March 23, 2015

Keep it in the Ground: Sign the Petition!

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

People don't want to talk about climate change. It's dull - it's a minor issue - there's nothing sexy about it - after all, it's not a topic like Israel or Putin – it is not a topic that generates astonishingly emotional responses as soon as it is broached. What's more, there are no central protagonists; there is no one to point to a blame should we face climate disaster. Indeed, we are the very protagonists we seek to influence.

This lack of a traditional narrative is compounded by the sheer amount of claims and counter claims about the validity of human-accelerated climate change; we seem to be caught in the debate about whether climate change is a “real” phenomenon, or “just” a normal Earth process. These claims and counter claims are put forward by earnest scientists, refuted by dubious scientists and the public struggles with the facts, the figures, the overwhelming complexity of the whole deal. After all- we can't see the change, day to day, and therefore, fail to make sense of the numerous facts and figures which tell us that on our present trajectory, doom is not only inevitable, but it's imminent.

Enter The Guardian. The paper has set up a divestment campaign which has already attracted over 100,000 signatures after only a few days. The campaign isn't designed to target governments or businesses, and it's not an aimless petition to “put climate change on the agenda”, as it were. Instead, it targets two charities: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. These are two immensely different charities; the Gates Foundation is a philanthropic charity that pumps money into socially-beneficial programmes around the world, and the Wellcome Trust is the charitable arm of the Wellcome Foundation – an organisation that seeks to promote medical research, with its own (fantastic) museum, gallery and exhibition centre in London. Targeting these two charities might seem like an odd move, but The Guardian is asking these two well-respected organisations to remove their investments in fossil fuel companies. After all, they are publicly-minded institutions who fund the activities of organisations that are damaging the planet and extracting fossil-fuels; indeed, they're funding organisations that extract fossil fuels as a business.

Now, there's no reason to get on one's high-horse about this. As I said, we are the protagonists we seek to influence; our behaviours of reliance on fossil fuels make us culpable for climate change - it's not simply the fault of large corporations, of evil oil tycoons, of cartoonish, demented governments. But what The Guardian's petition seeks to do is embarrass those which are in a position of moral authority and claim that climate change is a threat, while investing in its very source. By asking these organisations to divest its assets in fossil fuels, the paper is showing how the rug can be pulled from beneath the feet of fossil-fuel companies: pull out the money, and eventually, fossil fuels will have to stop.

You can read more about the petition here, and also more about divestment and its aims either on The Guardian or from 350.org.