In terms of climate action, the classic face-to-face, still observed in the last 48 hours between Total and Greenpeace, opposes the oil company on one side and the environmentalist on the other. The first suspected of having minimized his carbon footprint in 2019 who retorts to the second that he is wrong in his calculations.
>> Climate: we explain why Greenpeace and TotalEnergies are struggling with the carbon footprint displayed by the group
But here, with our philanthropic intruder, 65, American, the positions are reversed. AIleen Getty, whose family made a fortune in oil, is delighted to see climate activists throwing soup on a painting by Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London. She writes in a column published in the Guardian (link in English): “We must take disruptive action on the climate crisis before it’s too late.”
This climate commitment did not take him like that, waking up 15 days ago. She has been financing radical climate action for two years through a fund she co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund, which supports movements like Extinction Rebellion and even Just Stop Oil, which the soup throwers of these groups claim to be. last days. In short, it’s as if an heiress of pesticides now finances organic or veganism.
In the Getty family, the grandfather, Jean-Paul founded in the 1960s the Getty Oil Company. Everything is going well for him: in 1966, he was even the richest man in the world according to Guinness World Records. At the end of his life, he used part of this fortune to set up an academy for art and a museum of antiquity – which would later become the Getty museum near Los Angeles. But when he died in 1976, there remained a few billion dollars shared by his five children – from five marriages – who finally sold the company a few years later, we are in 1984. Among the five, we especially know Mark who co-founded the photo agency Getty Images.
In her biography published in 2022 by James Reginato, we discover the journey, to say the least painful, of this Aileen: childhood in Italy then in a chic boarding school in the United Kingdom. A rebellious adolescence that immerses her in cocaine, like her little brother, who will be kidnapped by the mafia, for which the grandfather will refuse to pay a ransom until the kidnappers send him an ear cut off from the grandson. This chaotic journey also goes through a marriage. In 1981 – she was 24 – she married Elisabeth Taylor’s son, Christopher Wilding, with whom she had two children. A marriage during which she contracted AIDS during an unprotected extra-marital relationship and which ended in divorce after six years.
She’s really a different Aileen Getty coming out of all these ordeals. In 1991, when she revealed her HIV status, she explained in an interview that, without HIV, she would have remained “a victim! Of his parents and his heritage”. She engages in various fights, AIDS of course, the homeless as well, rallying to her cause Lady Di or Elton Johh. Supported by her former mother-in-law, Elisabeth Taylor, who founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
Planet Defense is gradually being added to this list. In his gallery at Guardianshe speaks of it as an oath, the one “to put its resources at the service of all measures necessary for the protection of life on Earth.” Last winter, she had already signed a platform with another oil heiress, Rebecca Rockefeller. She joins forces with other donors like Rory Kennedy, the niece of the assassinated president.
Its Climate Emergency Fund has reportedly already distributed £3.5 million to the global “A22” coalition, founded in particular by Just Stop Oil. It finances travel, accommodation for activists, banners or room rental. As well as soup throwing, Just Stop Oil activists have blocked roads in Britain in recent weeks. There is no doubt that we will hear about it on the sidelines of the COP in Sharm El Sheikh which starts on Sunday.