The World's Greatest Climate Hypocrite

There’s no hypocrite quite like a green hypocrite is there?

Whenever you get some eco-zealot is lecturing you about impending climate doom and the need for “us” to go vegan, you can be pretty sure that you are dealing with someone whose carbon emissions would put some developing nations to shame and whose diet would make a vegetarian shudder.

Over the last year, the ability of our climate-aware friends to hop from the ski-slopes to the protest march, from the business-class lounge to the barricades, has been an endless source of entertainment. Remember Zoe Jones from Extinction Rebellion? She returned from holidays in Uganda, New Zealand and the Alps to blockade a major thoroughfare in Bristol, infamously preventing people from getting to hospital. “We’re doing the right thing” she opined.

One of our favourites was another Extinction Rebellion supporter, Professor Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria, who enjoys regular trips to Bali, and is also a visiting professor at institutions in Australia, Spain, Kenya and Switzerland.

Indeed, the hypocrisy of the environmental movement is now so all-encompassing that it is starting to move from the domain of amusing anecdote to that of serious scientific consensus.

Here at the Global Warming Policy Forum, we don’t like to let this achievement on this scale go unrecognised, and with that in mind we are launching an annual award to find the person who has most brazenly failed to practise what they preach, the person whose brass neck truly makes them stand out from the green crowd.

Our paper launching the awards can be read here, and in it you'll find details of how you can nominate your favourite eco-hypocrite and some of the possible frontrunners.

But hurry, nominations close on 13 December!