating their ability to influence things and and so you know when I was writing the report on air pollution for example it doesn't really come up in the machinations like and of course you know there are there are WEF meetings and what have you about air pollution and and climate change but I don't.
I don't I don't necessarily see them as the instigators. So I, I, I, I don't want to give them too much credit for what they don't. They don't. They haven't. They don't necessarily deserve and haven't necessarily created. The way I look at them is more like unsupervised sixth form discos preceding an outbreak of chlamydia. If you can compare ideology to
an STD. All these people they just move around in these kind of conferences and and and meetings and boondoggles and Beanos and what have you and and it rubs off on each other. They, they, they, they align through this kind of quite bland, insidious process that doesn't take away the evil of it. Like this is not how where decisions and ideologies should be made like that like the democratic well decision making
should be democratic. It should be we should be able to participate in that And of course these exclusive clubs are are exactly that. They're going to say no public allowed no no people allowed. So so to to to bring that back to the report it it seems to me that that you know with with figures like Bill Gates pushing sums like $4.7 billion into organisations like the World Health Organization funding UK universities to the tune of 300 plus $1,000,000 each.
That's not a year that's that's in total. But you know they're giving they're giving vast budgets to research in in the UK and and and throughout the world and they're dominating civil society just these you know just the few the handful of billionaires that we look at Bill Gates.
Mike Bloomberg Christopher Hohn Jeremy Grantham you you know the the the WEF that I mean those those are sums that are far bigger than the WEF and they they encompass much more of society than you know just Davos Mann who who used to be by the way I mean he's just an object of ridicule. In the 2000 tens Davos man was quite this quite naff figure who who you know sort of burdened by the latest gadgets gizmos and fashionable you know fashionable causes.
He wasn't a serious person. He sort of he he he he he you know it's a bit of a bit of a spiv really and not not not someone who is capable of executing you know world plan. And and I think we should actually perhaps even look at the these billionaires in the same way and it's not necessarily the case that you know like the the guy in The Simpsons, the evil the evil power station guy. They've got this this program. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. So so like kind of it's almost a civil society has been established to just completely flatter the egos of these already very narcissistic and psychopathic people. So so they they may themselves be victims of ideology.
It's not necessarily like scripts and plans and you know and what and what have you it's the the if you like the abomination is just in the configuration of politics in this way not necessarily the the documents that that that reveal what their agenda is And I appreciate that's nuanced and and some people might say well what difference does that make to me you know but but but that I mean but that but that certainly works both ways I don't I don't think that that
that billionaires should be able to give gifts with strings to intergovernmental agencies and civil society organizations with such influence in in in public life. So I don't I don't need the WEF or the Bilderbergs or to to explain that position. I just need to say I don't I don't want this I don't like their ideas I think they're wrong. I think they distort science
research across the board. They distort not just not just scientific research, they excuse me, they distort social and Economic Research and and all kinds. You know they form cabals and that's one of the things we pointed out in the report. Even 20 years ago, researchers into malaria and other transmissible diseases particularly those that affect the the world. They were complaining that philanthropies, specifically from Gates, has this toxic effect on research.
It it, it distorts the priorities of research and replaces them with the agenda of the philanthropist. So you know and and we know he's got his Gates for example is is preoccupied with vaccines. Well we well that malaria was eliminated in much of the West in in in in Europe and in America in North America and even as far north as the Arctic
Circle not through vaccines. You know we had we we we people went out with a lot of pesticide and and and where there were malaria mosquitoes they were wiped out. Now that that that may or may not have ecological problems but that was that was the approach we took or or the OR or you know sort of forward thinking. In fact governments and regulators took in order to address a very serious problem that you know that would not be tolerated today.
And and you can be sure that if something of that order did return today, people would be pretty pretty quickly demanding that kind of solution. So, so, so that that begins to shift the, you know, this philanthropy shifts the centre of gravity of those discussions and and and scientific research in institutions where strings should not be attached.
