MEP Roger Helmer (ECR, UK) is known for his frank opinions. He is one of a small number of MEPs who still actively resist the idea of anthropogenic climate change.Europolitics asked him where he stands on EU climate policy, seen as essential to the future of a sustainable Arctic.

Would the Arctic be an area you would want to see increase exploitation of oil resources?

Absolutely, but with all the provisos. We’ve got to learn from the Gulf of Mexico experience. I am also as concerned with biodiversity and the survival of species as anybody else is. We need to be very careful in the Arctic as it is a very sensitive environment, but industry and human inventiveness thrive on challenges. This is a challenge that we need to address. You could burn all the fossil fuels that we know of on Earth and it wouldn’t affect the climate very much at all.

How do you see current EU climate change policy affecting the formation of Arctic policy?

Let me first tell you where I stand on climate change. We have seen a slight net warming over the last hundred years or so and the generally accepted figure, this is not contentious, is slightly above 0.7 degrees Celsius. That is very small and very slow. The second point to make is that the small change we have seen over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well understood long-term climate cycles, which go back - well, they go back as far as ten thousand years.

Is EU climate policy misguided then?

There is nothing that requires an anthropogenic explanation. CO ₂ is a complete red herring. It has nothing to do with the problem. The result of this is of course that the EU’s climate policies are absolutely misguided on just about every level you could conceive of. They are misguided because CO ₂ isn’t the issue. Reducing CO ₂ won’t have any effect.

You don’t believe EU climate policies are effective?

None of the policies the EU is seeking to pursue will actually work. You’ve got China building a new coal power plant every week. India is not far behind. The idea that we can make radical global reductions in carbon emissions by 2020 or indeed by 2050 is just a pie in the sky. The EU’s policy is mistaken because even if you accepted that CO ₂ is the problem, and that reducing CO ₂ would be a good thing, the EU is approaching the matter in a wholly irrational way. Given the choice between a carbon trade and a straight carbon tax, any economist would choose the latter as the much better solution. It’s more predictable and more inclusive. It also doesn’t involve all the weird distortions and grandfather effects that you get when trying to create a complex carbon trading structure.

Do you agree with the EU’s 2020 target of 20% renewables?

I don’t agree with that objective. But let’s, for the sake of argument, say we want to reduce CO ₂. What would be the most cost effective way of reducing CO ₂? It would be to replace it with nuclear, coal and brown coal. Eventually, you might want to start replacing gas as well. Nuclear is a well proven, low cost, mainstream base-load technology. It can provide the energy we need to run our economies and industries. Instead, we’re concentrating on things like wind farms, which are an absolute abortion in terms of trying to generate anything. Wind farms are extremely expensive and disruptive. They produce a pathetic unpredictable trickle of electricity and infuriate local communities.

Are you against renewables?

I’m not in principle against all renewables, provided we can get the cost right at some point. Geothermal is a great idea, I think. Waste incineration with recovery is also a great idea, biomass, too, especially if you can bring in poor quality land that couldn’t be used for agriculture. Sewage works want to turn out dried sewage that you can put into cement. That’s fine, let’s do it.

So is there something you are concerned about in terms of energy?

I am concerned not about global warming but about energy security. To resolve my concerns about energy security, we need to be less reliant on imported fossil fuels. I have nothing against fossil fuels, they’re great. What I’ve got a problem with is bringing in gas from Russia where Putin could turn off the tap. There is also serious political instability where oil comes from the Middle East, Venezuela and Nigeria.

So why are we pushing renewables and action against CO ₂ emissions?

Nobody formally sat down and thought here is a great scam that we can make money out of. But unlike the millennium bug, there is no endpoint where we wake up and discover that we were wrong. I think initially there were genuine scientists genuinely saying CO ₂ might have some effect. But policy responses involving money kick in at some point. I was reading recently that carbon traders are now earning nearly as much as traders in other assets. All over the world, Dr [Rajendra] Pachauri, the IPCC, Al Gore - all these people are making very very large amounts of money.