Hey everyone Happy Divestment Day! I posted a few days ago about this. I spoke of my decision to divest my money from my bank if they continued to invest billions of dollars into the fossil fuel industry every year. Despite the fact that there was a surprisingly large number of negative reactions to me doing this (which I’ll touch on again in a sec), I think its great that this has got so many of you talking. I personally had no idea (perhaps naively) that the money I had in my bank was being directly invested in dirty fossil fuel projects. I wished someone had told me earlier, thus why I wanted to tell you about it, in case you didn’t know that’s where YOUR money was going too. There was quite a consistent argument in the comments about the apparent hypocrisy on my behalf. Comments like I hope she never drives a car or flies in a plane because that uses fossil fuels! Oh and credit cards are made out of oil too! but this in my opinion is an idiotic and simplistic argument that actually completely misses the point. At the moment we live in a world that is almost completely dependent on fossil fuels. Our entire society is structured like that, theres not much getting around it unless you want to quit your job and live like a hermit (which obviously isnt going to help anyone right now). What is going to help is if we invest in alternatives and put effort and resources into working towards a renewable-energy future. Because quite simply, if we do have a future as a planet, it has to be with renewable energy. Just ask every respected scientist in the world right now. There are endless potential jobs in the renewable sector, we just have to invest the money into creating them. But there are no jobs on a dead planet. To me, that’s almost as simple as the argument has become. So thats where I want my money to go. Towards the future of a healthy planet. Towards an actual future for our kids. I support the Divestment movement because the most powerful way I can see to make a difference is with my own dollar. Thats a choice no-one can take away from any of us: how we spend our own money. And in just in case you hadn’t noticed, this divestment movement is picking up pace FAST. All over the world. It’s exciting. Change is happening. Just last week the Australian National University publicly divested from the fossil fuel industry. Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young defended their position in an opinion piece for Fairfax Media, saying Far from destroying jobs, as our action has been described, I hope it goes some small way to do the opposite… The real debate in climate should be about producing cost-effective alternative energy. Sticking our collective heads in the sand and ignoring a changing world will ensure we do destroy jobs. And the Catholic Church is also publicly getting behind it, with their leading University in Ohio divesting $670 million dollars recently from fossil fuels. Before I go, I also want to add that I encourage EVERYONE to write back in the comments section, not just the angry men (yes, Ive noticed that the strong majority of negative comments are from men… curious.). In this new social media/ public opinion age I think its often the people who disagree, are angry and feel threatened that are the ones to leave comments, and the people that agree, tend to just click like or not write anything at all. I do the same. This is a shame, though. Because the argument gets skewed, and the general consensus appears to the outsider to be different from what it really is. So if you agree with a comment or if you read something that you know is ridiculous (ie. that icecaps are bigger than theyve ever been and that theres no such thing as Climate Change!!) then PLEASE respond. Dont be bullied into silence. There is too much denial and fear being bandied about for the good people to be quiet. These industries (ie. the banks and the fossil fuel industry) have massively powerful lobby groups too, who are not above getting everybody on their team to comment on Facebook or Twitter in a dismissive and bullying manner to try to quiet the issue.) An open discussion on this kind of thing is totally terrific and what we need, but it only works if everybody has his or her say. And I’ve just had mine. Thanks for listening! Missy xx
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 04:58:05 +0000
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