AN OBJECTIVE OBSERVER?

Have you ever wondered why Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s environmental analyst, is such a fanatical warmist, to the extent that he faithfully reports every utterance of warmist zealots? Could part of the reason be financial? He is registered with this speaker agency and demands fees of between £5,000 and £10,000 to chair sessions at plush conferences on climate change themes. He modestly describes himself as follows:

Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s Environment Analyst, is one of the world’s leading journalists and broadcasters on the environment and energy, and a distinguished speaker, host and moderator. Roger Harrabin is a distinguished and influential figure in the British media who has won many awards for broadcasting on issues related to sustainable development.

Recent events that he has chaired include a conference organised by the Royal Society of Arts and the Soil Association on this theme:

The politics of food and farming are on the agenda as never before. Up to 30% of the average consumer’s carbon footprint can be put down to our current, intensive food and farming systems. The UK Government has signed up to a target to reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050 – but has so far resisted tackling the ‘elephant in the room’ of food and farming.

Also on the panel was (Lord) Peter Melchett, a former director of Greenpeace in the UK who once faced criminal charges for allegedly tearing up GM crops. Mr Harrabin has thus chaired a panel in which at least one participant may fairly be described as a greenie extremist and activist.

The pattern continues. Mr Harrabin has been a very busy boy on the conference circuit. He chaired this event in Prague (an EU climate change-fest); this one in February (the World Sustainability Conference); the annual conference of the Combined Heat and Power Association(another group trying to make as much cash as possible from global warming subsidies); a session in Milan at the Power-Gen Europe conference; this conference in London on Green Strategy; and finally, is due at this one, to be held held by the Economist in June.

Thus the BBC’s “environmental analyst” is making oodles of cash – tens of thousands of pounds – by using his privileged BBC position to persuade conference organisers to hire him. All of the events he chairs have a common thread in that they are greenies or warmists trying to foist their views on the rest of us or make as much money as they can out of the massive subsidies that the EU and our government spray about for anyone on the right bandwagon. Put another way, Mr Harrabin makes bucketloads of cash out of the alarmism he spreads and has a therefore a major vested interest in it. His actions stink.