by Andrea Loken, science Teacher and ECA co-founder

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

Divestment is working – for what we want to achieve.

Divestment is not about hurting the fossil fuel companies in the short term. It may be true that within our current economic model, to sell off stocks in fossil fuel companies just means that someone else will buy them, causing no net harm and the industry will chug along.

Divestment is about exposing fossil fuel companies and the elites who run them as morally reprehensible; it is about choosing alternative, sustainable energy sources; and it is about creating a new model for our economic system that works for more than just the 1%.

On the first point: In one of the articles in the grounding breaking series about climate change published by the Guardian newspaper, an excellent analogy was made…

by Andrea Loken and Kevin Bowers – both teachers in Limestone OSSTF District 27 and ECA co-founders

This is the first in a series of posts that will answer several of the questions we are being asked regarding the divestment strategy.

Increasingly, the experts are saying that there is a great risk to keeping fossil fuels in investment portfolios, including pensions. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, along with the World Bank has stated this, admitting that the writing is on the wall for fossil fuel investments since 80% of known reserves are unburnable if humans are to deal with climate change.

The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports our immediate and grave concerns. The IPCC is not a bunch of radicals. The viewpoint the IPCC states is a conservative one as it represents the consensus of hundreds of scientists and politicians. The…