As Donald Trump begins his second term on a platform of fossil fuel expansion, a well-funded transatlantic network of UK politicians, think tanks, and media outlets is aligning with his anti-climate agenda. This coordination between U.S. Republicans and UK conservative figures seeks to dismantle net-zero targets and promote fossil fuels at a time when climate scientists warn of record-breaking global temperatures. The alignment represents a powerful, moneyed effort to shift the political climate and stall global environmental action.
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*The Voice of the Metropolis*
**EXTRA! EXTRA!**
---
### THE GREAT CARBON CRUSADE! TRUMP’S RETURN SPURS TRANSATLANTIC OIL SYNDICATE!
#### High-Society Slickers and Petroleum Czars Plot Across the Pond to Ditch Green Laws and Keep the Smokestacks Churning!
**NEW YORK, Jan. 20** — Grab onto your straw boaters and hold your horses, folks, because the political mercury is bursting right through the glass!
Just today, Donald J. Trump took the grand oath of office to become the 47th Chief Executive of the United States. But as he steps back into the White House, the eggheads and climate scientists are sounding a frantic alarm! They say the year 2024 went down as the sweltering-est, hottest year on record. If we don’t put the kibosh on these greenhouse gas emissions—and fast—our global pledge to keep the earth’s fever below 1.5 degrees Celsius is headed straight for the graveyard!
#### THE EFFICIENCY KINGPIN’S BRITISH RACKET
As the year 2025 roars to a start, Trump’s newly minted "Government Efficiency" czar, the eccentric billionaire Elon Musk—who backed Trump’s campaign with a cool 250 million smackers—is already stirring up trouble across the Atlantic. Musk has been using his megaphone to push sensational British grooming gang panics straight to the top of the London news sheets, aided by a troupe of right-wing Tory and Reform UK politicians and their ink-stained allies in the press.
But that ain't the half of it! Today, the crusading scribes at *DeSmog* have blown the lid off a massive, high-finance syndicate. They’ve mapped out a secret brotherhood of British bigwigs, think-tank pencil-pushers, and oil-slicked donors working hand-in-glove with the Trump crowd to put the freeze on the green-energy movement!
---
```
====================================================================
THE BLACK GOLD BROTHERHOOD: A SPECIAL REPORT
====================================================================
```
#### “DRILL, BABY, DRILL!”
President Trump remains a swell pal to the oil barons. In his first go-round in the Oval Office, the Republican chief tore up the grand 2015 Paris Climate Pact, and he’s itching to do it again. At his grand inauguration, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and hollered his old battle cry: *“Drill, baby, drill!”*
The brainy fellas at the *Carbon Brief* estimate this wild scheme will dump a whopping four billion extra tons of carbon soot into the atmosphere by 1930. And why wouldn't he sing that tune? The oil and gas syndicate greased his campaign wheels with over 25 million greenbacks!
And look who’s dancing the Charleston with him! Over in London, the Conservative Party has crowned a new queen bee, Mrs. Kemi Badenoch. She’s got Chevron oil money lining her campaign chest, and she’s singing the blues that the UK's green targets will "bankrupt the country." Badenoch recently went on a high-flying tour of North America, rubbing elbows with Canada's own Pierre Poilievre—a gent who’s voted against environmental measures nigh on 400 times!
But Mrs. Badenoch is small fry compared to Mr. Nigel Farage, the fast-talking boss of Reform UK. Farage, who claims carbon gas is nothing but "plant food" and wants all green laws scrapped, was right there in the smoke-filled rooms of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion on election night!
“Trump’s agenda will be a disaster for America and the world,” warned Bob Ward, a high-hat scholar from the London School of Economics, claiming British politicians are worshipping at the altar of Trump’s extreme program.
---
### BACKROOM CHINWAGS IN WASHINGTON
Just last November, Kemi Badenoch hopped a steamer to Washington for some backroom chinwags with the Republican brass. She shared a high-class dinner with Vice-President-to-be JD Vance, a gent who calls green policies "the great green scam." She huddled with Speaker Mike Johnson—a man who hates the EPA and votes against the green lobby every chance he gets—and then headed south to meet Florida's strongman, Governor Ron DeSantis, who calls climate science a “religion” and literally scratched the words "climate change" right out of his state's law books!
#### THE BILLION-DOLLAR THINK TANK
This right-wing racket goes deep into the shadow world of the Heritage Foundation and their "Project 2025" blueprint—a plan to gut the government's green watchdogs and let the oil companies extract to their heart's content. This outfit is lousy with oil money, pocketing over 4.9 million greenbacks from the notorious Koch Industries and a cool 21.5 million from the Mellon oil fortune! Even Trump's new ambassador to London, Warren Stephens, is a slick operator with his pockets stuffed with oil and gas investments.
And what about the British Tories? They’re swimming in oil money too, pocketing 8.4 million pounds from the pollution lobby. They’ve received 7.2 million pounds from the funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation—the chief peddlers of climate humbug in the UK. Badenoch herself took office space and campaign cash from Neil Record, a big cheese of the anti-green lobby who’s got deep ties to the old BP oil syndicate!
---
### FARAGE’S BIG-MONEY SYNDICATE
```
--------------------------------------------------------------------
DO YOU WANT THE REAL dirt ON THE POLLUTERS?
Subscribe to DeSmog today! Get the weekly lowdown on the big-wigs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
```
At the close of 2024, Nigel Farage and his money-man Nick Candy flew down to Florida to butter up Elon Musk, with rumors flying that the tech tycoon might drop a whopping 100 million pounds into their Reform party till. While they wait for that heavy sugar, Reform is already being greased by coal and oil kingpins like Jeremy Hosking, who poured 500 grand into their kitty.
Farage has been playing the high-roller in America, making five trips across the pond since July. He was the star speaker at the Heartland Institute’s fundraiser in Chicago, roaring “Drill, baby, drill!” to a packed house. Now, Heartland has launched a British branch, run by a frequent pundit on GB News named Lois Perry.
GB News is co-owned by hedge-fund kingpin Paul Marshall, a fella with 1.8 billion pounds sitting in oil giants like Shell and Chevron. Marshall is also funding a high-society club called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), fronted by that Canadian fast-talker Jordan Peterson and featuring Vivek Ramaswamy—a fella who calls the climate crisis a total "hoax!"
At these swanky ARC conferences, you'll find big-wigs like Douglas Murray, who tells folks that teaching kids about the warming planet is downright "child abuse," alongside a host of Tory MPs and right-wing broadcasters.
#### THE NATIONAL CONSPIRACY?
This pro-Trump league is also rallying around "National Conservatism" (NatCon), a traveling roadshow of right-wing agitators. Their Brussels shindig last year was co-sponsored by a Hungarian think-tank funded by Hungary's state oil monopoly, MOL!
#### THE GREEN BACKLASH
But the green crusaders aren't taking this sitting down! Dame Areeba Hamid, the firebrand chief of Greenpeace, tells us straight:
“Donald Trump has wasted no time paying back the big oil barons who bankrolled his campaign! But tearing up treaties won't stop the infernos and the devastating floods. Now is the time for leaders in the UK to fill the void. We need to make the fossil fuel industry pay for the chaos they’re causing so we can build a safer future!”
---
**EDITOR’S NOTE (CORRECTION, JAN. 15, 1926/2026):** *In an earlier edition, we reported Donald Trump’s oil and gas campaign grease at 32 million dollars. The correct figure is 25 million dollars. We regret the error.*