From university students to church groups, a united global effort will politically bankrupt the fossil fuel industry.
By Bill McKibben
| Environment | theguardian.com.
Excerpts:
The world has a choice when dealing with climate change. One is to decide it's a problem like any other, which can be dealt with slowly and over time. The other is to recognise it as a crisis, perhaps the unique crisis in human history, which will take rapid, urgent action to overcome.
Science is in the second, scared camp – that's the meaning of the IPCC report issued last month, which showed that our planet is already undergoing climatic shifts far greater than any experienced in human civilisation, with far worse to come.
And those of us urging divestment from fossil fuel stocks are in the second camp too – we recognise that business as usual is quite simply impossible.
In the US, a number of colleges, churches, and universities have begun to divest those stocks, arguing that they can't both simultaneously decry the wreckage of the climate and try to profit from it for a few more years.
The trustees of San Francisco State University recognised that it made no sense to have, on the one hand, a physics department understanding climate change and on the other hand, an endowment full of oil and gas stocks.
The United Church of Christ, which traces its roots back to the Pilgrims, decided it couldn't pay the pastor by investing in companies that are running Genesis backwards.
In addition, UK university students are increasingly engaged in divestment campaigns as evidenced by the work undertaken by People & Planet. To date there are 19 active divestment campaigns across the UK including universities with the largest endowments: Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh.
Everyone involved in this campaign understands that divestment won't in fact bankrupt Exxon or BP or Shell, but they also understand how important it is to politically bankrupt them. These are now rogue industries, committed to burning more carbon than any government on earth thinks would be safe to burn. Their irresponsibility belongs to their executives and boards of directors – but it also belongs to anyone who holds their shares. If you think that climate change is a true crisis, then the time has come to sever your ties.
Read the full article here.
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~ Superstorm Sandy Hit New York One Year Ago Today ~
TONIGHT: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 7:00 PM
Sierra Club Niagara Group will remember Sandy and screen “Comfort Zone” -- a one hour film on what Climate Change will do to Western New York.
Place: Schenck Hall at Daemen College, Main Street in Snyder [Campus Map]
The program is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
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