The climate activists taking down book festivals – while jetting off on long-haul flights

Climate influencer Mikaela Loach is a prominent member of Fossil Free Books - Getty

When even fellow eco-activists suggest your cause may be flawed, it might be time for a rethink.

From the Green Party to darlings of the liberal Left, prominent environmentalists have lined up to criticise pressure group Fossil Free Books (FFB) over its campaign to boycott literature festivals sponsored by Baillie Gifford.

The leaderless collective of authors, poets and booksellers has targeted the asset management company with the aim of forcing the firm to cease its investments in oil and gas, as well as companies linked to Israel’s military.

The unintended result? Baillie Gifford is understood to have simply pulled out of all its sponsorship deals – cutting off vital funding to seven of the UK’s premiere book events, from Hay to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, in the process.

“Who really wins here?” asked leading British environmentalist Mark Lynas. “All that’s happened is literary festivals now have huge holes in their budgets which will mean they have to raise ticket prices (thus excluding those on lower incomes) or maybe go out of business.”

Novelist Howard Jacobson has called the campaign “a desecration of the idea of literature”.

The backlash has led many to question who among FFB’s 800 named supporters across the publishing industry – from little-known writers and niche booksellers to bestselling author Zadie Smith and Left-wing celebrities such as Nish Kumar and Charlotte Church – is actually driving the pressure group’s tactics?

FFB has purposefully steered clear of appointing any leaders or a Greta Thunberg-like figurehead – instead setting up, in its own words, as a “non-hierarchical collective”. The group has strongly rejected accusations by Baillie Gifford that it is an “anonymous campaign”, but the amorphous structure has certainly helped individual organisers avoid too much public scrutiny.

This has been helped in no small part by the revolving door of spokespeople it employs to make sure scrutiny rarely lingers on any one individual member.

Since forming nearly a year ago, the main organising group is understood to have swollen to around 100 novelists, poets, and booksellers, mostly based in Scotland, who are said to collaborate over messaging apps, rather than meet up in real life.

Still, over the past 12 months, a handful of individuals who appear to be the real driving force behind FFB’s campaign have emerged. Here are those who appear to be the pressure group’s main players:

Mikaela Loach

Corbynista climate influencer, friend of Greta Thunberg

Mikaela Loach with Piers Morgan - BBC

With nearly a quarter of a million followers on Instagram, Mikaela Loach appears to be one of the most influential members of Fossil Free Books.

The 26-year-old from Surrey – who was educated at the £36,000-a-year Hurstpierpoint College – has been a rising star in climate activism for nearly a decade now.

An avowed supporter of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, her list of “achievements” includes participating in a blockade of roads outside Parliament during an Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019, taking the Government to the High Court over its oil and gas strategy (and losing), and befriending Greta Thunberg.

Loach – who was recently named one of Prospect magazine’s “World’s Top Thinkers” in 2024 – is understood to have become one of the organising members of the FFB while finishing her medicine degree at Edinburgh University.

Just weeks after graduating last summer, she helped the group make national headlines. Loach had been invited onto a panel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to discuss her recently published debut book, It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action To Transform Our World.

Instead, she staged a walkout, accusing its sponsor Baillie Gifford of “bankrolling” the climate crisis.

But the climate influencer might want to have a look at her own carbon footprint. She has already flown twice to the Caribbean this year, a 9,000-mile round trip. First in January to see relatives in Jamaica, where she was born before moving to the UK as a toddler, and then in March to join 120 activists for a “climate justice camp” on the exotic island of Saint Martin.

This is despite declaring in 2019 she would go “flight-free”.

Addressing the “Elephant in the Room” on Instagram following her recent trips abroad, Loach told her followers she felt she didn’t have “to justify my whole life to everyone”, claiming criticism of her apparent U-Turn was simply a “distraction tactic” used by major corporations.

Guy Gunaratne

The non-binary award-winning literary star

Guy Gunaratne is passionate about keeping arts festivals 'free from fossil fuel finance' - David Levenson/Getty Images

If Loach appears to be the most influential member of Fossil Free Books, Guy Gunaratne is the most critically successful.