We want scientists to pursue what is of interest to scientists and we want social researchers similarly to be independent of these ideological agendas. That doesn't mean that they don't have their own ideological genders or are not vulnerable to them, but that that the point of science is to reconcile. Those kind of differences in society. So yeah so probably probably a
long winded sale. I just think, I just think this kind of dominance of philanthropy is unhealthy and and I think we can start there more simply than we can with with other sort of forms of criticism about wax and and so on. If philanthropists were really charitable, they would just give the money to whoever they suggested, as everybody else does.
They would give the money to whoever they think it's doing a good job and that would be it. But as you say, conditionalities are attached and therefore there is an agenda at work here. But, but if we just look at the funding for scientific research at the moment, you've mentioned Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But I mean, who else is, is directly funding this type of research in terms of clean air and climate policy? Just on those specifics.
Well, well, I mean, the, the point of the research is we we sort of try and demonstrate 3 tiers to this because we were, because it was necessary to sort of explain the context of what
we were talking about. So at the top we point out there is the likes of Bill Gates and he spent an enormous amount of money over over the course of the, the development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I think it's in the order of $85 billion but I I don't have the the figures in in front of me and and he is he's kind of I argue that that that's quite simply buying his way into these intergovernmental agencies and
so on and so forth. That's as I explained then there's a second tier which is some more the green billionaires and they're kind of beginning to buy their their way in in the same way. And the three that we look at there are Mike Bloomberg, the media news media guy and the owner of the developer of the Bloomberg Terminal, which sort of transmits financial information extremely rapidly
around the world. And Christopher Hohn who's the UK billionaire hedge fund manager and and Jeremy Grantham who who's most, I mean he's he's a bit of a smaller deal but he he's interesting because he he funds very expensive units bearing his name at the London School of Economics and Imperial College and I think he's given those in the order of about 30 million of some denomination each.
So, and then the the third tier is is just showing how the air pollution is a proxy battle of the climate war. So in fact it's just those, you know, money from climate philanthropists that is is is making its way to the air pollution campaigns. So you know, and the 2nd tier is is developing along the same lines as as the first tier and and the air pollution anxieties are just the annex of the
climate wars, right? Something I wanted to ask you specifically about here was and if if if misread this in the in the report then then say so. But if we look at for example the Foreign Commonwealth Office and the way that they distribute money around the world, they are off. They they up to a point we're publishing all spending over 25,000 lbs And they would send money to a particular organization but then that that organization would then distribute that money further down the chain.
And So what what effectively was happening was that the money was being laundered so that you never knew that it was actually that a particular NGO that was working in the country was actually being funded by the the Foreign and Commonwealth Office via these other intermediaries. And. And I was just wondering whether I think I read that in in the report that's kind of the same model that's being used in this case as well? Yeah, yeah, possibly.
We looked less than that than I would have liked to have done. It needs more more more work. We only have we've got incredibly limited resources you know not not being funded by
billionaires. So I was you know only able to take a few weeks to to to do this The the the the dev tracker info that the the the foreign and Commonwealth Office do put out is really interesting and it was very I've I've I've seen it quite a lot sort of leveraging quite a lot of money the the billionaires money they seem to amplify their money through
through government largesse. Yeah. So yeah you could find at the foreign Commonwealth Office donations to the World Wildlife Fund of 30,000,000 lbs and then and you can find the the you know their their funding. The most bizarre I found which we we discuss is this organization called client Earth which which you know uses judicial reviews takes governments and companies to courts to try and advance the the the green agenda.
The government's given them 40 sorry 4,000,000 lbs so far that we've found and and yet they have taken the government to court 9 times at least nine times on the issue of air pollution. I think that that that was by 2019 and I think there have been a number of cases since, which is just absolutely, I mean, who's heard of a, a, a a a a plaintiff being funded by a defendant in a in a in a lawsuit that that's kind of crazy, isn't it?
