Lord Frost has said he doesn’t believe Britain is currently in a climate emergency, while also throwing his support behind nuclear energy and fracking.
The former Brexit negotiator resigned from his role in December 2021, due to "concerns about the current direction of travel" regarding the Covid pandemic
And speaking on the current concerns around climate change, he urged for a more “pragmatic” approach to dealing with it rather than up-ending the whole way our societies work".
While he added that the "current evidence" did not support that Britain was in a "climate emergency".
Lord Frost
Peter Byrne
He said: "We are told to stop travelling, live local, eat less, stop eating meat, turn our lights out and generally to stop being a burden."
While he also hit out at the “medieval” solutions instead of techniques such as nuclear energy and fracking.
Lord Frost continued: "'Rather, the effects of climate change are a problem, one of the many we face, and should be tackled in that pragmatic way rather than by asking us to up-end the whole way our societies work.
"Western society, and indeed world civilisation, depends on copious supplies of energy.
Lord Frost and Boris Johnson
Etienne Ansotte/European Commission
"Yet the prevailing mood is one in which individuals are asked to restrict their use of energy and in which unsatisfactory renewables technology is touted as the best solution to our problems.
'"Instead of focusing on technological solutions that enable us to master our environment and get more energy in a more carbon-efficient way — nuclear, CCS, fracking, one day fusion – we have focused on managing demand so we can use medieval technology like wind power,” he wrote for Policy Exchange.
It comes as Britain is braced for days of extreme temperatures in the latest heatwave, as millions more people face a hosepipe ban in the coming weeks.
The Met Office has issued a four-day amber warning for extreme heat in parts of England and Wales for Thursday to Sunday, with temperatures set to climb to 35C or even 36C in some places.
Temperatures are not set to be as extreme as those in July which smashed records when the thermometer climbed to above 40C in some areas in the UK for the first time.
Research shows that climate change is making heatwaves more intense, frequent and likely, with last month’s record temperatures made at least 10 times more likely because of global warming and “virtually impossible” without it.
Scientists also warn the likelihood of droughts occurring is becoming higher due to climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human activities.
