Katie McChesney / 350.org & The London Guardian – 2015-04-11 00:50:38
http://gofossilfree.org/
19 Yale Students Arrested as Fossil-Free
Activists Mount Divestment Actions Nationwide
Katie McChesney / 350.org
(Apr 10, 2015) — Something amazing is unfolding on campuses across the country. Yesterday morning, 48 students launched a sit-in at Yale University to demand their administration divest from fossil fuels, and yesterday evening 19 were arrested for refusing to leave the building.
Students asked their administration to pick a side: the people or the polluters. The fossil fuel industry that’s wrecking our climate — or the students, alumni, faith leaders, Nobel Prize laureates, and communities demanding that they get serious about this planetary emergency.
These brave students at Yale are not acting alone — as spring warms up, young people at schools across the US are turning up the heat. At Swarthmore and the University of Mary Washington to the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, activists have been blocking administration buildings and demanding that their schools stand on the right side of history. Now they need your help.
For years now, students, faculty, and community members at hundreds of institutions have engaged in dialogue with administrators and trustees. Their message has been simple: If it’s wrong for fossil fuel companies to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong for universities to profit from that wreckage.
To date, over 205 institutions have committed to some form of divestment, including Stanford University, the New School, cities like Seattle and San Francisco, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, and the Guardian Media Group. So why are universities like Yale digging in their heels?
Students aren’t taking no for an answer. They’re not backing down or going home. But their stand will be more powerful if they’ve got you behind them:
Add your voice to the groundswell of bold action for divestment.
From Yale to UC Berkeley, from Harvard to Bowdoin, students, alumni, faculty, and community members are bringing the heat. Wherever you are in the country, you can stand with them.
Thank you for being part of this moment,
Katie for the Fossil Free team
Fossil Free is an international network of campuses and communities that are divesting from the fossil fuel companies that are causing the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for email updates on our homepage.
ACTION ALERT: “Keep It in the Ground!”
The London Guardian
Join us and more than 180,000 in urging the world’s two biggest charitable funds to move their money out of fossil fuels
“Since we launched “Keep it in the Ground,” more than 180,000 Guardian readers have signed our petition calling on the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels. Below you’ll find some of the essential campaign reads from the last week.” ~ James Randerson, assistant national editor
How much fossil fuel has been used in your lifetime?
How much fossil fuel has been extracted since you arrived at this page? Or since you were born? The numbers below highlight the staggering amount of oil, coal and gas we take out of the ground — and how quickly change is needed
Nobel prize winners join call for charities to divest from fossil fuels
Laureates, including former Wellcome Trust employee Sir John Sulston, argue that investments by charities conflict with their aims of improving public health.
Podcast episode #4: Risks
The Guardian is a newspaper rather than a professional campaigning organisation, so does it know what it’s doing? The team gather to assess the risks and brainstorm possible mitigation. One possible risk is ticked off the list: Neil Berkett, Guardian Media Group’s chairman, announces that the company that owns the Guardian will divest from fossil fuels,
John Sulston: The Wellcome Trust’s polite business chats won’t save the Earth
Fossil-fuel divestment isn’t just a grand gesture — with an £18bn portfolio the trust could help switch us on to a high-speed track towards cutting emissions
The new face of the climate change movement – May Boeve
One of the few female figureheads in the US green movement, 350.org’s executive director has risen with the organisation to become a leading voice for the global divestment movement. She looks back to the early campaigns and reveals what winning would look like
ACTION: Sign the petition
To Bill and Melinda Gates, founders of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Jeremy Farrar and Sir William Castell, director and chair of the Wellcome Trust:
Your organisations have made a huge contribution to human progress and equality by supporting scientific research and development projects. Yet your investments in fossil fuels are putting this progress at great risk, by undermining your long-term ambitions.
Climate change poses a real threat to all of us, and it is morally and financially misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding and burning more oil, gas and coal.
Many philanthropic organisations are divesting their endowments from fossil fuels. We ask you to do the same: to commit now to divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years and to immediately freeze any new investments in those companies.
