As Extreme Heat Hits London, Fossil Fuel Interests and Global Far-Right Politicians Gather for a ‘Glastonbury of Climate Science Deniers’

Climate-deniers, Donald Trump officials, anti-abortion activists, big tech and oil company representatives, and far-right politicians all gathered on Tuesday to share ideas at London’s Olympia, in what has been described as “one of the biggest radical right events in the UK and a networking opportunity for the global right and far right”.

Commentator Jordan Peterson is one of four co-founders of the event, along with the Spectator and Unherd owner Paul Marshall – also a co-owner of GB News – Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, and the Legatum Institute (now the Prosperity Institute), the primary backer of the event. 

The UK-based conference is charging attendees as much as £1,500 per ticket with up to 4,000 figures from 85 countries expected to attend.

Representatives from the UK include Reform UK politicians Nigel Farage, Sarah Pochin, and Andrew Rosindell, as well as a host of the Party’s activists and advisors. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will also be in attendance, as will former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In total, more than 40 UK parliamentarians are expected to feature among those present. 

They will be joined by senior Trump administration officials, as well as guests from European far-right parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Spain’s VOX, and the Netherlands Party for Freedom. 

Speaking to Byline Times, Geoff Dembicki, Global Managing Editor at DeSmog, observing the event in his capacity as a journalist, spoke about the importance of the event as a networking opportunity for those who want to roll-back net zero policies and climate action. As he describes it, ARC represents: 

“A global gathering of people who want to bring like populist right-wing policies and values all over the world, and they’re here to kind of coordinate, share ideas, and network. What’s quite interesting,” he says “is that it shows a deepening of alliances between key figures in the Trump administration, and then Reform UK and other parties in Europe who are sympathetic to what the Trump administration is doing. One of the key areas where we’re seeing this coordination in learning is on the fight against net zero policies globally”. 

One of the first day’s big speakers is Chris Wright, Energy Secretary for the Trump administration, who recently told ministers at a meeting of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, to abandon Net Zero modelling entirely, reportedly after threatening to quit the organisation unless it dropped its focus on the energy transition. 

The Trump administration has taken a hardline stance in its attacks on renewable energy, including investments in wind and solar, despite the fact that in May of this year, the country generated more power from renewable energy than from gas. 

Chris Wright, as Dembicki describes, has been “aggressively against any kind of energy transition away from fossil fuels”, and that it’s important that “a group of powerful conservatives who travelled all over from the world” have come here “to learn from what people like him are doing to fight net zero, and then bring that back to their own countries.”

Similarly, James Orr, an influential advisor to Farage, also in attendance at ARC this year, has frequently attacked the UK’s goals of reaching Net Zero emissions by 2050. Reform politicians have laid out plans to do away with climate targets and tax solar farms, and multiple Reform-led councils scrapping climate targets. The party has also called for new North Sea oil and gas drilling. 

GB News, the broadcaster co-owned by Paul Marshall and Legatum, also frequently attacks climate science and climate action, with one report stating that the channel launched 953 attacks against climate change around the 2024 election alone.

Recent reporting indicates that more than two-thirds of the Reform’s income from donors comes from those with interests in oil and gas. ARC’s funding more broadly also comes heavily from those invested in the sector.

As previously reported by Byline Times, Paul Marshall, a major financial backer of ARC, contributed £1,000,000 to it in 2023. He is also listed as giving a £2,000,000 donation to the conference in 2025. Marshall’s hedge Fund, Marshall Wace, has held over $2.2 billion in fossil fuel investments.

Recent material uncovered in a joint DeSmog and Unearthed investigation also revealed that further donors to the 2025 ARC conference included Reform megadonor Ben Delo, french billionaire and right wing political funder Pierre-Édouard Stérin, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and US evangelicals and hardline republican Trump donors. 

Attending this year’s event alongside political figures on the far right are members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation instrumental in rolling back abortion rights in the UK, and which are making increasing inroads into the UK, developing close ties to the Reform Party.

Also present will be Sarah Rogers, a senior State Department official leading attempts to promote radical right-wing parties internationally, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, former Palantir employee and Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens, Trump-allied venture capitalist Marc Andreesen, and Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Trump’s ‘Project 2025’ agenda. 

Speaking from the event, Dembicki describes this convergence of interests as a “melding of Christian right groups here, in AI companies, Silicon Valley, fossil fuel interests and broader conservative groups as right-wing intersectionality… it’s all these disparate parts of the global populist right who are coming together in finding common cause and strategies for political power that they can all collaborate on.”

“It’s this big convergence of social conservatives, leading tech figures, climate deniers, and political leaders from the Trump administration and Reform UK. All coming together to sort of coordinate on strategies to expand their power worldwide.”

However, unlike last year, following hot on the heels of the 2024 victory of Donald Trump, he describes that, while still very much an ascendant force, “we’ve now seen a lot of cracks in this global coalition”, citing how disastrous the war in Iran has been for energy prices, the massive backlash to AI and data centres, and the ongoing opposition from local communities to Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration. 

“There’s controversy,”, Dembicki explains, “and so I think people are still feeling confident this year, but there are definite headwinds that the sort of powerful people gathered at ARC this year are having to contend with, so it’ll be interesting how that’s reflected in a lot of the talks that happen at this year’s event.”

Outside of the venue, there is also a growing sense of awareness of the conference in 2026, and backlash to the vested interests behind it. A coalition of climate justice groups have today held a demonstration against this year’s event. 

The action, led by climate justice group Fossil Free London, along with over 10 other groups including Greenpeace, Queers for Palestine, and Take Back Power, have protested outside ARC holding placards, and displaying banners reading “oily fascists out of London” and “Fossil Fuels Fund Fascism”, also wearing frog-themed costumes (a nod to themes seen at recent anti-ICE immigration protests in the US).

Speaking to Byline Times, a representative from Fossil Free London said: “Our concern at Fossil Free London is the networks this conference perpetuates, the philosophies it espouses and the entrenchment of narratives it promotes.”

“The global fascist conference (also known as ARC) brings together an elitist network of politicians, billionaires, oil corporations, arms companies and tech firms, to peddle dangerous, hate-filled narratives to serve one purpose: to maximise their own power, profit and self-interest.”

Robin Wells, Director of Fossil Free London, said of the event that: ‘Suited men are gathering in our city today. Their oily money is fuelling the extreme heat we’re sweating through, and we’re left poorer than ever before whilst they profiteer from war and crisis.

As this climate-change-induced heat suffocates us, they’re funding climate denial, bankrolling attacks on minorities and setting up narratives of division – all to ensure we’re looking in every direction except at them.