Upcoming video shoot, Glasgow divests(!), and other news
Super important points
We are shooting a video to support fundraising to expand this campaign. If you can spare us a couple of hours of your time on Saturday 25 October, please let us know. Email david.lepage@gmail.com for details. The video will also serve as a promo for the campaign, especially at UCT.
Our next working group meeting will be in Centlivres 3.29 at 5pm on Tuesday 21 October. It will be preceded by a 4pm mini-training session – a chance to talk through and learn more about the campaign issues.
Don't forget to sign our UCT petition, if you've not done so already. And please register your support.
Other news
On November 25 at lunchtime, there will be a screening of Do the Math in the Health Sciences Faculty, Medical Campus.
Fantastic news – as you may already have picked up, Glasgow University has divested, the first university in the UK to do so.
'Be afraid. Be very afraid.' That's how Business Spectator Australia summarises the message to fossil fuel interests from a new report by international investment bank UBS.
Investment bank UBS says in a new report that, following a series of meetings with clients, it sees the fossil fuel divestment campaign as significant and potentially effective. “Many of those engaged in the debate are the consumers, voters and leaders of the next several decades. In our view, this single fact carries more weight than any other data point on the planet for this issue,” UBS said in the report out of London.
The Australian National University has dropped some of its dirtiest fossil fuel investments: 'The Council of the Australian National University has agreed to the proposal by vice-chancellor professor Ian Young to drop the multi-million dollar investments following an investigation by independent research organisation CAER. The university will divest its holdings in Iluka Resources, Independence Group, Newcrest Mining, Sandfire Resources, Oil Search, Santos and Sirius Resources. The $16 million divested stocks represent about 5.5 per cent of the university's Australian equity holdings and about 1 per cent of its total investment holdings.'
Speaking of Australia, here's some Aussie black humour on the subject of the coal industry.
Writing in the Guardian just before the UN Climate Summit, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has reiterated his divestment call: 'Reducing our carbon footprint is not just a technical scientific necessity; it has also emerged as the human rights challenge of our time... The most devastating effects of climate change – deadly storms, heat waves, droughts, rising food prices and the advent of climate refugees – are being visited on the world's poor. Those who have no involvement in creating the problem are the most affected, while those with the capacity to arrest the slide dither.'
Demonstrating the instability of economies based on fossil fuels, falling oil prices are "sending economic and political shockwaves around the world".
