![]() ![]() In an interview last month, Fleming said: “I first came up with this idea three, four years ago because of climate. While Fleming is best known for his Covid activism, DeSmog can reveal that he claims his first motivation for setting up the campaign was his opposition to the UK’s climate policies. In 2020, Fleming founded Covid-19 Assembly, a Covid denial group which was dissolved as a limited company in April 2022, without having published any accounts, according to openDemocracy. The group was registered as a limited company in August 2022 by Fleming, who has a background in marketing for Formula One racing. The backlash spilled out into the real world with Not Our Future’s leaflet campaign in Oxford in January. There was also a segment on the topic on last night’s episode of BBC Newsnight. The subject was raised in parliament for the first time last week by Conservative MP Nick Fletcher, who called 15-minute cities an “international socialist concept”. In December, posts on social media falsely conflated the proposed traffic filter with a separate scheme for 15-minute cities – the idea that people should be able to reach amenities close to their homes – and labelled it a “climate lockdown”. Parts of Oxford already have a low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) scheme in place. ![]() Oxfordshire County Council is trialling a traffic filter scheme which requires permits on six roads for cars – but not buses, vans, taxis, heavy goods vehicles or motorbikes – to cut traffic and pollution. “That trauma has been weaponised by the anti-climate lobby, who now condemn any public policy as an ‘infringement on civil liberties’ and draw direct comparisons with Covid.” Trouble in Oxford ![]() “The pandemic was a moment of genuine trauma for millions of people,” she said. “Until 2020, fear-mongering about so-called ‘green tyranny’ had little to point towards, and often felt like an abstract, even lame Boogeyman,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank. Gyngell’s website TCW hosted an anti-vaccine event in London last week with climate denial author James Delingpole, anti-vax MP Andrew Bridgen, and 90s pop group Right Said Fred, the public face of Not Our Future.Įxperts say fears generated by the Covid pandemic are being exploited to oppose green policies. ![]() Not Our Future’s founding signatories include Kathy Gyngell, a trustee of Tufton Street think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group. It is also the latest sign of a growing alliance between opponents of climate action and anti-Covid vaccine conspiracy theorists. However, DeSmog can report that the group was conceived by Fleming years before the pandemic or the Oxfordshire scheme, and is backed by a network of high-profile climate deniers and conspiracy theorists based in the UK, Canada, the United States and Australia. Not Our Future’s director David Fleming, an anti-Covid lockdown and vaccine activist, presents his campaign as a people-powered movement opposed to a coming “authoritarian future” imposed by what he calls “The Blob”. The claims, which have seen local councillors receive death threats, have been fact-checked and debunked as misleading, and the council has described them as “harmful to public debate”. This was a reference to a conspiracy theory about a government plan to curb people’s freedoms.įalse claims about the Oxfordshire County Council scheme to cut traffic and pollution went viral online, with one tweet by climate sceptic author Jordan Peterson being viewed 7.5 million times. The group ‘Not Our Future’ made headlines last month by putting leaflets through Oxfordshire residents’ letterboxes calling them “guinea pigs” in the UK’s first “climate lockdown”. The “grassroots” backlash to a traffic reduction scheme in Oxfordshire is being boosted by an international network of established climate and Covid science deniers and amplified by right-wing media, DeSmog can report. ![]()
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