"The World Council of Churches, representing more than half a billion Christians worldwide, announced Thursday that it would pull all of its investments in fossil fuels, saying it had determined the investments were no longer ethical.
The World Council of Churches, a global coalition of 345 churches, made the decision to no longer fund oil, gas, or coal at its central committee meeting in Geneva, and recommended that its members do the same. 'The committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include fossil fuels,' read the finance policy committee report." (July 11, 2014) (Read the full story here.)
This is very big news. It is time we urge the big oil, gas and coal companies to invest in renewable energy, to build that energy bridge to the future for the sake of both their financial health and the welfare of the planet. (And though oil company executives often seem to forget this, the former is intimately tied to the latter.)
Major financial exchanges like FTSE have developed fossil-fuel-free indices, arguing that "stranded assets" ("fossil fuels deposits, including oil, gas and coal, that must remain unburned or in the ground in order for the world to avoid the worst impacts of climate change") will sooner or later negatively affect fossil fuel investments. Divestment is therefore both a sound financial as well as ecological strategy.
The very name "fossil fuel," though, prejudges the argument and makes it harder to speak up for letting those energy resources stay in the ground. It is as if we called trees: "woody fuel," or children "nascent labor"; as if their very purpose was to serve us. In which case foregoing their contributions to our purposes is seen as wasteful, and their essential character is masked or erased.
But of course, neither fossil fuels nor our children were created for our exploitation.
Fossil fuels are buried sunlight; millions of days of budding, growth and decay in the life of our planet, captured in a carbon museum. We can no more safely release all the stored carbon of these past days into today than we can safely cluster all past accumulated rainfall in one storm today. The world simply cannot bear it.
It is time we took action like the World Council of Churches and had our synagogues, Jewish foundations and the Associated (and entire Federation system) divest from fossil fuel companies until such time as they become pioneering renewable energy companies.
This coming shemittah year (5775 which starts Rosh Hashanah 2014) is a perfect time to press this issue. Read more about the financial and ecological wisdom - indeed imperative - of fossil fuel free investments. Adjust your own portfolio. Then talk with your synagogue, the Associated and anyone else who has investments. It is for their own financial good, and the good of the world.
