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Fossil Fuels

When We Fight: Keystone XL And Delegitimizing Fossil Fuels

November 10, 2015 Scott Parkin, www.counterpunch.org ,
By Scott Parkin for Counter Punch - Near the sprawling Dallas suburb of Garland, TX where I grew up are the east Texas piney woods that are now home to the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. In the blistering summer heat of 2012, I traveled there in support of the coalition of local Texas and Oklahoma landowners and radical environmentalists known as the Tar Sands Blockade that fought to stop the southern leg of the pipeline. A year before, Keystone XL had become a household name when over 1200 people participated in two weeks of sit-ins at the White House demanding that Barack Obama reject the pipeline. A few months after the White House sit-ins, Obama fast-tracked the permit for the southern leg with the stroke of a pen.

November 14th We Will Say Loud And Clear: #StopFundingFossils

November 7, 2015 David Turnbull, www.priceofoil.org
By David Turnbull for Oil Change International - Every year, governments funnel billions of dollars in support to the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is using those public dollars to dig up fossil fuels that we must not burn if we want a safe-climate future. So, in 2009 when G20 countries committed to ending that support, we cheered. But the cheering has ended. Year after year we hear empty promises to move forward in implementing that commitment. And year after year reports come out showing governments are still funding fossil fuels at enormous rates. Six full years ago we celebrated as the 20 richest countries in the world committed to end fossil fuel subsidies in the “mid term”. That “mid term” is upon us and it’s time to act.

Kayaktivists Tell Gates Foundation ‘Divest’

October 25, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Staff of Popular Resistance with information from GatesDivest.org. Seattle, WA - Kayaktivists took to the waters of Lake Washington on Saturday, Oct. 24 to visit the mansion owned by Bill and Melinda Gates. They brought an empty kayak for Bill and Melinda in case they decided to join the action. The main focus of the action was to encourage the Gates Foundation to be a world leader by divesting from fossil fuels. It is part of a new campaign, #GatesDivest, that was started earlier this year by Seattle activist Alec Connon.

World Bank Fails To ‘Walk The Talk’

October 11, 2015 , , ,
By Janet Redman for the Institute for Policy Studies. Washington, DC - At least in rhetoric, World Bank leadership has acknowledged for a quarter century that “the possible risks [of global warming] are too high to justify complacency or evasion.” The Bank itself has cautioned that unabated climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains — and that the poorest countries and communities will suffer the consequences first and worst. The Bank has become increasingly visible at global climate summits and officials regularly comment on the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting the climate and making a transition to low-carbon development. However, a sober review of its lending practices reveals the Bank is undermining the cause it purports to champion.

Campaign To Demand Museums Divest From Fossil Fuels

August 24, 2015 Go Fossil Free, www.gofossilfree.org , , , ,
By Go Fossil Free - To the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, California Academy of Sciences, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, & the Natural History Museum of Utah: In the face of climate catastrophe, we urge you to take leadership by doing more than observing and documenting history — by standing up to help make it. Please divest your funds from the fossil fuel industry. This spring The Natural History Museum, a new mobile museum that champions climate action, released an unprecedented letter signed by dozens of the world’s top scientists calling on science and natural history museums to cut all ties to the fossil fuel industry. Now we’re joining our voices with theirs to call for divestment. This moment calls for leaders that are willing to do more than observe and curate history — it calls for leaders who are ready to help make it. We believe museums of science and natural history can be those leaders.

Picturing The End Of Fossil Fuels

August 22, 2015 Bill McKibben, www.commondreams.org , ,
By Bill McKibben in Common Dreams - When they say a picture is worth a thousand words, writers rebel (or they write 1,500 words). I mean, pictures are great, but they can’t get across complicated concepts. Except when they can. Which would be the summer of 2015, on two separate occasions. Early in the summer, on the West Coast of the United States, “kayaktivists” in Seattle Harbor surrounded Shell Oil’s giant Polar Pioneer drilling rig, trying to keep it from getting out of the harbor. They didn’t succeed in that, of course—the Coast Guard cleared them out of the way—but they did succeed in reminding everyone of the scale of the destruction Shell has planned. The sight of those small, many kayaks against that one brute drilling platform brought home the existential nature of the struggle: it’s all of us, the little guys, against the immense, concentrated wealth and power of the biggest companies on earth.

Why the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement May Ultimately Win

July 31, 2015 Marc Gunther, www.e360.yale.edu , ,
That’s because the goal of the divestment campaign is not, and has never been, to do financial harm to fossil fuel companies by causing investors to sell their shares. “Divestment isn’t primarily an economic strategy, but a moral and political one,” says 350.org on its Go Fossil Free website The divestment campaign aims, first, to build a bigger and stronger climate movement, and, second, to put the fossil fuel industry on the defensive by attacking its reputation and challenging the long-term viability of its business in a climate-constrained world. “Calling for divestment is about targeting the fossil fuel industry, taking away its social license to operate, like tobacco, like apartheid,” says Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund.

