Divesting from the knuckle-draggers

The small spotlight that shone on fossil fuel investment by the four big Australian banks last week was a reminder that catastrophic environmental destruction is a cornerstone of western economic success. 

Although from a public relations point of view, divestment campaigns make great copy. 

And maybe that’s all that’s needed to get a wider movement started towards realistic renewable targets. 

The latest push to divest from companies that are heavily involved with fossil fuels comes from Bill McKibben, who is the founder of grassroots climate campaigning organisation 350.org. 

He told The Guardian that a recent Oxford University study claims it’s the fastest growing divestment movement in history. 

The most important thing, he says, is getting the analysis out into the ‘information bloodstream’. 

‘Most of the carbon in the world has to stay underground,’ he says.  ‘The analysis has now spread to the point where the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and just about everybody else has said that we have to leave at least two-thirds of the carbon we know about underground.’ 

And while the current knuckle-dragging Liberal/National  government wants big polluters to help themselves to public funds for vague climate change solutions, economists think otherwise. Fairfax Media reported last week that after a poll of 35 prominent Australian economists that they almost universally back an emissions trading scheme (ETS) over Toned Abb’s ‘direct action policy’ on climate change.