Gavin Newsom and UK’s Ed Miliband aim to burn their nations on the altar of eco-lunacy

At first glance, Gavin Newsom and Ed Miliband would appear to have little in common.

Newsom is the 6’3” sun-kissed California governor who’s head over heels in love with himself.

Miliband, the climate secretary in Keir Starmer’s left-wing government in the United Kingdom, is an infamously nerdy politician.

Cartoonists liken him to Wallace from the British series “Wallace and Gromit”: With his nasal whine and bumbling demeanor, he’s unlikely ever to be seen catching rays on Venice Beach.

And yet there’s one thing that binds this Odd Couple: Both are followers of the death cult of eco-lunacy.

Both seem hellbent on sacrificing the economic health of their nations at the altar of “Saving the Planet.”

Both are more interested in basking in the virtuous glow of “climate awareness” than they are in investing in the future.

Newsom has been swanning around Europe like a preening president-in-waiting.

He hit the soirees of the Munich Security Conference to rub shoulders with Europe’s great and good.

And he came to London to sign a “clean energy” deal with Miliband. The pact commits both sides to the protection of biodiversity.

President Donald Trump wasn’t pleased at the sight of vain Gavin and dorkish Ed signing the deal with the flags of the UK, the United States and California behind them.

It is “inappropriate” for Newsom to make such deals, he said, and for Britain to roll out the red carpet for him.

Everything “Gavin Newscum” touches turns to “garbage,” he warned Britain.

He’s right. It was flat-out rude of the United Kingdom to give Newsom the presidential treatment. 

What’s more, taking eco-tips from Ed Miliband is a recipe for disaster.

If Newsom thinks Miliband’s harebrained ideas are a good fit for California, then the Golden State looks set to get even worse than hapless Gav has already made it.

Miliband is a Net Zero nut. He’s determined to cut Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% before 2035 — however much economic mayhem such carbon-slashing mania might cause.

Last month, the UK’s National Energy System Operator estimated that his suicidal eco-crusade could cost a staggering £4.5 trillion ($6 trillion) over the next 25 years.

That’s more than the UK’s entire GDP.

That money would be squandered on windfarms, more charging stations for EVs and the insulation of homes so that we plebs will no longer have to turn on the heat.

He has also forbidden any more drilling for oil in the North Sea. And he’s plotting a new law that would permanently ban fracking for shale gas.

Trump was rightly horrified at this crazy eco-agenda. During his visit here last year, he castigated Downing Street for wasting a “TREASURE CHEST” of natural resources.

This is the insanity of Net Zero: We spend billions on windmills while sitting atop a vast expanse of oil and gas that we refuse to touch.

The United Kingdom now has to import coal from Columbia and gas from Norway. What a sad end for the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

And for what? The UK emits less than 1% of the world’s total greenhouse gases.

Britain going carbon-neutral to “save the planet” is like throwing deckchairs off the Titanic to try to stop it from sinking.

Of course, Newsom is a Net Zero nut too.

Thanks to his zealous eco-posturing, California has become an insanely expensive and even dangerous place to live.

At the end of 2025, Californian households were paying 32 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity — nearly double the US average of 18 cents.

As Cali gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton says, the Golden State now has the “highest electricity prices anywhere in America apart from Hawaii.”

And it’s down to Newsom’s “aggressive” anti-carbon agenda.

Meanwhile, California still suffers awful wildfires because Newsom is more interested in being a globe-trotting warrior against the “climate apocalypse” than in everyday issues like good forest management. 

Climate-change alarmism is the ultimate luxury belief. It’s a vanity project dolled up as a world-saving crusade.

Left-wing politicians in the US and the UK push through eco-policies with no consideration of the impact they will have on working-class communities.

Dems like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have openly agitated for a ban on fracking, with not a second thought for the jobs that would be lost or the hike in energy bills that would inevitably flow from America having to import gas from overseas.

What really ties Newsom and Miliband together is their nation-destroying vanity.

They cherish their own puffed-up position as “savers of the planet” more than they do the economic health of their nations.

What people want — in both America and Britain — is growth and good jobs.

They’re sick of eco-lectures from the rich and dumb.

Brendan O’Neill is chief political writer for the British online magazine spiked.