Back in the day, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was derisively labelled “America’s Poodle” for his support of George W. Bush’s march into the Iraq War. It turns out his absolute master is the global fossil fuel industry, writes Climate & Capital Media Peter McKillop in his weekly e-letter.
Last week, McKillop writes, Blair was at his craven best, yapping that climate change efforts are “doomed to fail” and insisting that the world must abandon its “irrational” attempts to phase out fossil fuels. If there were a Westminster dog show [video] for fossil fuel apologists, Blair’s poodle prance would take Best in Show.
Dressing Up Fossil Fuel Talking Points
Global climate action, Blair wrote, is “riven with irrationality” in a forward for a new white paper, The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change, produced by his Institute for Global Change (TBI). Blair warns that “climate action has reached an impasse. Past optimism assumed that green growth, political will, and public engagement would drive decarbonisation. Yet today, we are experiencing the greatest loss of climate momentum in recent history, just as the crisis escalates.”
Hmm. Has he been to China lately? He argues that the world’s biggest emitters—China and India—won’t decarbonize fast enough, so the West shouldn’t bother. But this narrative wilfully ignores reality.
Last month, China’s President Xi Jinping re-committed China to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 with a comprehensive emissions reduction plan, covering all economic sectors and greenhouse gases under the UN climate process. Yes, they are now the world’s largest carbon emitter due to their continued use of coal. However, in a rebuke to climate naysayers in the West, Xi pledged: “No matter how the international situation changes, China will not slow down its efforts to address climate change.”
Green Gold
And that will have a real impact. China’s actions back up the rhetoric. In the first quarter of 2025, China generated a record 951 terawatt-hours of clean electricity—a 19% year-on-year increase, with solar and wind surpassing thermal power for the first time. Clean energy now makes up 39% of China’s electricity mix, and the country is on track to cut its carbon emissions by 30% by 2035 if current trends continue.
“Clear waters and green mountains are just as valuable as gold,” Xi said.
Did you hear that, Tony? Gold!
I doubt it. You see, Blair is not about to allow a few China facts to get in the way of an oily spin. It turns out that Blair’s institute “white paper” is little more than a rehash of talking points he’s been peddling to oil-rich clients for years. Blair’s post-Downing Street career has been defined by deep, lucrative ties to oil-producing states. His fingerprints are all over their oil narratives, always cloaked in the language of “pragmatism” and “realism.”
Blair Petroleum
As UK prime minister and after, Blair lobbied for British Petroleum so aggressively that many insiders dubbed the company “Blair Petroleum.” Besides championing BP, he has also pushed for pipelines from Azerbaijan, worked for Gulf monarchies, and, most recently, tried (and failed) to advise Brazil’s COP30 presidency.
In 2023, he helped his old friend, the UAE’s Sultan al Jaber, “gratis,” to not sound too ridiculous as he tried to convince the world that being simultaneously head of his country’s state energy company and president of the UN conference created to solve the climate crisis was credible. (In the end, he failed.)
Touchy Subject
Blair’s institute insists its latest report was not influenced by oil money, telling the Financial Times the paper was not written “because Mr. Blair has worked with oil-producing nations that hosted COP or because he worked on the gas pipeline for Azerbaijan gas to come to Europe.”
But the pattern is impossible to ignore. His preferred “solutions”—carbon capture and nuclear—are the same ones pushed by oil and gas interests desperate to prolong fossil fuel use. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) remains commercially unproven at scale and has a track record of cost overruns and dismal results. At best, CCS could remove 0.06% of the Earth’s CO2 by 2030. At the same time, China pledges that its solar, wind, and battery power will remove 35%, or 99.83% more than carbon capture.
Advice for Blair
Blair’s intervention has drawn sharp criticism from the Labour Party he once led. Blair’s former lead climate advisor, Nicholas Stern—now chair of the Grantham Research Institute—called Blair’s report “muddled and misleading”. His former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, accused Blair of reinforcing public misconceptions and mixing up “public belief” in climate change with “political coherence and leadership,” adding that, “like many corners of our society, the climate has become a proxy for culture war battles in many countries.”
King offered Blair sound advice: “In such a polarised world, we must speak precisely and care.” The scientific consensus is unequivocal: phasing out fossil fuels is essential to avoid catastrophic climate change. The sooner those with power recognize this, the better. Blair’s “pragmatism” is, in reality, a recipe for delay and disorder.
If Blair truly wants to reset climate action, his Institute should stop taking money from petrostates and stop parroting the fossil fuel lobby’s talking points. And maybe, just maybe, pay a visit to China one day to see what authentic climate leadership looks like.
The world doesn’t need another poodle for Big Oil. It requires leaders willing to bite back.
This post was originally published by Climate & Capital Media. Republished by permission.
