Vector Volume 11 Issue 2 - 2017

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turning up the heat [Feature Article] Tara Kannan Tara Kannan is a first-year MD student at the University of Newcastle. Passionate about global health, she represents AMSA’s <strong>2017</strong> Code Green portfolio within her university’s global heath group. She believes that a major way forward in advancing medicine on the world stage is through nursing our environment back to good health. Aside from that, when she’s not busy dissecting Guyton’s diagrams, she enjoys perusing news articles online and loves her Cadbury. American environmentalist and journalist, Bill McKibben, offers a simple yet revolutionary proposition in the climate debate: “Leave oil in the soil, coal in the hole and gas under the grass”. The birth of an idea Divestment is a very simple idea. You just remove your money from companies that are involved in extracting fossil fuels. It’s a novel movement in the climate debate that is different from your traditional change-yourlightbulb kind of ideas. Its underlying basis is that to avoid catastrophic global warming, we will need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. There are three key numbers that explain this. First, 2˚C is the maximum global temperature rise this century that is aspired to in the Paris Agreement.[1] Secondly, we have a ‘carbon budget’ of 565 gigatons which is essentially the amount of carbon dioxide that can safely be released into the atmosphere while still complying to our 2˚C rule.[2] Most importantly, the third number to know is 2795 gigatons. This is the amount of carbon dioxide that will be released if all of the documented fossil fuel reserves were burned.[2] Addressing a sixfold rise in energy demand in the last 50 years, fossil fuels provide roughly 80% of the energy we need through coal, gas and oil.[3] Yet, the money-making industry releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and thickens Earth’s blanket of air pollution which led to 3.7 million deaths in 2012 due to pneumonia, asthma, heart disease, stroke and cancer. [3] Needless to say, carbon dioxide is a tiny molecule with a big bite. So, while as individuals we could make some adjustments such as changing our lightbulbs and switching from car use to public transport, if companies continue to dig up and burn their reserves, these measures will prove rather insignificant. This is where divestment comes in - a movement about shifting your money away from the problem and towards the solution. Turning back time So, while as individuals we could make some adjustments such as changing our lightbulbs and switching from car use to public transport, if companies continue to dig up and burn their reserves, these measures will prove rather insignificant. In history, divestment has been shown to be a powerful political tool in several major movements. In the latter half of the 20th century, a time when South Africa’s Apartheid was our world’s largest moral issue, two prominent figures created massive change. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu suggested a revolutionary tactic to help counter institutionalised racial segregation and white supremacy, imploring Western institutions to cut their economic ties with companies backing the Apartheid regime. Experts often deem this as the model of symbolic pressure as it raised awareness and embarrassed many American businesses.[4] Then, through the 1990s, a movement against the tobacco industry took place to shun the industry’s negative impacts on health. Along with regulation and taxation, tobacco divestment had a sizeable impact on society, shrinking the industry and smoking rates.[4] Most recently, divestment has had a role in the Darfur genocide - the first genocide of the 21st century. Darfur divestment involves removing money away from companies with ties to the Sudanese government. Some 17
Western institutions including Brown University divested; however, other investors interested in the nation’s valuable resources simply filled their place. Drawing from this rather unsuccessful campaign, fossil free activists are encouraged to consider how their actions could lead to the success or failure of the divestment movement. More specifically, it is important to weigh the impact of divesting from a company relative to giving up your voice as a shareholder. Fuelling a movement Nevertheless, the balance scales show that divestment is well worth the bet. Major goals of the fossil fuel divestment campaign can be captured in the following:[4] a) leverage the power of investors and institutions to make strong political statements and influence policy change b) raise awareness of the impact of the fossil fuel industry in our society c) lead the market to consider the effects of climate change when evaluating any investments d) drive capital investment into clean energy and other climate mitigation strategies Above all else, divestment stigmatises the fossil fuel industry, eroding its social license to operate and posing the largest threat to these companies. Back home, Australian universities are making bold statements with the help of several fossil free organisations on campus. La Trobe University, Swinburne University and the Queensland University of Technology pledged to divest their A$40 million, A$150 million and A$300 million portfolios from fossil fuels respectively. [7] Recently, both Monash University and the Australian National University have partially divested.[8] But sadly, Westpac, ANZ, NAB and the Commonwealth Bank – which make up the ‘big four’ banks of Australia — have failed to divest, instead funding the industry to the tune of A$5.5 billion in 2015.[7] the ‘carbon bubble’ has its underlying roots in the fact that our financial markets maintain an extraordinary overvaluation of fossil fuel reserves that has the potential to burst. Pop goes the bubble From an economic point of view, fossil fuel divestment is falsely thought to come with financial uncertainty and major repercussions. Addressing this, a key argument in the fossil fuel divestment campaign is that returns will, in fact, improve once investors have divested – an And, if you have not figured it out yet, the fossil fuel divestment campaign is not a normal movement. There are no great leaders. There is no Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. of the climate movement. But, establishing firm roots in society, the fossil fuel movement is set to be colossal with or without a figurehead. ...divestment stigmatises the fossil fuel industry, eroding its social license to operate and posing the largest threat to these companies. Blossoming ideas Since its initial conception in 2010, the idea of fossil fuel divestment has been spreading like wildfire. The campaign celebrated its first major victory in mid-2014 when Stanford University committed to divesting its US$18.7 billion endowment from the industry.[5] Later that year, the campaign inspired the People’s Climate March where a 400,000-strong crowd flooded Manhattan’s streets, demanding U.N. action on global warming.[4] By 2015, around 2500 investors representing US$2.6 trillion in assets had divested, including major organisations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Canadian Medical Association.[6] Figure 1: Global health groups are leading the fossil fuel divestment game with eight societies having divested; while, only three medical societies have divested so far. 18
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Vector Volume 11 Issue 2 - 2017

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