Dear British Cycling,

The bicycle is the transport choice of the future, but fossil fuels are the energy of the past. Judging by reactions to your announcement of accepting Shell UK as your official sponsor, you will by now appreciate that most people are therefore acutely aware of the incompatibility of aligning cycling with one of the world’s biggest polluters and major oil companies.

That you should allow the good name of British Cycling to become a billboard for an oil company which has for decades lobbied against environmental action and sowed doubt and confusion around climate science has come as a shock to many people. Whilst appreciating the challenges of funding any organisation, we ask you, for the sake of future generations, and to demonstrate that you reject greenwashing and sportwashing by major polluters, to withdraw from your sponsorship deal with Shell.

Shell has a track record of misleading communication on climate change and its own, unsustainable activities. The company is not aligned with international climate targets, nor has it accepted the science of the proportion of fossil fuels that must remain in the ground if these targets are to be met. Disturbingly the eight year period of your sponsorship deal overlaps with the time left for meaningful climate action to avert disaster.

All sports, including cycling, are vulnerable to the increasingly extreme weather associated with global heating. More than that, athletes and especially cyclists are vulnerable to the lethal air pollution that comes from the burning of fossil fuels, and the estimated 8.7 million premature deaths that result each year globally from that pollution. We believe that it is in the urgent interests of the sport of cycling, and cyclists everywhere rapidly to transition away from fossil fuel use. Cycling too is in a unique position to aid that shift. However, accepting sponsorship from an oil company with a history of delay and misinformation on the issue, is an irreconcilable conflict of interest. We ask you to consider immediate action to renounce sponsorship from Shell.