The Anglican Diocese of Montreal Votes to Divest from Fossil Fuels

The Anglican Diocese of Montreal Votes to Divest from Fossil Fuels On Friday October 16, 2015, the Diocese of Montreal voted by an overwhelming margin to divest from fossil fuels at their annual synod. The motion was advanced by the Stewardship of the Environment Committee. The motion specifically called for divestment from the Carbon Underground 200, a list of the dirtiest coal and oil companies in the world.

Montreal is the first Anglican diocese in Canada to pass such a divestment motion. Although others have voted to study divestment, Montreal is the first diocese to pass a motion with specific actionable plans that must be executed in a "timely" fashion.

Faith Communities and Divestment and the Canadian National Election in 2015

The movement to divest from fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy and climate solutions has exploded, growing fifty-fold in the past year. To date, 430 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Faith communities cannot, in good conscience, be strong advocates for addressing climate change while continuing to profit from fossil fuel companies. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “[p]eople of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.”

Facts Sheet: Five FAQ about the Motion to Divest from Fossil Fuels in the Anglican Diocese of Montreal

The Divestment Motion for the Anglican Diocese of Montreal reads as follows:

"Be it resolved that synod direct the Finance Standing Committee and its advisers to explicitly examine Diocesan investment and its implications on climate change, and to divest from those companies known to be the worst polluters as published in the "Carbon Underground 200," an annually updated list of the top 100 public coal companies globally and the top 100 public oil and gas companies globally, as ranked by the potential carbon emissions content of their reported reserves. The list is produced and maintained by Fossil Free Index."

In Addition to Faith Communities Fossil Fuel Divestment is of Interest to Investors Businesses and Power Companies

Faith communities have been at the forefront of the fossil fuel divestment movement, but they are not alone. As reviewed in this article, investors, businesses and even power companies are acting in response to divestment.
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The fossil fuel divestment movement is gaining serious traction and resonating widely. Divestment is at the forefront of efforts to manage climate impacts, and due to concerns about growing financial and reputational risks, investors, businesses and power companies are being forced to take notice.

While many initially dismissed divestment from fossil fuels as purely symbolic there is growing reason to believe that it is powering meaningful change. To date we have seen a total of 2.6 trillion divested from fossil fuels and the movement continues to grow. In the last year alone there has been a 50 fold increase in divestment activity.

Report on Faith Based Divestment from Fossil Fuels

Here is an except focused on faith based divestment from fossil fuels. It is taken from a report called, "Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean Energy Investment Movement":

Faith communities worldwide continue to divest—and are helping shift the climate debate to one grounded in a moral responsibility, bolstering the divestment and investment movement.

Islamic Leaders Call for a Phaseout of Fossil Fuels and More Renewables

Islamic leaders from 20 nations called for the phaseout of greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and for 100 percent of energy to come from renewables in an effort to rein in more dangerous levels of global warming. The clerics and scholars appealed to “well-off nations and oil-producing states” to recognize their “moral obligation to reduce consumption so that the poor may benefit from what is left of the Earth’s non-renewable resources,” according to the declaration e-mailed Tuesday from Istanbul.

Why I Support the Divestment from Fossil Fuels Motion in the Anglican Diocese of Montreal

This article was written by Stewardship of the Environment Committee member Brooke Struck,  in support of a motion to divest from fossil fuels. Delegates and clergy will vote on the motion at the Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal on October 16th 2015.
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The climate has always been changing, and life (including human life) has always had to adapt. Some organisms have succeeded, and have survived; others haven’t. But the present change in climate is much more rapid, exerting much stronger adaptive pressures on humanity and the rest of our living brethren on Earth. The main driver of climate change is carbon emissions from human sources, primarily since the Industrial Revolution. (For a very illustrative set of graphs about attributing climate change to various factors, recently assembled to include massive amounts of scientific data from wide-ranging sources click here).

Anglican Bishops Call for Urgent Action on Climate Justice

In March 2015, 17 Anglican bishops from six continents met at a summit in Cape Town, South Africa to discuss how Anglicans could respond to climate change. Their talks eventually led to a written declaration, The World is Our Host: A Call to Urgent Action for Climate Justice.

For the Rev. Canon Ken Gray—rector of the Church of the Advent in Colwood, B.C., co-chair of the Creation Matters Working Group for the Anglican Church of Canada, and secretary of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network—one word in the declaration seemed to strike a particular chord for readers: “urgent.”

“It is a theological and spiritual challenge for us now to face, immediately and urgently, concerning the way we have stewarded creation and the way we’re currently using it,” Gray said. “There, I think, is … growing distrust [in] neoliberal market economics as being able or willing to provide real solutions to real problems.”