Like kind of I'm, I'm paying you to sue me yet that is what that is. That's that's the situation. That's absurdity of of the situation we're in. Of course, Client Earth is not solely funded by by the government. It's funded by mostly the the billionaires we've discussed. And I think even Pink Floyd's guitarist Dave Gilmore, he he gave them about 16,000,000 quid, I believe. So that, you know, they're pretty, they're pretty bloated already with billionaire, green,
billionaire cash. So why the green? The UK government is funding them. I have no idea but that but that. But that perversity in in funding you know these legal campaigns is reflected in in in a lot of the funding that you can see from green organization to to green organisations from
the government. So. So it's it's all I I think to more towards the end of the report and and it's something I've argued elsewhere as well there there is something of a compact developing between business government and civil society And given that civil society is just a a a you know product you know just a just bought owned by business. We can say it's a compact between governments and business or governments and billionaires if we want to go that that far and that's the danger.
And you you you hear the likes of you know former president of COP 26 Alok Sharma, MP for reading W You know he was this sort of slightly pathetic figure given this sort of huge planet saving role and he gives this fascinating speech to the Green Alliance. You know his his BLOB outfit in Westminster quite quite an old one but a BLOB outfit all the same and and we're in in you know he uses the word civil society in this sort of presentation about you know what
what what what about COP 26 and the plans he uses the word the expression of civil society like more than 10 or so times.
He never talks about the public right So the the the the public just don't feature in in the thinking of these kind of wonks these technocrats these the the the the people that sort of inhabit the foreign the the the the foreign and Commonwealth in development Office. They they just do think of the whole of the world in in terms of of civil society organisations and and the great and good that they can do leaving out any any you know questions about what what
whether the public agrees with what these vast budgets. This is billions. This is 2% of GDP, which, well it was, which is what what Cameron wanted to use as the as the aid budget. And I think that this is the the trick of this is, you know Cameron will say we want to use 2% of GDP to as as aid and everyone will think of starving babies in Africa and we're going to go and give them some food. We might build them some houses, we might restore their agricultural land so they can use it.
No, it's going to you know, this kind of questionable university research departments and and civil society organisations and other intergovernmental agencies and so on to try and further
this green agenda globally. So. So for example you you you look at you know some some W African country that may be the putative beneficiary of £5,000,000 and and then you discover well it's it's it's half of that's going to the World Resources Institute and half of that's going to which is just like a stern you know Nicholas Stern outfit with with Jeremy Grantham's influence and so on and so forth.
And and then you know there might be a few regional NGOs that take a few of the crumbs but but what the the the point of this project is to help somewhere like Ethiopia develop its national nationally determined contributions to the Paris agreement or under the Paris agreement. So, so it's this is this looks like a this looks like going to help hungry Africans. But actually it's just it's just strengthening the Paris agreement.
It's buying and bribing officials in other countries to to adhere to the UK government's preferred global political institutions and and treaties and so on and so forth. So, so none of that gets discussed and I I've done a few dives on on on on those funds because I remember there's probably a distraction from the air pollution discussion. But you know a few months ago aid to India became a big thing because India just put a spacecraft on on the moon, which
is which is great. And then people were saying hold on, we're spending all these these millions on aid in India and and then if you go and look at what the money is actually going towards, it's stuff like creating apps to help people.
So so there there was a a few £1,000,000 that went to software developers in in India to develop apps for people's smartphones so that they could live sustainable you know they could have sustainable lifestyle tips or what have you completely daft and and and they they you know I I think what that's trying to do is is is to buy a part of Indian society to you know to to try and change values in in there so that people so there's you know 2 or 300 people in India now who are sort of who
have got buy in to Western environmental ideological precepts and that's how this this this stuff is intended to work and and but but you won't you won't hear that kind of thing discussed in mainstream discussions about aid They'll they'll go back you know it's on the BBC they'll be talking about the devastating floods or famines or what have you that people elsewhere have to deal with. So yeah, so it's it's a great big scam. This is all the same policy being expressed in in many ways.
