Climate Action Alliance of the Valley
Working toward a sustainable future for all
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT6H7HPWkqU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
350.org’s Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign, launched during Bill McKibben’s Do the Math Tour last fall, asks institutions to pull investments from the “publicly-traded companies hold(ing) the vast majority of the world’s proven coal, oil and gas reserves.”
Cities, colleges, churches and other institutions are increasingly committing to pursuing fossil fuel divestment. Could Harrisonburg and its institutions consider this?
Click on the US map image on the right to find out how to start such a campaign.
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John Fullerton, former JPMorgan Managing Director, and founder and president of the The Capital Institute, discusses fossil fuel divestment and the carbon asset bubble with Laura Flanders on an episode of her show in late 2013. Click on the image to see the show.
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The effectiveness of such a campaign is being debated within the Unitarian Universalist (UU) community.
Tim Brennan, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, Unitarian Universalist Association, voices his opinion in a February 26, 2013, Huffington Post entry: “Is Divestment the Only Solution to Climate Catastrophe?”
In reply, Toby Sackton, UU member from Massachusetts, submits this “Open Letter to Tim Brennan re Divestment from fossil fuels …written in the spirit of encouraging discussion of the divestment issue in a respectful manner, while disagreeing with Tim’s disparagement of divestment.
Dear Tim,
Thank you for taking the time to write about fossil fuel divestment. As Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of the UUA, you have born the brunt of the growing activism among UU congregations who favor divestment from fossil fuels.
As an investment professional, this must be disconcerting. I would like to explain why divestment should be considered as well as shareholder activism.
Shareholder activism has been beneficial, as you say, and you have some results to show.
But the victories you claim for fossil fuels – increase in fuel economy; pulling support from climate science deniers, disclosure of greenhouse emissions, and mandated disclosure of climate risk by the SEC- are all ‘political’ victories. They did not happen in a vacuum, but happened as companies bowed to public pressure and government action.
Shareholder activism was only one of many reasons these positive changes came about.
The key mistake you make in dismissing divestment as a strategy is this: You equate individual consumers and investors with the fossil fuel companies, as if we are all part of the problem together.
You say “it is satisfying to target the fossil fuel companies as the embodiment of evil. But those companies are only responding to demand from their customers–us.”
“The truth is, there is a simple way to really hurt the fossil fuel companies and it’s not divesting–it’s boycotting their products. And that is the real heart of the problem. Fossil fuels infuse our entire economy, the financial markets, and our lives. If you think your portfolio should be fossil fuel free, shouldn’t your life be too?”
In our view it is precisely because fossil fuels infuse our entire economy that it is imperative we choose collective political action to make a change.
Our current policies were built to support and protect fossil fuels – it is the focus of our tax code, our military, our accounting laws, our land management. It will take a collective political movement to change all of that – not individuals who say they will buy only green energy. Divestment is a powerful statement to galvanize this movement precisely
because it says we will not accept the status quo.
The fossil fuel companies and governments already own carbon reserves five times greater than the maximum amount of carbon we can burn and not destroy our biosphere.
By demanding divestment, we are similar to the 19th century abolitionists. They also lived in an economic and social milieu defined by the evil of slavery in their midst. The Northern mills prospered upon cheap southern cotton. Yet the abolitionists did not call for boycotts of manufactured clothing. They demanded an end to slavery on moral grounds.
We do not want to reform the oil and coal companies. Their business model – the most profitable in the entire capitalist world – directly depends on destroying the biosphere. They do not value reserves except that they can be burned at a later date.
That business model cannot exist if we are to prevent global catastrophe.
We need to halt all drilling and exploration for fossil fuels. We already have access to five times more known reserves than we can safely use. Yet the oil companies continue to spend billions searching for new fossil fuel sources.
We want to reconfigure public investments and incentives in an emergency drive to create non-fossil energy sources, and pay for this with taxes on oil company profits and carbon fuels. And as you say, you agree with this.
Divestment is a moral call to stop this madness. Abandoning fossil fuels will only happen once there is a sufficient recognition that oil companies do not have the moral right to operate if their business furthers the destruction of our planet’s biosphere.
The purpose of divestment is not to affect the behavior of the oil companies. It is to affect behavior of all of us – to build a recognition that exploitation of carbon fuels is not a legitimate business, and must be stamped out.
The mechanisms for this include much of what you support: carbon taxes, payments of the full costs of carbon extraction, and limits on emissions and support for alternative energy.
But these actions will never happen to the necessary extent until we come to a society-wide recognition that carbon fuel companies cannot be allowed to continue business as usual. They must be corralled, constrained, controlled, and then eliminated as we make a transition to a sustainable energy system.
