BOFFINS have been blasted for wasting tax-payers’ cash researching the impact of Star Wars on climate change.
The Government-funded UK Research and Innovation gave £200,000 to a university project examining the impact of fictional film robot R2-D2.
The Open University also looked into the impact of props and costumes used in the sci-fi franchise.
The project began in 2022 and is set to end in March.
Academics said it fed “into a broader study about environmental, militaristic and socioeconomic histories of Star Wars”.
They found it would take a tree 33 years to capture emissions made by creating the R2-D2 for the 1977 film.
But it would take 202 years for a tree to capture emissions from his digital version — created with computers.
Andrew Montford at the Net Zero Watch said: “It has been clear for many years that climate change is being used as an excuse to deliver vast funding and academic jobs to a small army of pseudo-intellectuals.
“It is quite shameful that this kind of project spending is being authorised at all, let alone spending on the scale that seems to be the norm today.
“The funding councils are wasting public money on a prodigious scale and ministers need to bring them to heel.”
Joanna Marchong from the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Funded research should focus on actual science and not sci-fi fantasies.”