UK: 18 Actions Against Fossil Fuel Disrupt Business As Usual

June 2, 2015 No Dash For Gas, www.nodashforgas.org.uk , , ,
By No Dash For Gas - Blockades, shutdowns, lock-ons, love-ins, tripods and nanas…..Reclaim the Power’s day of action against the fossil fuel industry today (1 June 2015) saw 18 different actions drawing the dots between big energy firms, government ministers, public relations companies, oil arts sponsorship and the fracking industry. We’ve all had the threatening letters from energy companies demanding payment for bills we can’t afford – and today we hit back. Reclaim the Power groups visited RWE Npower’s offices in Leeds and blockaded the front doors. Many households are forced onto pre-payment meters which are more expensive than direct debit accounts.

Harvard Heat Week Kicks Off Week Long Sit-In For Divestment

April 14, 2015 Jamie Henn, www.huffingtonpost.com , , ,
Hundreds of students, alumni, faculty and community members joined forces in Harvard Yard on Sunday night to launch "Harvard Heat Week," a weeklong sit-in for fossil fuel divestment. As of 11:00 p.m., dozens of students and supporters were still blockading the doors of Massachusetts Hall, where Harvard President Drew Faust will show up for work on Monday. The action began earlier in the evening at the First Parish Church of Cambridge, across the street from the university. Hundreds of people filed into the historic building, under a banner hung on the steeple that read, "We divested from fossil fuels! Your turn, Harvard." "We're on a roll," said 350.org founder Bill McKibben, who took the stage to thunderous applause after an opening song from Reverend Fred Small, who'd opened his house of worship for the event.

Oxford Alumni Occupation For Carbon Divestment

March 18, 2015 Oxford University Fossil Fuel Divestment, www.oxfordunifossilfree.wordpress.com , , , ,
Oxford alumni have occupied a university administration building to demonstrate their anger over today’s announcement that the university has deferred until May its decision on whether to divest from fossil fuels. The student campaign would like to issue a statement of solidarity with the alumni who have gone into occupation over the issue of fossil fuel divestment. We share their concern that the University is moving too slowly on this vitally important issue. Today’s events indicate the wide ranging support for divestment from University members past and present. We hope that today’s occupation will inspire others to express their support for meaningful climate action from Oxford University.

Out Of Public Glare Massive Pipeline Network Being Built

March 18, 2015 Fuel Fix, www.fuelfix.com , , ,
In a far corner of North Dakota, just a few hundred miles from the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline, 84,000 barrels of crude oil per day recently began flowing through a new line that connects the state’s sprawling oilfields to an oil hub in Wyoming. In West Texas, engineers activated a new pipeline that cuts diagonally across the state to deliver crude from the oil-rich Permian Basin to refineries near Houston. And in a string of towns in Kansas, Iowa and South Dakota, local government officials are scrutinizing the path of pipeline extensions that would pass nearby. While the Keystone project awaits a final decision, scenes like these are unfolding almost every week in lesser-known developments that have quietly added more than 11,600 miles of pipeline to the nation’s domestic oil network.

Climate Change: UN Backs Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign

March 17, 2015 Damian Carrington, www.theguardian.com , , ,
The UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations is backing the fast-growing campaign persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel assets. It said it was lending its “moral authority” to the divestment campaign because it shared the ambition to get a strong deal to tackle global warming at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December. “We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue,” said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC). The move is likely to be controversial as the economies of many nations at the negotiating table heavily rely on coal, oil and gas.

Next For Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign: Escalate

February 20, 2015 Divestment Student Network, www.commondreams.org , , ,
Whether they are trustees who ask Harvard students to "thank BP," or presidents who believe that turning off light bulbs can help solve climate change, administrators have revealed themselves to be out of touch with reality. Presumably in the fantasy world of college boardrooms, the fossil fuel industry neither poisons hometowns nor receives $88 billion in corporate welfare a year. Yet back on planet Earth, students know that university endowments gamble away our futures with investments that undermine everything higher education stands for. At this crucial juncture in history, to value critical thinking and academic credibility is to value climate justice. That is why this spring, we will ask our administrators, "Whose side are you on?"

Fossil Fuel Divestment Backlash Asks: Which Side Are You On?

February 18, 2015 Kate Aronoff, www.wagingnonviolence.org , , ,
Polarization is inherently risky. There’s no sure way of telling how the public will react. Rather than convincing administrators, or even the fossil fuel industry, of their wrongs, divestment campaigners should be convincing everyone that the movement is right. As one crucial part of a broader movement for climate justice, divestment is looking to affect nothing short of a fundamental shift in our society’s relationship to the planet and the economy: to bring about a new normal. Ironically, the industry and its supporters understand this more deeply than many of their opponents. Shifting paradigms and cultural landscapes means shifting popular consciousness, not that of the worst actors. In short, the opponent may be the fossil fuel industry, but the target is the public.

World Calls For Divestment From Fossil Fuels

February 14, 2015 350.org Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
Today, right now, the world is standing in a window of opportunity. Right now, the fossil fuel industry is on the defensive -- from fracking bans, to the President's renewed pledge to veto the Keystone XL bill, to a fossil fuel divestment movement that is truly hitting its stride. Today we're demonstrating that there are thousands of people around the world who know that fossil fuel divestment is both the smart thing to do and the right thing -- and those people are willing to take action in their own communities. We know that if it's wrong to wreck the climate, then it's wrong to profit from that wreckage. Earlier this week, the fossil fuel industry launched a concerted counter-attack on the divestment movement, only to have their efforts fall rather flat. This (perhaps apocryphal) Gandhi quote feels more apt than ever: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
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