We don’t want to convince Exxon. We want to stop Exxon from operating as a large and successful company unless they abandon all fossil fuel activity.
In our generation we have about 20 years to fight this battle. And our abolitionist forefathers and mothers in the Congregational churches should be proud that today the UUA has accepted this historic moral challenge.
We hope you will join us in our moral outrage – as recognize that public divestment from fossil fuels is indeed a first step to further action.
Toby Sackton
First Parish
Arlington, MA”
The debate on the effectiveness of Fossil Fuel Divestiture to control climate change continues here:
HARRISONBURG — God made man, according to the Bible, and He gave him dominion
to till the Earth.
People the world over have used these words from the Bible’s first book, Genesis, to justify resource consumption, but some Harrisonburg clergy say these words have been
misinterpreted.
The Climate Action Alliance of the Valley assembled two clergy members, a philosophy
professor, a representative of the Islamic faith and an audience of 65 recently to discuss
why and how mankind should respond to climate change. The event, titled “Can Ethics and Faith Guide our Responses to Climate Change?” was held at the Massanutten Regional Library in Harrisonburg.
The Rev. Ann Held of Trinity Presbyterian Church asserted that the confusion originates
from a few key misinterpretations of biblical text.
She said the word “dominion” or “radah” in Hebrew has been interpreted as “to have rule or to hold sway.”
“[It’s] not that we have dominion in that we own the Earth,” she said.
Held explained that radah refers to the point at the top of a plant’s root, or its “center of
strength.” It’s the point where one grabs a weed to uproot it cleanly from the ground, she
said. This in turn, Held said, means that the passage is really saying that man is supposed
to be the piece of creation that holds the Earth together.
The Rev. Ross Erb of Park View Mennonite Church furthered the semantic argument by
referring to how the word “till” has been interpreted to mean plow.
He said this interpretation has led to discretionless farming practices and soil depletion.
“That same word gets used throughout the scriptures and it’s really translated as ‘serve,’”
Erb said.
“So we are to serve this world,” Erb said. “For me that is an important twist on what God
has set us here to do.”
Held also talked about Jesus’ instructions to love your neighbor, adding that Jesus was not
talking about just the people next door.
“We are to be about interconnectedness,” she said, using the Holy Spirit as an illustration.
Thus, Christians are responsible for the “least of these,” as Jesus said in Mathew 25:40,
“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for
me.”
Professor Ehsan Ahmed of the Islamic Association of the Shenandoah Valley explained
that developing nations are being hit the worst by the effects of global warming.
He noted the Republic of Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, whose president
has proposed relocating the country’s entire population as tides continue to rise.
Echoing Held’s interpretation of Christianity, Ahmed said that under Islam, “We’re
responsible for all the creations of God, which have lived or will live on this planet.”
And this responsibility, he said, extends to all one’s actions, big or small, intentional or not, including the actions of one’s society and culture.
Erb added that caring for the Earth should come down to love for God.
“We need to love with all of our being,” Erb said, explaining that Christians should show
their love by loving what God loves, which is all of creation.
“Part of creation care is using less,” Erb said. “What we believe is worth very little if we’re
not willing to put it into practice,” by taking action to at least decrease individual
consumption.
And just to be sure the point got across, the alliance invited a philosophy professor to give
the pragmatic point of view.
Mark Piper, assistant professor of philosophy at James Madison University, explained with
applied ethics that people should take care of the planet, simply because it’s in their best
interest.
Under instrumental value theory, he said, Earth’s ecosystem has worth only in its relation to human interaction.
Humankind needs water and earth to survive, thrive and propagate.
So, Piper said, taking care of these resources is “conducive to our interests,” and thus
worth human devotion.
After outlining why people should protect Earth’s ecosystem, the group discussed how to
do so on micro and macro scales.
They suggested small adjustments, like simply consuming less food and buying fewer
products, something everyone can do.
But they argued that environmental issues have been pushed aside for short-term
economic gains on a societal scale and that these problems require a grander approach.
“Are you all in any of your churches discussing nonviolent civil disobedience?” Cathy
Strickler, who founded the local group, asked.
The answer was a resounding “no,” but alliance members said they had begun to speak
their voice in a public way.
Many had just returned from Washington, D.C., where they attended a climate rally
advocating against the Keystone XL pipeline that would connect oil fields in Canada with
refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Behavior has to change. People have to change,” Piper said. “People have to act
differently.”
Contact Alex Rohr at 574-6293 or arohr@dnronline.com