Now the question I had for you was therefore politicians are not representing our wishes, they're not representing us in any way, they're representing policies to us, it seems to me. And therefore, you know all the at best all we have is a veneer of democracy here. It's a non democracy here you can a management style and that and that. The only contest that really exists between, for example, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sonak is a is a fake debate about who's
competent to to run the state. It's not about anything deeper about any of the principles, the organising principles at stake. You know there aren't. There are none because they're just too they're just too well, everyone knows their puppets. Even even people who would vote Labour or or or Tory know that Rishi Sanak doesn't represent them and and Keir Starmer doesn't they. They know, they know that.
I think the best thing in the world that could happen would be if both Tories and Labour and the others got together and said we won't vote for our party, if you don't vote for your party, because we both know that they're completely corrupted.
Labour doesn't represent the working class and Conservatives don't represent the traditional values that that that that party used to stand for And Liberal Democrats of course are neither liberal nor democratic and there's a question mark over whether the Green Party are actually Green.
So so like the the that that being the case they've they've all sort of arrived at a consensus position on on these issues and what we show in the report is it's the IT was a consensus that was engineered by the Green Alliance which is that I I mentioned them a few moments ago this sort of think tank very very rooted in western. It's not massive.
It doesn't have you know budgets of 10s of millions or anything but it. But it has a lot of influence in in in Westminster and they were behind the instigating the the the climate assembly that sort of big experiment with against democracy a few years ago that that that sort of coincided with the arrival of extinction rebellion and you know that so they're they they organised this campaign in the in the 2015
general election. I think it's called Show the Love and and they, they basically lobbied the leaders of the parties, the three main parties, David Cameron, of course, Ed Miliband, who was Labour leader at the time, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. And there's this picture of them all signing this pledge not to debate climate policy but to all agree to to sort of emphasise the Paris agreement and and and tackling climate change in their
policy genders. So so you know sort of agreement to put the green BLOB before the interests of the of the public and then to allow the public a view and and I think people would recognise that not just in climate change now but across
the board. It's really difficult for I can only really go on about climate change but I think people you know recognise that that that woke has established itself in in the political establishment at large not necessarily just the just in Westminster. In along the same lines a racial ideology, gender, geology, all of the and and and greener geologies and they're all pretty much a piece and they've all sort of set themselves in in Westminster in this kind of way
and and and at the expense of us participating in politics and deciding what principles should should be key to to policy making. I mean, I don't want to return to the 1970s, for example, when you had, you know, these these horrible disputes between labour and, as it were capital or labour, you know, between we don't want strikes again, right? But, but but we do want there to be a dialogue of some kind between between differing perspectives to society.
Otherwise those differences in society are going to fester and they're going to be dangerous that that those schisms are going to become dangerous. That's why we have democracy is because it's the it's the it's the best way of resolving tensions that develop within society. But if you've got a whole political establishment which is very easily bought into these sort of fluffy consensuses that have a billions of pounds of PR surrounding them, well, well,
well, what? What's going to happen? And I think it's really important to remember that as these politicians were trying to build the consensus around climate change. We were going into a referendum where where really the the the the the the public had been denied this this this this view for a really long time. Have been denied the ability to give a view on on on Britain's membership of the European Union for for such a long time.
And that had grown and grown and grown until it was a such a problem for David Cameron that he was forced to give people a consensus. And then they and then the the they threw the whole resources of the state behind trying to sort of nudge people into making the right choice. So, so, so, like, there couldn't be a more vivid demonstration about the difference between, you know, the the democratic deficit. Everyone in the everyone. Well, not everyone, of course, because it didn't didn't turn
into a it wasn't 100%. But but the the largest, the largest sort of the, the dominant issue as far as the public were concerned for the preceding 15 or 20 years was the question of Britain's membership of the EU. Whereas the dominant question as far as Westminster was concerned was what happens if it gets 2° warmer, right. That's just this. So people were saying we want democratic control of policy because there's all this stuff that's going on that's terrible. We've got this growing
immigration problem. We've got this growing house housing problem and we've got all these economic problems that haven't been resolved and and and you're all dancing around in Europe worrying about climate change.
