OPINION
Restore Passenger Rail is slowly becoming the newest climate change cult that has taken over New Zealand. Started by James Cockle, who became famous for challenging James Shaw for co-leadership of the Green Party, the group has decided to fight for free public transport to reduce carbon emissions by glueing themselves to the streets, forcing cars to waste more carbon emissions while waiting for them to move.
The question that hasn’t been asked though is who funds them? It took only a little bit of digging to find out.
In the about page of their website they are in partnership with the A22 Network, an international network for environmentalist groups that commit to civil disobedience.(https://restorepassengerrail.nz/about/) Restore Passenger Rail itself is listed as one of its projects (https://a22network.org/en/#projects). But who then funds this network to support these activists?
That would be the Climate Emergency Fund an organisation that provides grants to ‘fight climate change’. Their board of directors include Adam Mackay, the director of the climate doom-saying film Don’t Look Up, who flies 5,000 miles in a fossil-fuel-powered jet from LA to Ireland. Their advisory board unsurprisingly includes Bill McKibben, founder of the 350 organisation who once said that mass migration was a threat to the climate. (https://www.climateemergencyfund.org/about) But who funds this fund? Adam Mackay has pledged 4.6 million dollars to the fund but another donor turned out to be Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of George Getty who made his fortune in oil. That’s right, the groups that pledge to fight fossil fuels are themselves funded by the industry they oppose. How’s that for hypocrisy? (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/22/just-stop-oil-van-gogh-national-gallery-aileen-getty)
Of course, this is not something that the activists themselves know. In fact, many believe that the money comes from the ‘grass roots’. This is an example of what environmentalists often call ‘greenwashing’, a PR move by corporations to make their goods and services seem more environmentally friendly. As pointed out by Lushington D Brady, it could also be a case of young rich kids feeling guilty for their wealth and trying to redeem themselves. Whatever the case, it shows that this so-called environmental movement may not be as environmental as it seems.