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| La Trobe University will phase out its investments in listed companies with a strong involvement in fossil fuels. |
It looks as though 2016 will go down as the year that Western democracies
were torn open to reveal the growing disconnect between citizens and
governments. A year when many felt trust in government had fallen so low
that it was better to try to burn it all down than continue on our
current course.
Next month, Donald Trump will become the president of my country.
Britain is destined to leave the European Union. In Australia, the
political malaise is so strong that no prime minister has made it
through a full term in almost 10 years. But even as the major parties
scramble to find a popular face to put on their unpopular policies, many
voters are abandoning them for the empty promises and scapegoating of
far-right populism.
Take note Australian politicians: while you dither, the money is moving out of fossil fuels.
Riding that wave is Pauline Hanson, who
brought a swag of One Nation senators with her to the Australian
parliament – including a climate change denier and conspiracy theorist
of an ilk I thought only existed in fossil-fuel-loving America.
But there is a much greater disconnect that is plaguing global democracies, and nowhere more so than in Australia.
More than 75 per cent of Australians believe
the climate is changing and the vast majority agree that humans are
driving this change. Yet despite this overwhelming consensus, the
Australian government is currently the biggest pariah nation in the
world when it comes to action on climate change.
This was highlighted at the recent United
Nations climate meeting, where Australia faced more questions than any
other country on its lack of climate policy and action. Indeed, things
look pretty bleak down under: both your federal government and the
Queensland Labor government are pushing for Indian company Adani to open
the world’s largest coalmine in the Galilee Basin – against the wishes
of the land’s traditional owners, who are fighting back in the courts.
The federal government is bullying the states to drop renewable energy
targets and pressuring them to open up gas exploration on farmland; they
are scrapping funding to renewable energy bodies, while pouring money
into new fossil fuel ones. On the climate sanity front, it’s not a
pretty sight.
It is a sad indictment that your federal
government perceives climate change to be an effective wedge to score
cheap political points off its opposition. It is a dangerous game in
which no one wins.
Indeed, it’s becoming manifestly clear that
all of us around the world stand to lose from this retrovision,
including such short-sighted politicians as your environment and energy
minister, Josh Frydenberg, and former prime minister Tony Abbott, who
would seemingly see the world burn before they were willing to take
genuine climate change action.
Well, the world is burning. As 2016 grinds to
a close, we now know it has been the hottest year on record – meaning
16 out of the hottest 17 years on record have happened this century. The
Great Barrier Reef is still ghostly white, and a record drought grips
much of Australia. The Arctic is experiencing extraordinarily hot sea
surface and air temperatures, which are expected to see record lows of
sea ice at the North Pole next year.
But as your government sleepwalks,
Australians – like growing numbers of people everywhere – are taking
effective climate action on a scale not seen anywhere else on the
planet.
This week, a new report was released – by
global financial outfit Arabella – charting the global trajectory of the
fossil fuel divestment movement. Divestment, quite simply, is the
opposite of an investment – it means getting rid of stocks, bonds or
investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous. And the
numbers are astonishing: more than 690 institutions representing almost
$A7 trillion and countless individuals worldwide now make up the
fossil-free movement.
This is all from a small movement that
started on United States college campuses barely four years ago. The
divestment campaign was initially based on the apartheid divestment
campaign, grounded in the moral case. But what we’ve found in four years
is that it is now about real money. Take note Australian politicians:
while you dither, the money is moving out of fossil fuels.
Indeed, removed from the highly charged and
partisan federal space, your local institutions are actively working
behind the scenes to strip the fossil fuel industry of its funding and
the social licence it needs to operate.
Australia has more divested institutions per
capita than any other developed country, and is second only in number of
divestments to the US. Of this, 30 local councils have divested from
fossil fuels and one in 10 Australians now live in a fossil-free
council. These councils range from progressive, inner-city councils such
as Moreland and Leichhardt, to former coal towns such as Newcastle, and
rural councils such as Mount Alexander and Ballina.
In the mining state of Western Australia,
about one-quarter of all residents now live in councils that have
divested – that is 2.5 times the national average.
But the fossil-free movement goes beyond
councils. Superannuation funds, universities, churches and health
institutions have also pledged to shift their investments away from
coal, oil and gas.
The campaign for universities to divest is
rapidly picking up speed. Already six Australian public universities
have divested, with the University of Technology Sydney recently
announcing its intention to divest in the new year.
As the intellectual compass of our society,
universities are a particularly strong plank of the divestment movement.
The ideas and debates that happen within university walls often seep
into society and shape the issues of the day. So it makes sense that
students and staff are calling on the world’s universities to put their
money where their morals are and stop funding an industry that is
destroying the climate.
The question they raise is a good one, and
one all world governments would do well to consider: How can you purport
to care about our future when our own actions and investments are
driving the biggest threat to that future? At a time when the Australian
government is refusing to take serious climate action, divestment
signals a very real way forward.
Take your Big Four banks, for example, who
have lent $70 billion to new fossil fuel projects since 2008. They and
other global lenders can help decide the future of such projects as the
Adani coalmine – a climate time bomb. To go ahead, that mine will almost
certainly need funding, and lenders have a choice as to whether to be
part of a project that threatens a safe climate future.
This is where the power of divestment is
manifest: as more and more institutions move away from banks such as
Commonwealth, which has handed $2.2 billion to the fossil fuel industry
since publicly committing to align its lending with a 2ºC world, the
pressure it places on these institutions will, I believe, make fossil
fuels as toxic to investors as tobacco. Add to this the ever-increasing
risk of fossil fuels becoming stranded assets.
If your government won’t be accountable on
climate, we can force financial institutions to take note. And some
already have. The NAB has ruled out funding Adani’s mega coalmine;
Australia’s biggest super fund has felt the wind of change and is now
offering a “fossil-free option”; La Trobe University and Queensland
University of Technology have dumped their investments in the worst
coal, oil and gas companies; dozens of local governments have favoured
banks that don’t lend to fossil fuels over those that do.
While it’s disheartening to see climate
change deniers taking centre stage in the political arena, it’s
inspiring to see what people, communities, universities, churches can do
on their own. Every day the momentum is growing – politicians must
either heed the call or risk becoming irrelevant as the world moves from
polluting fossil fuels to the clean energy future.
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