We need to bring we need to bring politics back with to back to democracy and and and you know the the likes of Ed Miliband wandering around with their heads in the clouds on on the global stage just didn't recognise that still don't recognise that democratic deficit that's something that needs to be resolved so that that's kind of an important that's an important. Aspect to understanding how air pollution fears and crises develop.
This is their context, right? This is it's it's from it's this democratic deficit that that creates this kind of distorted view on the other side that that the likes of Ed Miliband and and other politicians are are victims of and and what what?
So what we really point out in in that part of the report is that global climate politics it kind of comes to a halt in 2015 with the Paris Agreement and perhaps knocked a bit for six as well by Britain's Britain's vote, you know the the Leave vote and also by Donald Trump's election. Right. These are two kind of earthquakes that unsettled global you know globalists if you like in their in their ideologies.
And so there's a recognition that global, the Paris agreement essentially allows everyone to set their own emissions targets. Whereas in the past the hope was you could get one-size-fits-all. Everyone agree it's such an emergency. We all have to impose this this this one policy now and then and and and then every country has to deal with it because now it's it's it's this sort of fake agreement to to so it's an agreement to disagree basically. And so politics, climate
politics has to shift. It has to go somewhere else and where it goes is is local. Because if you. I mean as as we've seen now, there's a lot of fallout about Rishi Sanak's plans to abolish he. Well, he he says he'd put back the deadline for abolishing petrol and diesel cars to 2035 to bring it into alignment with other countries. This is, this is enormously politically toxic for national governments. So, so national. So climate policies don't work
at the global level. They don't really work at the national level. So, so they've been trying to find ways to push climate policy making to local politics where of course turnouts are extremely low. You know, and I I don't think any London mayor for example, has ever had a turn out at the election of more than 45%. And of course they're not. They're they're they're getting barely more than half of that total vote in the in the second
round. So you know, they can't really claim that very many Londoners support, support any mayor that there's ever been. I think what what I think people have pointed out, more people voted Brexit in London than voted for Sadiq Khan, which is this remarkable disparity given the ambition to that that that Khan has to abolish everyone's
cars anyway. So so giving powers as it were to local authorities essentially to exceed what people would believe to be local authorities powers is where the the climate agenda has ended up and and so you know banning cars is is done on the basis of air pollution at the local level not on the level not not as climate change at the national or global level and and you and and and it's done in the context of extremely weak
democratic engagement. You know, I've given an example of London but in many local elections throughout the UK you know the the turnouts are as low as the low teens. So so you know and and that's for you know for for for all parties. So you could, you know there there could, there could be a a council that has just, you know, just the support that a mandate given to it by by single digit percentage of the local population. Yet what they want to do is extremely radical even even by
national government standards. So, so they, you know, is a is a huge change to the way we live our lives and you know, radically changes the informal social care that goes on. It radically changes the opportunities that you can give children and it radically it changes how you get to work and so on and so forth. But that is now.
That is the competence that's been assumed by local governments and what what we So what I found fascinating about this because we were saying well what's that got to do with billionaires like Mike Bloomberg.
Well Mike Bloomberg was mayor for three terms of New York City and we I've been talking about turnouts and and the the turn out in in New York was catastrophically low I think in I think it's got 25% and in so in in in his third term in office Bloomberg spent for every single vote that he achieved $186 which is I mean he he he spent more on a on a you know on on his mayoral election than all UK political parties spend on on on an on a general election campaign And for a city the size
of London for a job like city comes I mean it's just an extraordinary amount of money. So my suggestion is this indicates that local government, not just in the states, we've got the same problems here, are completely vulnerable to money and they're completely vulnerable to to these fake civil society organisations and and and so being completely open to to the power of money, that was the obvious place for climate politics to go from global to to to to local.
