Today students all around Europe are joining a global strike against climate change. It’s 2019, and the common belief among scientist is that is already too late: we should have started taking action 10 years ago to keep consequences manageable. Today, while students are protesting, many leaders of the world in the last decades, like Angela Merkel, expressed support for this strike.

Also today, I witnessed a seminar in a research institute where a very bright, excited young scientist showed us how they are measuring the cascade effects of climate change on animal health and, from animals, on human health. She collected a very nice data set, to assess the health impact of pollution in seas and deforestation in forests. The focus of this young scientist thesis was on developing countries, with a particular touch for exotic places and exciting trips — motorbiking around deserts, hiking in jungles — to collect data.

At the end of the presentation, more than a few words are spent about funding and partners of the research. The most prominent one is a foundation, which is the non-profit branch of a very large multinational corporation, one of the wealthiest in the world. More than that: an oil company. One of the top 10 companies on the globe in the oil and gas sector. One of those that has been involved in countless scandals about corruption in developing countries, to open or buy oil drills. In the European country I’m from, if you want to talk about neocolonialism, that company is one of those names you just have to mention. A perfect example of how Europe is still exploiting developing countries for its own interests.

Especially if you become inhabitable, Africa.

So, yeah, this company is the one that is actually profiting from the oil addiction of the planet. And apparently, beside paying a bunch of lobbyist at the Europarlament, joining dozens of European Commission meetings per year to discuss the future of energy policies, they are also funding research on climate change.

I don’t doubt that there is some good people there. But I also think that nothing good can come out of research financed by those that are supposed to be under scrutiny. And no amount of “humanitarian aid” paid by these companies can change this belief. You get a little bit the feeling that these multinational corporations are funding non-profit organizations exactly in order to spoil some first-world rich kid into thinking that they are doing good for humanity, maybe in some exotic and creative way, but always under the direct or indirect control of who owns the capital and pays their salaries. This might not even be a conscious choice for them — it’s just how this system is preserving itself. While in Africa they are used to bribing military leaders in order to extract oil undisturbed, in Europe they need to fund intellectuals in order to leave their critic energy under the ground.

And as a final note, the speaker told us about how the supervisor of this research group, while taking funds from oil companies, is organizing a bunch of “art exhibits” about science. You know why? Because “in this era of fake news, science is always under attack from ignorance”; and thus “we need to convince again people that they need to trust science”. You know what could do better to science than funding art exhibits? Not allowing oil companies to pay for your trips.