Adding another alarmist voice to the Brexit debate, the Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has warned that Britain voting to leave the European Union (EU) poses a major threat to global environmental efforts.
Green industry tycoon, Lord Deben (John Selwyn Gummer, pictured), was the keynote speaker at an Institute for Public Policy Research conference in London late last week entitled ‘The Path from Paris: The Implications of the Paris Climate Agreement for UK Policy and Business’, BusinessGreen reports.
He used his speech to sound a note of alarm to those present about the harm Brexit would have on efforts to combat climate change through EU action on slashing carbon emissions, saying:
“I’m quite clear that if Britain left the European Union it would put this back, as far as us and the rest of the European Union, very, very considerably.
“Brexit is a real threat to Paris, and we have to accept that because we cannot allow ourselves to go backwards in the mechanisms which we have created for working together.”
Turning his fire on Eurosceptics by using the inflammatory language of environmental activists, the former Tory environment minister implied that many would be relaxed about such an outcome, saying:
“I note that most climate change deniers are believers in our leaving the European Union, and most of those who want to leave the EU are not prepared to accept what the real demands that climate change places upon you [are].”
Lord Deben sought to persuade his audience that remaining in the EU gave Britain greater clout in pushing the international decarbonisation agenda, suggesting:
“What we need is an increasing power for Britain – greater sovereignty, a stronger voice, and that we get inside the European Union.”
It should come as no surprise that Lord Deben’s environmental activism is backed with Europhile sentiment. As Breitbart London previously reported, Lord Deben sits on the Steering Committee of the group Environmentalists for Europe (E4E) alongside the likes of 1970s comedian Bill Oddie, former Head of Prevention of Pollution Division at the European Commission and Member of the European Parliament Stanley Johnson (father of Boris), Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, and Craig Bennett (Chief Executive Officer of Friends of the Earth).
The E4E website reveals its views by declaring on every page “PROMOTED BY MATTHEW FULTON ON BEHALF OF THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT UK”.
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