Alan Rusbridger is another who will go down in history. I think his actions are pretty amazing. Test your conclusions against mine:
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Interview with Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian newspaper, CBC Radio. (re “Keep It in the Ground”, )
Share the link. I am sending it to you, and to people who have, or who manage investment portfolios. Rusbridger is doing powerful work on climate change alongside Bill McGibben (350.org) and millions of others around the Planet. Powerful (in the best sense of the word) people are coming to the aid of the grassroots movement to get going on climate change. You and I can add to the power simply by ensuring that everyone knows what’s going on.
The “divest/invest” movement has come a long way in the short time since I posted
- (2014-09-22) Heirs of Billionaire Oil Tycoon John D Rockefeller Join Growing Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now and
- Letter to University re Investment in fossil fuels (protect endowment funds, you can predict that the value of fossil fuel stocks will go down; they will not recover).
Today, I picked off some URLs through google, in case you are interested in approximating the size of the effort to “Keep it in the ground”. See
See also (2015-04-02) This $1.2 billion news organization just pulled its money out of fossil fuels. The Guardian.
Alan Rusbridger, Editor, The Guardian Newspaper “gets it”:
For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the skeptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.
The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2 degrees C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet’s remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.
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AVAAZ (41 million members worldwide) is part of the action:
From: Nick Flynn – Avaaz Sent: May 9, 2015
Subject: Let’s wind down Chevron
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| SEND A MESSAGE |
Dear friends, Climate change threatens everything we hold dear and we all have a part to play in fighting it. If you have a pension fund, you have the power to demand a fossil-free future and fire this right into the heart of the board room. Even if you have no fund, your voice still counts. Pension funds use our hard-earned money to buy shares in the companies frying the planet. They own BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil on our behalf. and they could tell them to keep their fossil fuels in the ground, but they let them gamble with our climate and our savings instead. Why do they ignore the risks? Because they follow the Wall St herd and nobody calls them out on it. Now, a new on-line tool lets us challenge this lazy thinking. You can use it to tell your pension fund to order Chevron, the largest polluter in history, to give your money back rather than spend it on digging up fossil fuels. Just tick the ballot box and send your fund a powerful message about how to vote at oil and gas company shareholder meetings. Let’s create an unprecedented chorus they’ll find impossible to ignore. Even if you don’t have a pension, tick the ballot box to lobby the largest funds on earth: http://www.avaaz.org/wind_down_Chevron_5
Pension and other retirement funds have a tough but important job — helping people enjoy their later years in peace and security. They own the majority of shares in the world’s biggest companies and they have a say in key decisions. If we can force them to use their votes to demand that fossil fuels stay in the ground, it will be impossible for oil and gas companies to ignore. Pension funds have a legal duty to listen to the people whose money they spend but they never normally hear from them. VoteYourPension.org has created a revolutionary new tool that will deliver a deafening message – that we want funds to demand fossil fuels stay in the ground. Hearing from hundreds and thousands of us will cause panic in their board rooms. If they ignore us, they will need to explain why and they’ll find that hard to do given the financial risks and the climate science. Click to demand a change of course instead of a change of climate: http://www.avaaz.org/wind_down_Chevron_5
We keep hearing how corporate vested interests and Wall Street control our lives and subvert our democracy – now our time has come to use our biggest weapon, one that we didn’t even know we had. It is time to take back shareholder control, save our planet and save our savings. Our planet’s climate is hanging by a thread, warming as fast as the worst case predictions scientists were making just a decade ago.
There’s no time to lose. That’s why Avaaz is partnering with the VoteYourPension.org to take on this massive piece of the climate solutions puzzle.
With hope, Nick, Emma, Bert, Iain, Fatima, Spyro and the whole Avaaz team
More Information
Most fossil fuels ‘unburnable’ (BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30709211
Just 90 companies caused two thirds of man-made carbon emissions (Guardian) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change
Chevron and others’ carbon footprints http://carbonmajors.org/downloadable-graphics/
Stranded assets – how your pension is being used in a $6 trillion climate gamble (Guardian) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/apr/19/pension-6-trillion-climate-gamble
Asset Owners Disclosure Project – Vote Your Pension The Asset Owners Disclosure Project is an independent not-for-profit global organisation whose objective is to protect retirement savings and other long term investments from the risks posed by climate change by improving the level of disclosure and industry best practice http://aodproject.net/
Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears – NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?pagewanted=all
Avaaz.org is a 41-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (“Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18 countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz’s biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.