‘MPs Need to Listen to the Scientists, Not the Oligarchs’ — Scientists Sound the Climate Alarm at Westminster

On 13 May, a day that the temperature in London — according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index — was 5.5°C hotter than normal, more than 150 scientists gathered in Westminster to urge MPs to stop ignoring science and instead deliver evidence-based policies to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.

The action was spearheaded by wildlife TV presenter and campaigner Chris Packham who was joined by climate scientists, engineers and ecologists from all over the UK .

Packham fears that science is “not getting the ear that it needs in Parliament” and accused the Government of not making the best-informed decisions based on the science.

“There are a lot of good ministers in the cabinet at the moment but they’re not being given the leadership and they’re not being given the funding or resources that they need. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity about that,” he said.

When we look at what we need to do about fossil fuels, what we need to do about food, what we need to do about biodiversity, they’re not sending out any of the signals that they’re going to act upon that in the right way, or rapidly enough or broadly enough.

Chris Packham, campaigner

Former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, accused the political system of failing the electorate and described the current trajectory as a form of “global suicide”.

King said there was an urgent need to bridge the gap between science, policy, and public understanding and highlighted the wealth of public support for climate action — over 89% globally. He added that politicians are disconnected and remain captive to vested interests and short-term political ends. 

“We are destroying our ecosystems, and we are destroying ourselves in the process. Politicians need to listen to the scientists and stop listening to the oligarchs,” King explained.  

A case in point is the Labour Party’s proposed Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

Green MP Dr Ellie Chowns is adamant that politicians “have absolutely got to pay attention to science” and warned that environmental protections would be dismantled if the proposed Bill is passed in its current form. 

Although the Government claims its plans to speed up the planning system won’t reduce safeguards for nature, Chowns, who sits on the committee currently considering the Bill, and her Green-Party colleagues, have “serious concerns”. 

The Bill, she explained, shifts the approach from one that requires thorough ecological surveys and damage avoidance, to one that skips straight to “offsetting” payments often without even knowing what is being destroyed or harmed.

“Science has to underpin the politics of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill,” she said. 

Packham has also condemned the Bill for undermining the Habitats Directive, a crucial piece of environmental law, and his legal team at Wild Justice has initiated a judicial review to challenge it. 

Angela [Raynor] said that basically the Bill as it stands, won’t harm wildlife. Well, legally, we’ve looked at it and it will harm wildlife. So we need Angela to go back to the House of Commons and tell the truth about that. Before that bill is voted on

Chris Packham, campaigner

Simon Oldridge, science adviser for Zero Hour, says policymakers should  base climate decisions on science, not short-term political agendas. “It’s time we stopped letting politics override what the science tells us must be done,” he said.

Oldridge criticized the UK Government’s climate strategy, which heavily leans on carbon capture technology. While capturing emissions from existing industry and power stations is sensible, he argued, the Government’s plans go far beyond that.

He says the real focus of these carbon capture schemes is to justify building new gas-fired power stations and blue hydrogen plants — facilities that make hydrogen from methane, a fossil fuel. These operations are marketed as low-carbon because they promise to capture 90% of emissions, but according to Oldridge that claim doesn’t hold up. 

Oldridge cited recent evidence from Norway, where Equinor’s carbon capture performance fell far short of its claims. Yet, even if such plants captured all on-site emissions, he warned, the broader climate impact would still be devastating.

“To fuel these new plants, the UK would need to import more gas, mainly liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US. This is fracked gas, and methane — the main component — leaks all along the supply chain. Methane is 84 times more potent than CO₂ over a 20-year period. When you account for those leaks, a major study last year found that LNG is actually one-third worse than coal for global warming,” he explained.

Oldridge highlighted that two-thirds of these emissions occur upstream — before the gas even reaches the UK — and are ignored under current climate laws, which only count emissions produced within UK borders.

“That’s how the Government gets away with this,” he claimed. “They’re following outdated legislation that allows them to ignore the emissions caused by our imported fossil fuels. That’s why we need the Climate and Nature Bill, to take full responsibility for all the emissions caused by UK activity, wherever they happen.”

However, Oldridge is convinced that a path to green energy is not only possible but backed by strong scientific consensus.

Some say there’s no alternative, but that’s just not true. We can build a 100% clean energy system without relying on carbon capture. We need to accelerate renewable energy deployment, improve grid interconnections with neighbouring countries, and invest publicly in infrastructure, not leave it to private industry, which continues to bet on fossil fuels

Simon Oldridge, cience adviser for Zero Hour

Dr Andrew Boswell, a climate litigation expert who has mounted a legal case against the Net Zero Teesside gas plant, told Byline Times that while these projects claim to be part of the solution, they are in fact locking us into fossil fuel dependency.

Boswell’s legal battle, which will receive judgement any day now, highlights a deeper problem: that even climate policy intended to reduce emissions often ends up protecting fossil fuel interests under the guise of innovation.

“The message from today,” concluded Packham, “is essentially we want better leadership and we want that leadership to be listening to science.”