The former documentary maker – who identifies as non-binary – was launched into literary stardom after publishing the award-winning debut novel, In Our Mad And Furious City, in 2018.

A reportedly key organising member of FFB, Gunaratne took to the stage at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last year to deliver an impassioned speech on keeping arts festivals “free from fossil fuel finance”.

Gunaratne, 40, who is not a self-proclaimed activist, claimed that speaking out was risking their career.

Yet just a few months prior, Gunaratne appeared to have no qualms judging the £30,000 Rathbones Folio Prize. While Baillie Gifford says just 2 per cent of its clients’ money is invested in fossil fuels, compared to a market average of 11 per cent, London-based Rathbones Asset management’s portfolio appears to have far greater exposure.

One of its funds has nine per cent invested in BP and Shell, and a further three per cent in the UK arms giant BAE Systems, which supplies the Israeli Air Force with weapon systems for its fleet of fighter jets.

Gunaratne also appears to be a frequent flyer, having regularly posted pictures on social media over the past decade travelling across the world on long-haul flights to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Tanzania.

Gunaratne has seemingly taken at least half a dozen trips to North America. To promote In Our Mad And Furious City, the writer – who was then based in Sweden – travelled to and from the UK almost monthly for literary events, as well as a book reading 7,500 miles away in Bali, Indonesia.

Yara Rodrigues Fowler

Novelist and Tinder political activist

The Financial Times named Rodrigues Fowler as one of 'the planet's 30 most exciting young people'

One of the most vocal members of Fossil Free Books is Yara Rodrigues Fowler, an award-winning British-Brazilian novelist and political activist.

The 31-year-old – a seemingly key driver in adding the situation in Gaza to the pressure group’s ever-growing list of causes – has appeared on both the BBC and LBC in recent weeks strongly rejecting claims the pressure group are “anonymous activists”.

It is not the first time Rodrigues Fowler’s activism has made an impact. The Oxford graduate was credited with boosting youth turnout in the 2017 UK general election after co-creating a chatbot that encouraged Tinder users to register to vote. It saw her named by the Financial Times as one of “the planet’s 30 most exciting young people”.

Two-years later, the high-achiever was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for her debut novel, Stubborn Archivist, in 2019.

Her third book, a work in progress, is said to be “a literary account of the life of Princess Diana through a formally experimental, Marxist, feminist, anti-imperialist lens”.

Like her activist companions, Rodrigues Fowler also appears to enjoy a jet setting lifestyle. In recent years, she has holidayed in Spain, Bangladesh, and three times in Brazil.

As the FFB campaign gathered pace this spring, she also flew to New York to give a lecture at Princeton University entitled the “feminist soapboax”.

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

The anti-Amazon writer selling books on… Amazon

Johannesson has previously held workshops exploring 'the colonial roots of the climate crisis' - Alamy

Another key member of the group is Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, a bookseller, activist and author who has enjoyed rather more modest success compared with her high-flying allies.

After growing up in Sweden, Colombia and Ecuador, she eventually settled in Edinburgh to study for a master’s degree. The Scottish city links among many of FFB’s supporters and Johannesson remains a key figure in its literary scene.

Johannesson – who has previously held workshops exploring “the colonial roots of the climate crisis” – currently works as a digital campaigns manager for Edinburgh’s Lighthouse Bookshop. The “queer-owned and woman-led” independent business describes itself as an “unapologetically activist, intersectional, feminist, antiracist, lgbtq+ community space”.

In a recent article promoting FFB, Johannesson highlighted how the group had widened its call for Baillie Gifford’s divestment to also include Amazon, which it said was linked to “apartheid surveillance” and AI-assisted military operations carried out by Israeli troops. Notably, the author still has two books listed for sale on the site.

The piece goes on to claim Fossil Free Books is “committed to changing our industry for the better”. The jury is still out on that one.

The Telegraph contacted Loach, Gunaratne, Rodrigues Fowler and Johannesson for comment. Rodrigues Fowler and Gunaratne declined to comment. At the time of publication, Loach and Johannesson had not responded.

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