Activists opposed to the responsible development of oil and natural gas are in the middle of a public split over whether disruptive and illegal protests are helping or hurt their cause.
The fracture within the climate movement comes amid widespread news headlines over the actions of Just Stop Oil, a UK-based activist group that’s caused “criminal damage” to famous works of art and shut down traffic on a major British highway, resulting in prison sentences for activists.
Tactics like those employed by Just Stop Oil – and Extinction Rebellion, another UK-based activist group – have been criticized by Dr. Michael Mann, a climate science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and frequent commentator on environmental issues, who published a poll showing that these disruptive protests do far more to hurt than help:
“A plurality of respondents (46%) say disruptive non-violent actions decrease their support for efforts to address climate change, while only 13% say that these actions increase their support.”
Financial Support from the Climate Emergency Fund
This very public split among activists raises a key question: who is funding these disruptive and illegal protests?
Reporting from the New York Times earlier this year revealed that Just Stop Oil receives major financial support from the U.S.-based Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) and, in an unusual arrangement, CEF is directly pays activists:
“Miranda Whelehan, of the British group Just Stop Oil, said members had been overworked and stressed until the Climate Emergency Fund gave them close to $1 million and helped cover salaries for 40 organizers and activists.”
Just Stop Oil’s website further notes that “most of our funding for recruitment, training, capacity building, and education comes from Climate Emergency Fund.”
In 2019, the Times reported that Extinction Rebellion also received $350,000 from CEF, and in 2020, the Guardian wrote that the group’s activists received up to £400 a week. Extinction Rebellion activists have been on the CEF payroll, including the group’s co-founder and former leader Roger Hallam, who left Extinction Rebellion to lead Just Stop Oil amid a dispute over the former group’s tactics.
Hallam is no stranger to controversy. Previously, he faced heavy criticism from inside and outside the climate activist movement for dismissing the seriousness of the Holocaust in comparison to climate change, as Fox News recently recalled:
“Roger Hallam — the founder of Just Stop Oil, a far-left British climate activist organization — once downplayed the Holocaust as a ‘normal event’ and said climate change was a more serious threat. Hallam, who also founded the climate group Extinction Rebellion, said in 2019 that there were many other instances of cruelty in human history besides the Holocaust, in an interview at the time with German media outlet Die Zeit, according to The Guardian. After facing widespread criticism for the comments, Hallam noted the climate crisis was another Holocaust on a ‘far greater scale.’”
Financing Illegal Activities?
On top of the tidal wave of headlines of Just Stop Oil activists conducting illegal protests and getting arrested, Extinction Rebellion activists it crystal clear in an article from TIME Magazine that they engage in “illegal” protests:
“The plan was to do something illegal, but no one among the two-dozen climate protesters assembled in a courtyard in Midtown Manhattan would tell me exactly what. Extinction Rebellion organizers were coming through the small crowd, asking who was ‘red role,’ meaning that they were willing to be arrested. … Eric Arnum, an organizer from Extinction Rebellion NYC, remained behind; he told me they were acting as ‘decoys’ to keep nearby police from following the other demonstrators. ‘They’re waiting for us to make our move, but we’ve already made our move,’ he said, gesturing to a group of nearby police detectives.” (Emphasis added)
The Extinction Rebellion leader then became even more explicit about its intentions:
“Put this in your article. We play a giant game of cops and robbers with the best police force in the world, and we always win.” (Emphasis added)
These actions do not align with the rhetoric coming from the Climate Emergency Fund, where leaders have gone to great lengths to publicly claim that, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization, they only fund legal activities. On CEF’s website, the organization specifically states:
“Our robust legal team ensures all activities funded by Climate Emergency Fund are within 501(c)(3) requirements. … We rigorously vet all applicants to ensure funds support high-impact projects, groups, and individuals.”
And in an interview with the New York Times, Margaret Klein Salamon, the Executive Director for CEF, said the organization only supports legal activities:
“Both Ms. Redford and Ms. Salamon said their groups had financed only legal activities, such as training, education, travel and printing and recruitment costs. Grant recipients must confirm that the money has not been spent on activities prohibited by law.” (emphasis added)
However, the London-based newspaper City A.M. reported that more than 1,700 Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested so far in 2022 in the United Kingdom, and recently, Just Stop Oil’s crowdfunding website was shut down, citing violations of the site’s terms of use.
In 2020, Quadrant, an Australian journal, noted that Hallam has specifically called for illegal activities, saying:
“We go out and tell people that they will die. That emotionalizes them. Building on that, it works like project management: we want to get these people to break the law. After that, it’s just a numbers game. If three are arrested, nobody will be scratched. If a million people are arrested, things will change.” (emphasis added)
CEF appears to be playing it both ways: Claiming to only support legal activities but structuring their grants to protect themselves knowing that grantees will aim to break the law, as Trevor Neilson, a co-founder of the group told the New York Times in 2020:
“The money comes with one important restriction, Mr. Neilson said. It can ‘only be used for legal activities.’ The nonprofit organization worked the language into the paperwork on every grant agreement and indemnifies the donors from the consequences of illegal actions.” (emphasis added)
Moreover, the organizational structure of Just Stop Oil likely limits CEF’s ability to do proper due diligence on the organization and its use of funds. There is little public information about Just Stop Oil’s organization or governance structure, and the group does not appear to be incorporated as an entity in the U.K. or elsewhere. Instead, Just Stop Oil has been variously described as a decentralized, “non-hierarchical coalition” and a “coalition of groups working together” with no formal leadership.
CEF’s financial support to Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion raises several questions:
Bottom Line: The extreme tactics that Climate Emergency Fund bankrolls have come under fire from the mainstream media and from major players within the climate activist movement, even prompting a condemnation from Dr. Michael Mann on Twitter. As a U.S.-based nonprofit, CEF continues to fund explicitly illegal activity in the U.S. and in other countries while sheltering donors from liability with disclaimers and empty claims about due diligence and vetting.
