Guest essay by Eric Worrall

You might expect on the eve of a global food price crisis, a charity which genuinely cares about feeding hungry children would swallow their pride and prioritise accepting donations from any legal source. But Save the Children appears to have decided they care more about climate virtue signalling than their core mission.

Charity snubs £750,000 donation from gas company over reluctance to take cash from fossil fuel firms

• Save the Children rejected a large donation because it was from a gas producer
• The £750,000 donation from Neptune Energy for Ukraine was rejected
• Save the Children said they did not want the money because it ‘didn’t want to endorse fossil fuels’ 

By NIAMH LYNCH FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 12:55 AEDT, 23 March 2022 | UPDATED: 12:55 AEDT, 23 March 2022

Save the Children has refused an energy firm’s £750,000 donation to ease the Ukraine crisis because it doesn’t want to endorse fossil fuels.

It rebuffed cash from North Sea gas producer Neptune Energy two weeks ago, stating it was ‘committed to working on climate change issues’.

Despite refusing help for Ukraine, it said it would take cash for its Children’s Emergency Fund, which supports youngsters in crises around the world, because ‘this could be used in a crisis for which relatively little money is available’.

Neptune, which says it has given £1.5million for Ukrainian humanitarian efforts, challenged the decision with Save the Children’s trustees, saying its staff chose the charity and the snub had ‘shocked’ them.

Save the Children will now refuse donations from firms ‘whose core business is fossil fuels… following a lead by children who have protested about the threat the climate crisis poses to their future’, The Daily Telegraph reported.

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Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10642107/Charity-snubs-750-000-donation-gas-company-reluctance-cash-fossil-fuel-firms.html

This has got to be one of the most stunning examples of climate hypocrisy and bad timing I have ever encountered.

Every one of the “Save the Children” executives who made this fatuous decision use fossil fuel in their every day lives, in the clothes they wear, their household appliances, home heating, the roads they drive on. Their computers and telephones are largely made of fossil fuel based plastic, and powered by fossil fuel. Even if they drive an EV, their automobile is mostly made of fossil fuel, and recharged by generated powered by fossil fuel. Any metal components in their EV were smelted and shaped using fossil fuel powered machines.

The timing of this move could not be worse. The world stands on the brink of a food supply crisis, thanks to the interruption of 25% of the world’s wheat supply, wheat which normally comes from Ukraine.

Even worse, the rest of the world might find it unusually difficult to make up the shortfall, due to fertiliser shortages. A significant portion of the world’s fertiliser is manufactured in Russia.

Can you imagine a more ridiculous time for a food bank charity to decide to be fussy about whose money they accept?

My suggestion, if you normally support “Save the Children”, find another charity to support, a charity run by people whose focus is their core mission.