Wealthy British financier Sir Christopher Hohn’s multimillion-pound donations to climate campaigns, particularly supporting low-emission zones, come under scrutiny in a report questioning the transparency of funding behind climate policies. The Telegraph has more.
One of Britain’s wealthiest men has been bankrolling the campaign for low-emission zones and has made a £46 million donation to a climate network chaired by Sadiq Khan, the Telegraph can reveal.
Sir Christopher Hohn, a financier whose investments include a stake in the owner of Heathrow Airport, has donated more than £670 million to climate campaigns via his philanthropic fund in less than a decade.
He is one of a handful of billionaires ploughing money into civil society organisations that lobby local and national governments to enact Net Zero or clean-air policies.
Sir Christopher and Michael Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, are “strategic funders” of C40 cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities who are united in action to confront the climate crisis.
Mr. Khan, the London Mayor and chairman of the group, which has called for people to eat less meat, give up their private cars and take only one flight every three years.
Since 2013, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), co-founded and chaired by Sir Christopher, has given nearly $57million in grants to C40 cities, and Mr. Bloomberg has donated $45 million to the organisation that he used to chair.
The London Mayor has been the C40 cities chairman since 2021, and a source at City Hall said that its more radical proposals were made before he was in post and were not targets.
CIFF is also a major funder of the Clean Air Fund and has donated more than £17 million to it. The lobby group claims on its website that it “drove the creation or expansion of eight Clean Air Zones (CAZ) in Bath, Brighton, Portsmouth and the London Ultra Low Emission Zone – with the potential to save millions of lives.” …
The funding details are revealed in a report on the Clean Air campaign, seen by the Telegraph, which calls for the public to be included in debates about radical policies.
Its authors, from Together and Climate Debate U.K., say not enough is known about the funding behind organisations pushing through policies that have a major impact on people’s lives. Their report alleges that “undue proximity between billionaires and the centre of political power” excludes the public from conversations.
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