Richard Tice surprised a journalist when the Reform UK deputy leader declared man-made climate change was “garbage” in an uncomfortable interview.
The right-wing party has just announced it would scrap net zero altogether and impose a windfall tax on renewables if it were ever elected, moves which Reform claims would cut the public’s energy bills.
Although the move was slammed by pollsters as leader Nigel Farage’s “first big mistake”, his deputy Tice seemed to double down on the anti-green stance in an interview with Sky News.
Speaking to the MP for Boston and Skegness, reporter Ali Fortescue asked him: “Do you believe in man-made climate change?”
“Climate change is real, it has gone for thousands of years, always will,” Tice replied. “The arrogant, naivety of people who think you can stop the power the sun, stop the power of volcanoes –”
Fortescue interrupted: “We’re talking about man-made climate change.”
Tice replied: “Hear me out, there’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change, given it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years. How did climate change happen before man-made CO2?”
The journalist pointed out that there are a “vast” number of scientists and experts who believe climate change has been accelerated by human behaviour since the industrial revolution.
As the UN’s secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned last year, “we are playing Russian roulette with our planet” right now, so “we need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell”.
“What is that you know that they [climate experts] don’t?” Fortescue asked.
The politician simply pointed to a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which said implementing net zero tomorrow would make no difference to sea levels for between 200 and 1,000 years.
“In other words, they’ve not got a clue, it won’t make a difference,” Tice said. “They are being lied to, misinformed, and we’ve got the courage to say we’ve got to stop this nonsense.”
The IPCC also explains that there is a time lag when it comes to the impact from greenhouse gases.
Fortescue pointed out that the same panel of experts he’s talking about, the IPCC, also say human activity is the main cause of climate change.
But Tice said he disagrees with that, and claimed Reform “have the courage to say it how it is – people are being ripped off by the renewable sector, by the vested interest”.
“We are on the side of the British people, not the vested interest, nor the mainstream politicians,” the deputy leader of Reform UK said.
He then claimed: “Do you know what, we’re leading in the polls, maybe the British people are starting to realise we are talking the truth, they know they are being lied to.”