Speaking at the launch of the GWPF in the House of Lords today, Lord Lawson introduced the new think tank:
“Last year I brought out a book on global warming which (rather to my surprise) generated an enormous feedback, almost all of it positive. A number of those who wrote to me, who included scientists, engineers and others with an experienced background, urged me not to leave the matter there but to follow it up in some way. It was this that led me to found the think-tank we are launching today, which can achieve far more than I could on my own.”
“I am most grateful both to all those who have agreed to join it as Trustees and to those who have provided the funds to enable it to get off the ground. My hope is that the birth of the Foundation may mark a turning-point in the political and public debate on the important issue of global warming policy.”
Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser launch the GWPF, The House of Lords
23 November 2009
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. We are an all-party and non-party think-tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated. On the eve of the UN climate change conference at Copenhagen, designed to secure agreement on such policies, this has become particularly timely.
Through our website (www.gwpf.net) and in other ways, we shall be subjecting both the claims of the damage that might be caused by any future warming, and the costs and consequences of alternative policies that might be put in place, to dispassionate analysis based on hard evidence and economic rigour. We are in no sense ‘anti-environmental’. There is a wide range of important environmental issues, which call for an equally wide range of policy responses. Our concern is solely with the possible effects of any future global warming and the policy responses that may evoke. But we are also aware of the curse of world poverty, and of the crucial importance of growth and economic development in the poorer countries of the world as the only serious means of alleviating it.
The Foundation is headed by its Director, Dr Benny Peiser, who founded (in 1997) and continues to edit the world’s leading climate policy network. It is governed by a distinguished Board of Trustees, comprising members of all three main political parties and none, with great experience in a number of different walks of life. It is advised by an Academic Advisory Council, comprised chiefly of eminent scientists and economists with a wide range of views. It is funded entirely by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts. In order to make clear its complete independence, it does not accept gifts from either energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company.
Benny Peiser said:
“The Foundation’s aim is to become the most trustworthy and readily accessible source for those, whether in politics, the media or among the wider public, who wish to be informed of the most reliable and authoritative analysis of both the claims of climate alarmists and the policies currently in place or being discussed, whether in Copenhagen or elsewhere.”