Editor's note #1

At the Reform UK party conference, Deputy Leader Richard Tice set out three cults. Imposed on us were “the cult of mass immigration”, “the cult of the NHS”, and “the cult, this new religion, of net zero”.

It’s no wonder net zero is a focus of Reform when 92% of their funding from the 2019 general election to the start of the 2024 campaign was from fossil fuel interests, according to DeSmog. With similar messaging about each of these issues in the UK, and similar tactics in the US, net zero is just one of several out-groups far-right parties can target.

Climate action is happening anyway. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2024 predicts that renewables will grow 2.7-fold by 2030, Carbon Brief summarises. Yet the outlook acknowledges the uncertainty of these predictions, “Countries representing half of global energy demand are holding elections in 2024, and energy and climate issues have been prominent themes for voters that have been buffeted by high fuel and electricity prices, and by floods and heatwaves.” The fact is that renewables are great, and if you can't afford rooftop solar, you can even join an energy co-op to own a share of a utility-scale plant and reap the savings on your energy bills.

One such election, the US presidential election, is in less than two weeks, and even though last week Adrian Draber wrote a piece for this section about the attribution science behind hurricanes Helene and Milton, Republicans are still lying their way out of acknowledging the climate crisis. The most recent conspiracy has them falsely blaming the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the weather. Architect of the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres, called Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments about how ‘they’ can control the weather “absolutely irresponsible and unfeeling.”

Sorry fruit bats, the Republican party gives you a bad name.