Neil Hamilton, MS for Mid & West Wales, and Leader of UKIP Wales has hit out at calls for climate change to be made a compulsory part of subjects taught in schools.
Speaking in ‘virtual’ plenary Mr Hamilton, a member of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs committee, urged fellow members to throw out a group of amendments to make this topic a mandatory element.
He was taking part in the Stage 3 debate on the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Bill, on a group of amendments, ‘Climate Crisis and Ecological Emergency’.
Mr Hamilton said he was deeply shocked at the amendments, put forward by Plaid Cymru,
which included adding the topic to a list of mandatory elements to be taught in schools.
He said:
“Education should be about teaching children to question, to think and use their judgment, not to impose some kind of received truth upon them. There is much hotly disputed debate amongst academics, climate scientists and others who are well versed in the theory of climate change.
“As with all subjects, we must teach both sides of this argument. That is what true education should be about. We are not dealing with dogmatic truth, but a subject in which there is considerable uncertainty and theorising.
“There’s not enough hard empirical evidence over a long enough period to draw concrete conclusions. We should be seeking to put forward both sides of this argument and then inviting those in the classroom to think about everything involved around these issues.
“Yes, there is anxiety about the climate but people are anxious about all sorts of things. A thousand-odd years ago, people were worried about the end of the world coming in the year 1000. It sets a dangerous precedent to use a Government Bill to impose a particular political view upon the minds of suggestible children.
“What we do know about climate change is that change has always been with us. As far as we can tell, two thousand years ago in Roman times, the climate in Europe was warmer than today. Then a cold spell in the dark ages, a warm period in medieval times and again in Roman times. Then, in the seventeenth century, as well recorded in the diaries of Samuel Pepys, we went into a little ice age from which we have been emerging slowly ever since.
“The term ‘climate denier’ is offensive. Nobody denies there is global warming but the causes are hotly disputed. We should be teaching our children to use their own powers of thought and reason to come to their own conclusions, not indoctrinate them with a false ‘climate science’.“
