LONDON: Rather bizarrely, the European Parliament has chosen Nick Griffin, the controversial far-right British National Party leader and a self-confessed climate-change denier, to the next month’s Copenhagen U.N. conference where world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, will try to reach an agreement on saving the planet from further environmental pollution.
Mr. Griffin, who was elected to the European Parliament earlier this year, has branded climate change campaigners as “cranks”. His party believes that one way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Britain is to throw out immigrants who — it claims — contribute to pollution.
In a speech in the European Parliament last week, he said that the “Orwellian consensus” on environment was “based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics”.
Mr. Griffin, who will be part of European Parliament’s official delegation, called climate change a “new theology” and threatened to speak out against what he described as attempts to “impose an anti-human utopia” on the world.
In Britain, political parties and environment groups reacted with fury while the government made clear that the European Parliament delegates “do not represent the UK Government or its views”.
“Nick Griffin will not be part of the UK delegation,” the Department of Energy and Climate Change said.
