Keep it in the ground climate campaign: the week in brief
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Version 0 of 1. On Wednesday a key parliamentary committee in Norway passed a motion that calls on the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund to dump its coal interests. The resulting move by the $900bn ($589bn) Norwegian sovereign wealth fund “will certainly create a wave” of divestments by other funds, says Mark Campanale, founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative. The shares divested could be worth as much as $5.5bn, says Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace in Norway. 350.org founder Bill McKibben seems pretty happy: Norway's $900bn fund, that just divested from coal, is in fact the world's largest fund. Like, in the world. The whole planet. Earth. Following a 10-day occupation protest, students at Edinburgh university are celebrating a fresh commitment by the university to divest from three of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers within six months. Meanwhile in Canada, a minister has been exposed for delivering a rallying speech to industry oil specialists encouraging tar sands oil extraction. The meeting at the Banff Springs hotel was the annual strategy session of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the main lobby group in Alberta’s tar sands. This week for the second in our series on ‘carbon bombs’, we visited Fort McKay, a town that sits above the Alberta tar sands in Canada, one of the most polluting carbon source sites on the planet. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does ground-breaking sanitation work in Durban, South Africa, tackling the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and polio. Yet we revealed this week that the same residents live near a petroleum power plant which they believe is causing huge respiratory problems in the area – and is run by companies funded by Gates. In the US, it’s graduation time and students across the country are receiving their first request to donate to their university. But a growing number are taking a stand and instead donating to a new fund – which the institution will only receive if it divests from fossil fuels. More than 200 alumni, parents and supporters have now donated to the Multi-School Fossil Free Divestment Fund at 21 institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Stanford and Syracuse universities, which have already made divestment commitments. They will receive the money upon completion of the divestment process. Meanwhile, the UK’s poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has curated a series of 20 poems on climate change for Keep it in the Ground. This week saw us publish five more including Last Snowman by Simon Armitage – it satirises our modern day culture as the last snowman drifts away from his Arctic home. What’s the story the top editor at one of the world’s largest newspapers says is most hidden from you? That’s the question Upworthy asked this week in their feature on Keep it in the Ground. Related: The biggest story in the world podcast: Episode 10, Shell Another podcast, another grilling. But this week it’s the turn of Shell chief executive Ban van Beurden. Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger takes him to task on what may be the biggest question of all: why do they still insist on taking vast quantities of fossil fuels out of the ground, even when they accept climate change? Download episode 10 of the biggest story in the world here. Get involved Has your job been affected by climate change? Whether you’re a health or humanitarian worker, city planner or teacher, we want you to tell us how, by submitting your stories or pictures here. It was great to meet some of you at the Guardian Sustainable Business debate on Tuesday. Economist Nick Stern attacked the mentality of chief executives in oil companies like Shell. “They do not believe the world will be wise enough to follow policies that can hold the world to 2C and are asking us to bet against the world,” he said. Is it possible to get a fossil-fuel-free bank account? What about pensions and building societies? And what happens if the stock market crashes? These were just some of the questions you sent in for our Q&A on personal divestment on Wednesday. Many of you have told us you want to divest your own money from fossil fuel companies and we hope the Q&A will help you do that – along with the new tool we’ve launched with responsible investment charity ShareAction. Just pop in the name of your pension provider to send them an email requesting a fossil-fuel-free fund. When you receive a response, send it our way and we can help you to decipher it. From a Brazilian climate scientist to a dentist in the Congo, the Keep it in the Ground supporters are a diverse bunch. You can now meet them in this week’s interactive. More than 212,000 of you have joined Keep it in the Ground so far – and we want to hear from you all. Provide a photo and answer a few questions and we’ll add you to our interactive. It’s never too late to join the Keep it in the Ground campaign so sign up below and remember to tick the box for regular updates. We’ve also been inspired by your messages and ideas so please keep sending them to the campaign team at keep.it@theguardian.com |