{"id":5432,"date":"2015-03-20T13:21:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T12:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432"},"modified":"2015-03-20T13:21:35","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T12:21:35","slug":"one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week-divestment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week- divestment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"divestment\"<\/a>The big story of the week has to be divestment (more specifically fossil fuel divestment).\u00a0\u00a0 Increasingly individuals, philanthropic investment\u00a0 funds, educational institutions and (I’m glad to say) churches are selling their shares in fossil fuel companies.\u00a0 The divestment\u00a0 movement which has been likened to that over slavery started in the US but is now spreading worldwide and judging by the numbers last autumn was in the early stages of exponential growth.\u00a0 Its actually very hard to keep pace, since every few days a new victory is announced.\u00a0 Last week on the plus side the London assembly voted to pull its pension funds out of fossil fuels (although its ultimately up to the mayor), Oxford University put a decision off.\u00a0 Last Autumn Glasgow University was the first University in Europe to divest.\u00a0 The Guardian<\/a> also joined the fray last week asking the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome trust to divest as well as thinking about the Guardians own divestment plans.\u00a0 The moral logic over this push is obvious both these philanthropic organisations work to improve human health, something climate change is working against.<\/p>\n

There are also good financial reasons to do so.\u00a0 The first is the idea of a carbon bubble.\u00a0 We cannot afford to burn all the fossil fuels left in the ground and expect to meet a 2 degree target.\u00a0 If there is a strong agreement in Paris, these reserves maybe become stranded assets.\u00a0 An increasing number of politicians are warning about this and also the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.\u00a0 Some people reckon this could even cause another global crash since so much of the assets of pension funds is tied up in fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

The second reason for divestment is the expansion of renewable energy technologies (and I would add efficiency technologies such as LED’s).\u00a0 The expansion of solar power in particular is always underestimated by analysts.\u00a0 As the costs fall towards subsidy free economics then these technologies could take off explosively undercutting fossil fuel production. If there is a weak agreement in Paris then one outcome as a sop is governments pushing renewables harder.<\/p>\n

Divestment looks like being a huge story over the next year and shows early signs of being very successful, I’m proud to say many churches are leading the way on this although there is still a long way to go.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big story of the week has to be divestment (more specifically fossil fuel divestment).\u00a0\u00a0 Increasingly individuals, philanthropic investment\u00a0 funds, educational institutions and (I’m glad to say) churches are selling their shares in fossil fuel companies.\u00a0 The divestment\u00a0 movement which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,37,17,4],"tags":[269,103],"class_list":["post-5432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-energy-conservation","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-renewables","tag-climate-change","tag-divestment"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week- divestment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The big story of the week has to be divestment (more specifically fossil fuel divestment).\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week- divestment\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/divestment-300x192.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-20T12:21:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/b6f2831189b0d01294e9672bb540ba6f\"},\"description\":\"The big story of the week has to be divestment (more specifically fossil fuel divestment).\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/divestment-300x192.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/divestment-300x192.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5432#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week- divestment\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The oil lamp - 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