Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s organisation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Climate Emergency Fund, which finances the eco-activists Just Stop Oil.
Just Stop Oil says it gets most of its funding—which it claims is “for recruitment, training, capacity building, and education”—from Climate Emergency Fund. It is the biggest recipient of the fund, receiving $1.1 million.
Just Stop Oil is protesting the government awarding new oil contracts to businesses and is behind a wave of illegal actions, such as blocking access to petrol stations and parts of the United Kingdom’s busiest motorway, breaching High Court injunctions, and more.
Dark Money
American author and journalist Robert Bryce, who has been reporting on energy and power for more than three decades, told The Epoch Times by email that “what is clear” is that the Climate Emergency Fund and “similar radical groups are part of the anti-industry industry, a sector of the global economy that is taking in billions of dollars per year to fund anti-hydrocarbon, anti-nuclear activism.”“These groups often have interconnected webs of directors and donors. Their funding is often purposely obscured because it comes from other NGOs that don’t disclose their donors,” he said.
“This dark money applies to Climate Emergency Fund, which lists two foundations among its funders. Those funders are the Onward Together Foundation, which doesn’t disclose its donors, and Earthsense Foundation,” he added.
Confusion Over Activist Crowdfunders
The Epoch Times found there was confusion from British authorities around discussing the model of internationally funded activist groups.Just Stop Oil is not a registered company or charity, which would otherwise leave it open to rules and regulations.
Last October, the UK’s biggest crowdfunding platform, Crowdfunder, shut down Just Stop Oil’s account. Crowdfunder’s co-founder and director told The Epoch Times at the time by email that “it no longer complied with its terms of use” after a series of acts of vandalism.
The Epoch Times contacted Chuffed for comment.
The ubiquitous nature of Just Stop Oil’s activities and subsequent arrests have led to the introduction of new legislation that gives police more power to shut down the protests more quickly, including the Public Order Bill, which critics say could curb the right to peaceful protest.
The Epoch Times contacted governmental departments as well as financial, charity, and fundraising regulators who could not comment on Just Stop Oil or its international funding and law-breaking strategies as it fell outside their regulatory remit.
Left Wing Activism
Onward Together, like Climate Emergency Fund, supports what it deems helpful to the progressive movement.The Climate Emergency Fund is in turn partly funded by Aileen Getty, a U.S. billionaire whose grandfather was the petroleum tycoon J. Paul Getty. Getty co-founded the group with wealthy donors, including renewable fuels businessman Trevor Neilson and Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Climate Emergency Fund donor and Hollywood film director Adam McKay recently pledged to triple donations to Just Stop Oil.
Climate Emergency Fund insists that it “only funds lawful activities, and we are guided by legal counsel with expertise in activism and social movements.”
It claims that it is “roughly three times more cost-effective to send in activists than lobbyists.”
On its mission page, it says it works with an “international network of activists” called the A22 Network, of which Just Stop Oil is a part, and which uses a specific method of “building mass civil resistance.” Climate Emergency Fund says the A22 Network has created a “proven method for scaling up disruptive protest.”
Climate Emergency Fund is A22 Network’s primary funder.
In 2022, Climate Emergency Fund made $5.1 million in grants to 44 groups.
Asking potential donors to “support this uprising,” a link says that “history tells us that the fastest way to create transformative change through sustained civil resistance.” It also asks to “help us support Just Stop Oil at 10 other groups in the A22 Network to recruit thousands of everyday people to join our fight for humanity.
In the now-deleted form, activists were asked to sign a document that said: “I understand the importance of this action in the context of the unimaginable horror that will occur if the climate and ecological crisis is not dealt with. Only a dramatic life event, such as a loss of a close loved one or illness, will prevent me from taking part in this action.”
The form also presented a commitment to action that would lead to “at least” one arrest.
“What is worth more, art or life?” said Phoebe Plummer, one of the activists.
More recently, activists have been slow-walking down busy roads. Other tactics include scattering powdered paint at high-profile events such as the Chelsea Flower Show and the World Snooker Championship.
Universities
The Epoch Times found that while there is an abundance of studies across British universities about the far right, there is little research exploring left-wing environmental organisations.New Culture Forum says it is challenging the orthodoxies dominant in society’s institutions, public life, and wider culture.
“The fact that in so doing, you speak the language of division (calls for black-only spaces), derision (calling people gammon), and so on, doesn’t seem to bother the institutions,” said Kiszely.
Kiszely said that the “eco-zealots are another version of the same thing” in “that the cure is worse than the disease.”
He said that they “champion ‘degrowth’ as a means of combatting climate change.”
“This of course is catastrophic; but obsessive ideological purity always comes with a significant hair-shirting element. It’s a substitute for real thinking. Universities are brim-full of anti-capitalist academics, so they naturally approve of such attacks on wealth (as long as it doesn’t impact on them),” he said, adding that students have “been force-fed a diet of simplistic identity politics and environmentalism.”
Kiszely said that universities “no longer offer an intellectual challenge.”
“They reinforce preconceived ideas and encourage everybody to think the same thing,” he said.
“It’s easier that way. Their ‘values’ (they talk about values an awful lot) are the same as those of the media, the corporations, and the protest groups. They are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas; instead, they sell a way of life. Activism is just that, a way of life. An end in itself. And it provides the illusion of worth—for the individuals themselves and for the degrees they pay for,” he added.
Kiszely noted that there are “many excellent individuals teaching and researching in universities up and down the country,” but higher education as “a sector is completely captured by radical activists—and that’s the problem.”
“It gets harder by the day for dissenting voices to be heard,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted Onward Together and Climate Emergency Fund for comment.