“I just thank God that someone in government has finally come to their senses and decided to embrace so called ‘pollution’ and stop trying to fight it,” declares controversial climate denier Dr Clint Stosser, in response to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s recently announced opposition to urban low emission zones and low traffic neighbourhoods. “The sooner that we get vehicle exhaust emission levels up again, particularly in our most densely populated urban areas, the sooner we can get our population back on the road to recovery.” Stosser – who has a regular column in right-wing tabloid the Daily Excess denouncing green initiatives – has long argued that the supposedly toxic fumes put out by fossil fuels are actually beneficial to humans and that their restriction has led to widespread declines in global health. “It’s so bloody obvious – you don’t have to be a scientist like me to see it,” he explains. “I mean, back in the seventies when we happily blasted out fumes from our gas guzzling cars, unencumbered by catalytic converters and other ‘green’ nonsense, burned coal in our homes and let factories put what they liked into the atmosphere, we didn’t have any pandemics, did we? Yet, here in the supposedly clean air of the twenty first century, we had the world paralysed by Covid! Believe me, if people were still breathing in healthy amounts of soot and carbon monoxide, there is no way that they would have been so susceptible to a glorified cold virus!”

But it isn’t just Covid that Stosser blames on the current low levels of pollution. “Just look at the increased incidences of childhood illnesses we see nowadays. Today’s kids are just so fragile – and why? Because, obviously, they aren’t getting enough pollution into them,” he opines. “I remember that when I was a kid playing in a playground right next to a busy motorway, we were robust as Hell! We never took a day off school sick and nobody we knew had things like asthma, eczma or alopecia – unlike kids today!” Stosser’s theories have found avid support in the conspiracy community, which already believes that both the Covid pandemic and climate change are scams being perpetrated by ‘the elite’ against the general public. “The great thing about Stosser’s claims is that they tie the two together into a super-conspiracy that explains so much!” enthuses top conspiracist Luke Potz in the latest issue of Conspiracy Today, Britain’s best-selling periodical for cranks. “It isn’t just that so-called climate change is being pushed by the green lobby so as to sell their expensive ‘solutions’ to a non-existent problem to people, but it also facilitates a decline in human health, allowing a normally harmless virus appear so virulent it creates a fake pandemic, facilitating massive state spending to develop fake vaccines!”

Indeed, Potz has developed Stosser’s theories further, having recently called for lead to be re-introduced into petrol. “I know that unleaded fuel was introduced because of the supposed brain damage lead inhaled from exhaust fumes could cause children, but frankly, I think that is the lesser of the evils involved here,” he postulated in an article in Practical Conspiracies, (Britain’s biggest subscription only monthly for crackpots). “The fact is that ever since we got rid of leaded fuel, there has been an upsurge in mental illnesses associated with electro-magnetic radiation from mobile phones, wi fi and the like. It seems obvious that the lead inhaled by kids was effectively lining their brains, protecting them from radiation.” Further, Potz has questioned the benefits to the intellectual development of children from the abolition of lead in petroleum products. “If it was supposed to increase their intelligence, then it has failed completely,” he says. “Modern kids seem to be far stupider than I was when I was breathing in lead – they seem incapable of recognising the most obvious of global conspiracies playing out in front of them! They instead cling to stuff like ‘facts’, ‘rational argument’ and ‘logic’. All concepts invented by the secret world government of the Illuminati to mislead the public and obscure the truth!”

Stosser’s theories, however, have been widely dismissed by the scientific community, described variously by leading experts as ‘utter nonsense’, ‘scientifically illiterate’ and ‘complete bollocks’. His scientific qualifications have also been called into question, with allegations that his doctorate is actually in divinity and was acquired from a postal college advertising in the back pages of the Exchange and Mart. Critics have also claimed that Stosser is a con-artist, in the pay of the petrochemical industry, pointing to his previous work for the tobacco lobby. “I stand by my assessment that unfiltered cigarettes were actually beneficial to smokers’ health,” he says in response to his critics. “The tar inhaled by them formed a protective layer in their lungs, stopping airborne bacteria and viruses from infecting them. Believe me, if there had been more smokers, then the Covid pandemic would never have gotten started.” He also dismissed claims that a reduction in smoking had reduced lung cancer rates. “Oh for God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “Look around you – are people still dying from cancer even though tobacco use has virtually been outlawed? Of course they bloody are – without the protection of tar and nicotine we’ve left our bodies wide open to attack!”

Stosser feels vindicated by the Prime Minister’s recent U-turns on a number of environmental issues, particularly his commitment toi ssue new licences for North Sea oil exploitation. “We have to squeeze every fluid ounce of this precious resource out of the ground,” he says. “But we don’t just need more North Sea oil production, – we need more fracking on the mainland! The more of the stuff we can get and burn, the better!” He is also urging Sunak to authorise the construction of more oil and coal fired power stations in order to secure the UK’s future energy needs. “We need to ditch those wind and solar farms and get back to pumping carbon products into the atmosphere – not only will it give us cheaper energy, but it will improve the nation’s health,” claims Stosser, additionally urging a return to domestic coal fires for winter heating. “People just don’t grasp how good for them oil and other fossil fuels are – if I had my way, school kids would be drinking a glass of the black stuff every day to ensure that they grow up strong and healthy.”