Wealthy US entrepreneur bankrolling Just Stop Oil sensationally turns on ‘unproductive’ climate mob and says ‘pink-haired, tattooed and pierced’ protesters stopping kids getting to school are not ‘accomplishing anything’

•  Trevor Neilson co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) which funds JSO

The American entrepreneur who funded Just Stop Oil has slammed their activism as ‘performative’ and claimed the group is alienating those it could be winning over.

Trevor Neilson co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), a group that bankrolled Extinction Rebellion and JSO, but has since resigned his position and described their methods as ‘unproductive’.

The 50-year-old Californian businessman stepped down in 2021 but has since decided to speak out to criticise the groups’ protest tactics, which include ‘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 suspected to be the next sporting event under threat.

‘It’s become disruption for the sake of disruption,’ Neilson told The Times. ‘Working people that are trying to get to their job, get their kid dropped off at school, survive 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 bankrolled Extinction Rebellion and JSO after the Californian wildfires in 2018 (file image)

Major events have also been disrupted by JSO, including the Rugby Cup final at Twickenham and the Epsom Derby, with Wimbledon suspected to be the next sporting event under threat

Neilson was once an enthusiastic supporter of the controversial tactics employed by the climate groups, but said their activities have caused him increasing unease. 

‘If at the same time they have a pink-haired, tattooed and pierced protester standing in front of their car, so that their kid is late for their test that day, that does not encourage them to join the movement,’ he told The Times. 

‘It’s just performative. It’s not accomplishing anything. I absolutely believe that it has now become counterproductive, and I just feel like that has to be said by somebody that was involved in the beginnings of what it has become.’ 

The passionate environmentalist started the fund after wild fires tore through the neighbourhood where he lives in Malibu in 2018.

He admitted that at the time, his work in sustainability had been being done from a safe distance from the real-world impacts of climate change, but that the experience of his home being under threat was a wake-up call.

His criticism of where CEF’s funding goes was rebuked by the its current CEO, Margaret Klein Salamon.

She said that disruptive activism, like that carried out by XR and JSO, is ‘the single most effective force in terms of moving the conversation’ around the climate crisis.

‘We are sleep-walking off a cliff and the activists are waking us up,’ she said. ‘You’d rather do that than walk off the cliff.’ 

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