Disruptions to the global climate threaten food systems. increase the threat of war and violence, and dramatically increase the number of displaced persons globally. Ironically and unjustly, the Global South and indigenous populations are the most susceptible to climatic chaos and the least responsible for causing it.
The United Church of Canada is complicit in global climate chaos through its investments in fossil fuel companies. This complicity is inconsistent with our call to live with respect in Creation, which means ensuring global ecological integrity, and with our call to follow Jesus, who advocated for marginalized, vulnerable populations. Our history as a church includes bold actions to divest from the tobacco industry and from apartheid South Africa. It is time to re-align our financial assets with our spiritual assets by living out our many policy statements since 1992, and by divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies (as identified by Carbon Tracker).
We should continue to engage companies through actions like shareholder resolutions and we should continue reducing our personal carbon emissions. Divestment represents another strategy that we undertake as a collective; it is our best hope for living into the just vision for which Jesus advocated throughout his life. Divesting from fossil fuels is our best hope for abundant life for all.
I am very concerned about the changes to our climate that are already underway and for the catastrophe that may ensue. We must reduce carbon pollution significantly and immediately. I echo the hope that there is still time to limit warming, sea level rise, and ocean acidification to a manageable level.
The United Church of Canada’s selling its holdings of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies would significantly boost the present divestment movement. It would send a clear signal to governments and industries that we are not satisfied with the status quo and that we must shift toward an economy based on a brighter future that leads to abundant life for all. We cannot ask our siblings in the Global South to bear the burden of the Global North’s fossil-intensive economies and public policies.
I support the motions that Trinity-St Paul's United Church intends to bring to General Council in 2015. The United Church of Canada Treasury and the Foundation should take active steps toward selling their shares in fossil fuel companies. I also agree that the United Church of Canada Pension Board should report on its Carbon Tracker analysis, discern whether its investments are consistent with Christian imperatives for justice, and evaluate and disclose the risks of holding carbon assets that may become stranded and lose their value.
We must unite in affirming the possibility of peace, justice, and abundant life for all.