And and Mike Bloomberg has seen it. And if you look at Mike Bloomberg's presence at COP 28, which is happening now, he's he's running this strand on local politics. He's running the show, literally running the show and discussing how they can further buy their way in to local politics to essentially circumvent democracy
at national and local levels. But in case that sounds gloomy, because local elections are so have such low turnouts, we have huge opportunity here to organise independent campaigns to stand against those candidates that are so vulnerable to the green BLOB and so so that you know, we we, we can overturn this and that. That's why you know citizen journalism and organisations and and campaigns like together that's so important to to to help that process.
Well, absolutely. And of course, you know, people will be often pessimistic about local politics and getting involved in local politics. But it's a great way to get a message to to an audience without requiring the mainstream media. And that's really what I want to ask you about next, because obviously none of this could happen if the media was doing its job and was actually helping to hold politics at whatever form of politics it is to
account. And contrary to that, they have demonstrated in the last 1020 years to be absolutely on board with with policy rather than holding policy to account. So I just wondering what you think about mainstream media? Oh, well, I try not to. I mean, I don't. I don't. I mean, I could. I mean, actually, I say I don't. I try not to. I just, I mean I I I used to just turn it used to be tuned on to my radio with my my radio used to be radio four in the
kitchen and I just. I mean it's something I listen to from my you know from my childhood into run into my 30s, the BBC. And I just don't recognise it first of all like kind of. I just don't you? I mean, of course there were always sort of leftoids and ideologues and what have you at the BBC and that's that. But that was all added to the richness of the experience, I think. And I turn it on that and I just, I just couldn't. I couldn't.
You know, maybe I'm just standing like a grumpy old man. Yeah, I didn't recognise the Britain that they were portraying. I didn't recognise any of the issues that they were they were claiming were sort of dark, ought to be dominant and the and the same with the. I mean the the the TVI probably switched off many years earlier, although I I used to remember thinking Channel 4 was really
amazing. Ben Channel 4 used to be in terms of mainstream media news Channel 4 News used to be pretty much top line and if you remember back in 2000 and nine 2010 they exposed the swine flu scam that was trying to be pushed on on the on the world at that time and and then go forward 10 years and they were absolutely 100% behind the COVID
narrative as well. So. So you know they that something changed there but I wasn't even you know BBC and and and broadcast news that's one thing but also we've got still got the newspapers and of course the Guardian in particular have been on the receiving end of quite a lot of the philanthropic money that you were talking about earlier in the in this interview so. So there there is definitely influence coming through from the same kinds of sources that are influencing academia and
politics. Yeah. So the other change that happened of course over the COVID period is they started being directly funded by government for advertising in a way that they hadn't been up to that point as well. So, So you know, I I just wonder how much of that is, is the reason that they are refusing to actually engage in these topics? Again, the sums are pretty large and that's only the ones we've been able to to uncover.
A lot of money going from Bill Gates to to the B, the World Service end of the BBC, not necessarily the licence fee funded part of the BBC. And I think the BBC. And there's some very interesting documents around Again around the around 2016 from from the BB, CS Charter, Balaam, BBC Media Action, which feeds into a lot of BBC World Service programming, which in turn gets pushed out variously across the network. So the BB, CS Fact Checking unit
is funded through this stuff. It's also quite a beneficiary of quite a generous grant from central government as well, which has the same preoccupations. But around 2016 is when all of this panic about misinformation begins and and you know this the the, the, the fake news stuff.
And I think it's because the BBC you know being the the main instrument of the political establishment at large I would say not necessarily the government or the state you know but the but the the the the political class it's sort of represents it's most prominent sort of institution is is of course the BBC and and and it's terrified you know if you if you read these kind of discussions in the in in the BBC that about
what's just happened. Trump's just been elected Brexit's just just been voted for and and they're like Oh my gosh what what have we what have we allowed to happen. We were supposed to be the centre of gravity of everyone's opinion in the whole UK we national agenda.
