RE: Adjudication of 66^th Texaco Children’s Art Competition

Dear Adjudicators,

In light of national and global concerns regarding the negative health and biodiversity impacts of the fossil fuel industry I am writing to ask you to please reconsider your scheduled adjudication of the 66^th Texaco Children’s Art Competition on Wednesday, 15^th April 2020.

I have spoken by phone to Ms. Bronagh Carron at Texaco Children’s Art. I informed her of my plans to commence a social media campaign to coincide with the awards ceremony. I will ask Irish society, and indeed art and nature lovers everywhere, to follow the example of a number of major arts institutions and museums around the world who have severed their ties with major oil companies like Texaco.

Over the past 30 years of my work with Just Forests I have seen big oil companies like Texaco destroy landscapes, ignore and trample on indigenous peoples’ rights, wipe out biological diversity and blatantly deflect attention from the damage their exploitative practices cause and the resulting climate/biodiversity  crisis.

The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 gives the global community 10 years to halt and hopefully revert damage caused to the earth’s most precious ecosystems. Every one of us has a role to play in doing what we can to restore vital life supporting landscapes for present and future generations.

I believe a big oil company such as Texaco, is not the appropriate body to fund a children’s art competition and I hope you will support my request to you.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Roche