Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Spreads In UK
October 13th, 2014 by Sandy Dechert
The University of Glasgow in Scotland has taken a page from Stanford and other US colleges. It has become the first EU academic institution to divest fossil fuel holdings. On Wednesday, the university court voted to divest $29 million (£18 million) of investments in the fossil fuel industry and freeze new investments across its entire endowment of $206 million (£128 million).
The Glasgow University Climate Action Society worked on the fossil fuel divestment campaign for 12 months. Student groups at Imperial College and University College, London, are also demanding divestment. The University of Edinburgh and Oxford University and its colleges (which have larger investment funds than any other higher education institution in the UK) also have divestment on the table.
Activist Naomi Klein, author of five books including just-released New York Times bestseller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, says of the fast-growing student climate action and fossil fuel divestment movement:
The institutions entrusted to prepare [students] for the future cannot simultaneously bet against their future by profiting from corporations that plan to burn [much] more carbon than our atmosphere can safely absorb…. They are sending an unequivocal message that fossil fuel profits are illegitimate—on par with tobacco and arms profits —and that brings us a significant step closer to demanding that our politicians sever ties with this rogue industry and implement bold climate policies based on a clear, progressive ‘polluter pays’ principle.’
American environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called Glasgow’s move “a dramatic beachhead for the divestment movement,” signaling that Europe would be “just as powerful in this fight as Australia and North America…. That it comes from Glasgow, which has as much claim to birthing the industrial revolution as any city on Earth, makes it that much more special. Everyone from the Rockefellers on down is realizing it’s time to move on.”
As of September, over 800 large investors around the world have begun fossil fuel divestment, withdrawing a total of $50 billion (£31 billion) from petroleum investments over the next five years.
You can find more information about divestors at the gofossilfree website. It has a long list of and related information about commitments from many colleges and universities, cities, counties, religious institutions, and other groups. Notable among them: World Council of Churches (which represents over 7% of the world population and made its decision in July); the British Medical Association; cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Madison, Ann Arbor, Santa Fe, Providence, Dunedin (NZ), Boxtel (The Netherlands), and many others; and just last month, the wealthy Rockefeller Foundation, one of at least a dozen with deep pockets..
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About the Author
Sandy Dechert covers environmental, health, renewable and conventional energy, and climate change news. She's worked for groundbreaking environmental consultants and a Fortune 100 health care firm, writes two top-level blogs on Examiner.com, ranked #2 on ONPP's 2011 Top 50 blogs on Women's Health, and attributes her modest success to an "indelible habit of poking around to satisfy my own curiosity."
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