We were supposed to be presenting to people the view of the world and and they they feel like they failed so they kind of doubled down and and and I think I think the the other broadcasters and a lot of the rest of the media were in their orbit but I think they've doubled down too hard so and I and I think that that you know so we we might see these quite large sums going like you know in the order of $50 million going from Bill Gates to the BBC 12 million I think to the
Guardian and even some to the Telegraph. But it's not, it's not what it's not going to work now because that there's a disjuncture now and and too many people have read it and too many people have seen it.
So now people are just switching off the BBC precisely because it's just become this bland conformism that doesn't, it doesn't explore any issue to any depth and you know that as as much someone say, who could say, oh, you just got this view that's an outlier that's out of kilter, that that's much more interesting to people than sort of authorised consensuses about, you know, the the, the, the, the, the correct scientific
opinion. People, people want to hear about debates, people want to hear about, you know, differences of perspective and people, people don't want to be spoon fed bland piety through their TV so now that's why they're switching off. But none of the the broadcasters recognise it. I think Channel 4 just blew £5,000,000 on I on on sort of reinventing their logo and making films about how they did it, but then that that just leaves £5,000,000 they're not spending on the content.
They're all logo and no products, right? But they're not they're not interesting enough for logo to stick on people's T-shirts or something. So. So, you know, they're they're, they've become in in this kind of way preoccupied with themselves as brands and sort of their relationship to society at the expense of actually serving any good in society. So I think people, people have, people have turned off.
So again, I wouldn't be too bleak about the dominance of mainstream media because this I know, you know, apart from anything else, we're here now, we're doing this now. This probably wasn't possible to the extent that there it is now, before COVID and before Climate, before before Net zero and before Wokeness. So every every kind of trench that the the, the, the, that that establishment position digs as its own kind of defences undermines its own foundations.
People don't want people want stuff like this and the more people that can sort of find it the more the more they will watch And the more that the BBC and Channel 4 and the mainstream newspapers are defensive about it. The more the more they will drive people away. That that that's that's been the the tendency so long, long may they continue. But that that is also why they're getting very aggressive about online harms and misinformation and other stuff. So we have to be careful.
It's not. It's not a done deal. There's a lot more they could do to to to prevent freedom of expression and that they are planning to do and we've got, we've got to be careful to it. But I I think we should be again optimistic about mainstream media's demise. I think it will. It is imminent and it will be a
good thing. I can't leave without talking about air quality itself and and a bit I mean one of the points that's made in the paper is that of course the the the air quality debate isn't based on science and and so I mean whenever Sadiq Khan is is claiming that he needs an ultra low emission zone because air quality is is bad in in London and 4000 people are dying a year and so on. I mean what what? What is the scientific evidence on his correctness or incorrectness on that?
There is no science of it, first of all, right, so there isn't there. There was an attempt to estimate the mortality risk of air pollution exposure and and that is based on a broader number of studies and it's quite simple.
You you you sort of try to estimate a population's level of exposure and then you look at how long they're living and then you you try to to to work out what the influence of of those air pollutants specifically PM 2.5 which is the smallest particles of soot and the such like in in air and stuff like nitrogen, the the noxes and soxes nitrogen dioxides and nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides.
So they try to build these statistical models of of of of that exposure risk and now as use they may well be useful in certain contexts and and I'm not against like you know I think it's probably better that we we, we we don't have open coal fires in in a place like London. I think that you know so but I don't I don't I, I we're talking about something categorically different when we're now when we're talking about banning anything we're essentially talking about banning combustion
full stop of any form. So the the, the the the the government had convened in the 2000s or you know sort of met occasionally a panel of experts called committee on the medical
effects of air pollutants. It's called Comia and and that sort of brought these sort of researchers and scientists together with a couple of lay people interestingly enough again from 1A representative from the Green Alliance that BLOB organization I've discussed quite a bit and they discuss how what what what how can we work out what what what is the mortality risk and they they they try every few years to sort of synthesize the science that that that's available.
