Climate Science Denial Group Trustee Leaves Anglia Ruskin University Board

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A prominent economist who is a trustee of the UKโ€™s principal climate science denial group is no longer Chair of the Board of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) after completing the maximum term allowed forย governors.

Jerome Boothโ€™s departure comes after almost 200 current and former faculty and students sent an open letter last year to ARUโ€™s Board complaining that his association with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) โ€œbrings our university intoย disreputeโ€.

The letter called on ARU to be โ€œat the forefront of actionโ€ on climate change, and said Boothโ€™s choice to become a GWPF trustee while Chair was โ€œin direct contradiction to this commitmentโ€. It called for Booth to step down from his GWPFย role.


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Dr Sarah Royston, a Research Fellow at ARUโ€™s Global Sustainability Institute, who organised the letter, said she was โ€œshocked and disappointedโ€ when she found out about Boothโ€™s GWPF association from DeSmogโ€™s reporting lastย year.ย 

โ€œA lot of my colleagues, as well as students and alumni, felt the same, and so we put together an Open Letter calling for our Governors to be active advocates for evidence-based action on climate change,โ€ she told DeSmog. She hoped the yet-to-be-announced new Chair would help โ€œdeepen our whole-organisation commitment to real action on the climateย emergencyโ€.ย 

Booth told DeSmog shortly after his appointment to the GWPFโ€™s board that he had decided to join the group because he was โ€œinterested in energy policy and believes greater scrutiny of climate policies is needed.โ€ He also confirmed he had made donations to the GWPF.

Just months after Booth took over as Chair of Anglia Ruskin University, a mock memorial to climate science deniers, including GWPF founder Nigel Lawson, Christopher Monckton and Owen Paterson, Melanie Phillips and James Delingpole, won the universityโ€™s annual Sustainability Artย Prize.

Booth has featured on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated wealth of ยฃ112 million. He runs asset management company New Sparta and was briefly a Lecturer at the University of Oxford, where he studied. He has donated a total of ยฃ20,000 to the Conservative Party, as well as ยฃ30,000 to Conservative MP and former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell. No donations have been made since 2013, according to the Electoralย Commission.

Along with his GWPF trusteeship, Booth remains Chairman of the Board of UK Community Foundations, Britten Symphonia, and the Royal Philharmonic Society. He did not respond to a request forย comment.ย 

An ARU spokesperson confirmed that โ€œFriday 31 July was the last day of Dr Jerome Boothโ€™s term as Chair of the Governing Bodyโ€ and that he โ€œhad been a Governor of ARU for nine years, which is the maximum term of office that Governors are permitted toย serve.โ€

Image credit:ย Mohammed Tawsif Salam/Wikimedia Commonsย CC BYSA 3.0. Updated 06/08/2020: The number of signatories to the open letter wasย updated.

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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