More than 50 organizations with millions of members, and prominent Australians, including Tim Winton and Natalie Kyriacou, have demanded the Queensland Museum end a controversial sponsorship deal with fossil fuel giant, Shell.
Image Credit: Queensland Conservation Council
In an Open Letter delivered today to the Queensland Museum, they say the multi-million dollar deal with Shell, worth over $10 million since 2015, has led to Queensland schoolchildren being given misleading Shell-branded climate change materials.
The action follows an investigation by the climate communications charity, Comms Declare, which has also just released a new report identifying more than 260 programs and sponsorships through which fossil fuel companies, like Shell, are marketing to millions of Australian children through trusted institutions.
Parent, teacher, medical, environmental, youth, Indigenous, religious and bushfire survivor organisations are among those who’ve signed the Open Letter calling on the Queensland Museum to dump Shell as a sponsor to protect the integrity of kids’ education.
“People are stunned that school children have become the innocent victims of the Queensland Museum’s quest for millions of dollars from one of Australia’s largest polluters, Shell,” said Simon English, one of the founders of the End Fossil Fuel Sponsorships Group, which organized the Open Letter.
Author Tim Winton AO said: “Our children deserve clean air, clean soil, and clean water. But they also deserve clean information about the world they live in and the challenges we all face. Our educational institutions should never allow themselves to be used to launder the reputations of big polluters. Educators should be shielding kids from purveyors of deceit and misinformation, not abetting them in this way.”
Author and environmentalist Natalie Kyriacou OAM said: “There is a reason tobacco companies do not develop curricula on respiratory health for children: it is a conflict of interest. The same conflict of interest should prevent fossil fuel companies from developing (misleading) content on climate change for children.”
Comms Declare Founder, Belinda Noble said: “We call on Queensland Museum to stop promoting climate-wrecking gas, to drop Shell as a sponsor, and to put in a partnership policy that ensures children receive accurate information, untainted by corporate influence.”
Hayley Troupe of the Queensland Conservation Council said: “We are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, putting ourselves and the special places we love at risk. Meanwhile, the Museum is allowing fossil fuel companies to mislead students, the same students who will inherit the dangerous and uncertain future these fossil fuel companies are creating. The Queensland Museum must end fossil fuel sponsorships and ensure their educational materials are grounded in science.”
Cultural and scientific institutions should not accept money from a mega corporation whose “core activities contribute to the degradation of the very heritage the public institutions are charged to preserve,” signatories to the Open Letter declared.
“The museum is risking not only its integrity, and its perceived independence, but also risks breaching its own charter. The Queensland Museum should end its deal with Shell and follow the lead of other public institutions around the globe which are turning away from partnerships with fossil fuel companies.
“Shell should not be allowed to pollute our children’s minds as well as the planet.”
In an event outside the museum today (Wednesday) the End Fossil Fuel Sponsorships Group was joined by representatives from the Queensland Conservation Council, who have organized their own matching petition to present to the Queensland Museum.