The BBC has been slammed for allowing a pro-Trump figure to express climate science denial on one of its flagship programmes.
This morning (13 February), the Today programme gave a platform to Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former Trump advisor and staff member at the Heritage Foundation.
On the show, which has a listenership of 5.6 million people, Furchtgott-Roth was asked to comment on the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the U.S. government’s endangerment finding, a ruling introduced in 2009 which stated that a range of greenhouse gases are a threat to public health.
Furchtgott-Roth brushed off Trump’s decision, which is being described as a “gift to big polluters”, stating that “a lot of people like it a bit warmer.”
She was not challenged on this statement by the Today programme’s presenter, who instead tried to steer her onto a different angle of discussion, despite her claim not being supported by the scientific evidence.
The interview was preceded by a short clip from former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who said that Trump’s decision was like “putting a lit match on the kindling of climate-exacerbated hurricanes, fires, droughts, that now kill people and now rig up an annual bill of $182 billion in climate disasters.”
The latest research from the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change – a collaboration of more than 300 experts from around the world – stated that our failure to curb the warming effects of climate change has seen the rate of heat-related deaths surge by 23 percent since the 1990s, to 546,000 a year globally.
Furchtgott-Roth also claimed that “the harms of climate change are risks for the future” – a misleading statement that was not challenged by the presenter.
Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the world’s foremost climate science body – has said that “heat is a growing health risk” due to more people living in cities, an “increase in high temperature extremes”, and ageing populations. This issue is set to become even more acute in low-income, high-population urban areas in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and southern Europe.
“The idea that ‘a lot of people like it a bit warmer’ ignores a devastating and well‑documented reality: rising temperatures are already killing hundreds of thousands of people every year. Any suggestion that warmer temperatures are something to embrace is profoundly out of step with the evidence, including in the United States,” said Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.
“Climate change policy rollbacks will only extend this devastation – driving more extreme heat, and in turn more preventable deaths, more pressure on health systems, and pushing communities towards the limits of human physiological tolerance.”
Scientists also predict that climate change will exacerbate a wide range of extreme weather events – including droughts, flooding, and storms – not just extreme heat.
The BBC’s failure to meaningfully challenge Furchtgott-Roth is potentially a breach of the broadcaster’s editorial code, which states that “minority views or those less supported by evidence, should not necessarily be given similar prominence or weight to those with more support, to the prevailing consensus, or to those better evidenced.”
It also states that “serious factual errors should normally be acknowledged and corrected quickly, clearly, and appropriately.”
The BBC declined to comment on the record.
Furchtgott-Roth served on Trump’s transition team following his victory in the 2016 presidential election, and was subsequently appointed as the assistant secretary of transportation for research and technology during his first term.
From 2022 to 2026 she ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment – authoring a chapter of Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term agenda.
The document urged Trump to “dismantle the administrative state”, reverse policies on climate action, slash restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrap state investment in renewable energy, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency.
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