Fossil Free Books has heightened the risk of sponsoring the arts, says Finbarr O’Mahony

In his article (Our Baillie Gifford boycotts aren’t about tearing down the arts – they’re about building them up, 27 June), Tom Jeffreys writes: “The furore over festival funding is obscuring the real issue here, which is that in the last nine months Israel has slaughtered more than 37,000 people in Gaza.” I agree. Fossil Free Books has caused the furore, but without leading to divestment from either Israel or the oil and gas sector, merely the divestment from literary festivals. Surely a blow for justice and the environment so tangential as to be useless.

Jeffreys is confident that pure, alternative sources of arts funding are available. This is not the case. Fossil Free Books has heightened the risk of sponsoring the arts. Now that Baillie Gifford has walked away, I doubt anyone else will want to drink from that poisoned chalice.

Sustainable, ethical sources of funding are not an outlandish ask – and possibilities are already emerging

• Tom Jeffreys is a writer who also organises with Fossil Free Books

When I became involved with Fossil Free Books in March, I did not anticipate how toxic the name Baillie Gifford would become, or how quickly. The firm, once thought of as a benevolent supporter of the arts, is now better known for its investments in environmental destruction. Nine literary festivals and three art galleries are no longer receiving funding from Baillie Gifford. Such shifts may not feel like victories, but in several important ways they are.

Fossil Free Books came together last summer after Greta Thunberg announced she was pulling out of the Edinburgh international book festival amid concerns over the fossil fuel investments of its sponsor, Baillie Gifford. At the time, Baillie Gifford stated that its investments in fossil fuels were 2% compared with an industry standard of 11%. Which raises the obvious question: if these investments are so low, then surely divestment is not so hard to achieve without denting profits?

UK campaigner who fronted lawsuit on future impact of fossil fuel projects says she fears for future despite ruling

Sarah Finch considers herself an early adopter of environmentalism, even if she is not quite sure what the initial spark was. “I was only ever interested in the environment,” she says. “That’s all I wanted to do.”

She never expected her name to become part of legal history. Last week, the supreme court handed down a landmark ruling in a lawsuit that Finch fronted, ruling that the climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects. It set an important legal precedent and threw doubt on the approval of new fossil fuel projects in the UK.