Wealthy American entrepreneur who finances Just Stop Oil turns on ‘unproductive’ climate mafia
Wealthy American entrepreneur sensationally funds Just Stop Oil against ‘unproductive’ climate mafia, says ‘pink-haired, tattooed and pierced’ protesters who stop children from going to school ‘achieve nothing’
- Trevor Neilson co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), which funds JSO
The American entrepreneur who funded Just Stop Oil called their activism “performative” and claimed the group is alienating those it could win.
Trevor Neilson co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), a group that funded Extinction Rebellion and JSO, but has since resigned, describing their methods as “unproductive.”
The 50-year-old California businessman stepped down in 2021, but has since decided to speak out to criticize the groups’ protest tactics, including “slow marches” and blocking roads.
Major events have also been disrupted by JSO, including the Rugby Cup final at Twickenham and the Epsom Derby, with Wimbledon believed to be the next sporting event under threat.
“It has become disruption for the sake of disruption,” Neilson told The Times. “Working people trying to get to work, putting their child through school, surviving a brutal cost-of-living crisis in the UK, you know, there’s a certain hierarchy of needs that they have.
Trevor Neilson co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), a group that funded Extinction Rebellion and JSO after the 2018 California wildfires (file image)
Major events have also been disrupted by JSO, including the Rugby Cup final at Twickenham and the Epsom Derby, with Wimbledon believed to be the next sporting event under threat
Neilson was once an enthusiastic supporter of the climate groups’ controversial tactics, but said their activities increasingly uneasy him.
“If they have a pink-haired, tattooed and pierced protester standing in front of their car at the same time so that their child is late for their test that day, it doesn’t encourage them to join the movement,” he told The Times.
“It’s just performative. It achieves nothing. I absolutely believe it’s become counterproductive now, and I just feel like that needs to be said by someone who was involved in the beginning of what it has become.”
The passionate environmental activist started the fund after wildfires raged through his neighborhood in Malibu in 2018.
He admitted that at the time his work on sustainability was being done at a safe distance from the real impacts of climate change, but the experience of his home being threatened was a wake-up call.
His criticism of where CEF’s funding is going was rebuked by the current CEO, Margaret Klein Salamon.
She said disruptive activism, such as that of XR and JSO, is “the most effective force to start the conversation” around the climate crisis.
“We are sleepwalking off a cliff and the activists are waking us up,” she said. “You’d rather do that than walk off the cliff.”