So in the the, the, the one of them, the sort of key events that is a report they produced in 2018 where sort of more more definitive effort to estimate mortality risk of of of all the potents that people are exposed to and they and they produce this model. But but a lot of the scientists on the panel or a number of the scientists on the panel, it's not a huge panel. They disagree and they say this is not a Safeway of informing policy.
There is no mortality risk associated with air pollution exposure. And we know that because people are living longer lives, right. So you know, it's misleading to say that someone dies the cause of air pollute exposure to air pollution. Now it might be that you live slightly longer if you're exposed to slightly or much less air pollution, but this is, this is these these effects are
extremely weak statistically. So as as we point out in the earlier report, life expectancy has been growing through most of the 20th century and into the 21st century pretty linear linearly at a rate of 72 days per person per year. So you know, you're like, this is life expectancy increasing at this quite phenomenal rate, certainly a historically unprecedented development. So people were where they were sort of at the middle of the last century, dying towards the
end of their 60s. Now they're living into their 80s as an average as an expected norm. So this and that's that's great that we we we want this but the the, the so the worst you can say about exposure to air pollution according to these models is that that 72 days per year increase is slowed down by 64 or so hours a year, right.
So you essentially let's say you gain 72 days a year through whatever is driving normal material progress that that kind of stuff and then you lose 60. So so 100 steps forward, one steps back, right that that's how to think of this and so so it's and that's why it's misleading to say it causes death or it causes premature death because it doesn't it just slightly air pollution exposure slightly slows the rate of
increase of life expectancy. So so so this debate happens within Commie app and and and and a couple of the scientists say we're not putting our name to this because this is this is misleading and it's going to distort the public's understanding of of of air pollution and and they say this in 2018 and and Sadiq Khan has proven them right because Sadiq Khan. Sadiq Khan you know and I hate you know we've got a worse repeat the point I'm not
claiming A denying A denier's position for example that I might be some people might sort of characterise my views on climate change. I'm stating the science here literally. The published government official science, it's saying do not use mortality as a statement of of of the risk of air pollution.
But but they, you know the likes of Sadiq Khan, just just just just ignore that that warning, that advice from science itself and I would say scientific institutions, research organisations such as those that are based at Imperial College are complicit. And even the chair of Commi App itself has been complicit in allowing, as it were, Sadiq Khan
to get away with that. And and and I'm I'm not suggesting that that's just because they've been bought, although we can see extremely large amounts of money flowing between City Hall in London, the mayor's office and the NGOs and and philanthropists involved with air pollution campaigning. But but you know might the the the whole thing might be more complex than just about funding but there's definitely ideology interfering with institutional sciences contributions to our
understanding. And even after having produced such a clear statement as as as as Comiak did, it's chair is going around supporting the mayor in his very alarmist propagandist kind of interventions. You know, trying to you know this this policy making so, so this and that and that's just to wrap that up. I guess that's how we can know that climate change is BS as well because air pollution as I've said before is a microcosm is a proxy battle of the climate debate.
And and if we can see such liberties being taken by institutional science and by scientists at in this, in this in this field in the field of air pollution, we can definitely see that replicated throughout the other debates about about about climate change. So that's that's what we try and do in the report. We try and say air pollution is the microcosm of of the the broader climate and green agenda and we and we can see these same things happening.
Brilliant, Ben. We have to leave it there for today. I hope we can do this again in the future. In the meantime, how do people get a copy of the report and how do they see your other work? Yeah, you can get the report at the Together Association website. If you'll forgive me if I've forgotten the URL, but it's quite easy to find. You can find it on Twitter as well We're we're tweeting it every day at the moment. So so the you can also find me on Twitter. Climate debate Sorry Climate
resistance Clim #8 resistance. My website isclimatedebate.co.uk Ross Got YouTube channel but all those are linked to on on Twitter and on the website. But yeah, should be should be easy to find the report either by my name or by the together association with the word report if you will do a web search. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Ben Pyle, thank you for joining me today. And as I say, hopefully we will see you in the not too distant future. Thank you very much. Bye, bye for now.