Photo: DANGER by Alisdare Hickson https://www.flickr.com/photos/alisdare/

That COP30 taking place in Belém, Brazil, later this year, a city that is the gateway to the Amazon river, is highly significant.  Can the symbolic setting precipitate a fundamental change to what has become a moribund COP process?  Or will it be business as usual, with fossil fuel lobbyists swarming round to make their influence the decisive one?  

In considering the situation, we also felt it pertinent to think about the rise of the Far Right in many countries, and how that links to fossil fuel protectionism and climate denialism – after all, here in the U.K., Reform’s ‘scrap net zero’ ethos is posed as a natural extension of their racist anti-migrant rhetoric.  

We asked our friend and colleague Richard Wilson, Director of Stop Funding Hate, for some materials in the subject.  Below is his response, and we share this with you as a valuable resource on what is rapidly becoming a critical aspect of the climate struggle.

Richard writes:

I wanted to share what I managed to find – as you know this is also a particular area of interest for us given that there are so many of these intersections and given that there does seem to be a clear crossover between Stop Funding Hate and Stop Funding Heat.

It feels like there’s a real need for more work on this but this summary is a really helpful starting point – The Denial Business: Exposing the Far Right’s Love Affair with Fossil Fuels and the book referenced in the article also looks very relevant: 

White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism | Verso Books

Also possibly of interest: Thesis shows how far-right media contribute to opposition to climate science

The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Lining up Behind Far-Right Authoritarians – Institute for Policy Studies

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-fossil-fuel-industry-tactics-are-fueling-democratic-backsliding/ 

Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies | Corporate social responsibility | The Guardian

Desmog has done a series of really interesting and useful articles following the various threads – for example: 

U.S. Climate Denial Group Using Far-Right to Attack EU Green Policies – DeSmog

Mapped: Reform UK’s Anti-Green Network – DeSmog

Desmog has also done a lot of digging on the organisation featured in this article: ‘Hard-Right’ NatCon Event Was Organised by Oil Funded Group – DeSmog  – a group called Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) which is closely linked to the Orban government in Hungary and is funded via the Hungarian state oil company, MOL. 

Hungary COP29 Climate Delegates Linked to State Oil Company – DeSmog

Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll – DeSmog

‘Hard-Right’ NatCon Event Was Organised by Oil Funded Group – DeSmog

There’s also more about them here: How a populist think tank is stoking Scotland’s culture war & Orbán’s think tank is on a mission to break Europe’s climate ‘consensus’ – POLITICO

Partly as an experiment, I asked ChatGPT’s “deep research” tool to summarise the available information on Mathias Corvinus Collegium and its links to the far right, and while I haven’t yet double checked all the sources (so definitely don’t rely on this as a primary source) it looks to have done quite a good job in drawing together a lot of the threads: https://chatgpt.com/s/dr_68151a0bf6208191a44fe552ed92e6e5 

I’ll stop there for now but keen to keep talking about this and would definitely be good to hear about anything you uncover!