It has always been clear that fixing climate change would require a massive industrial and technological transformation, with widespread social and economic consequences. The recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 degrees, however, deeply challenges dominant assumptions about the speed and scale involved. This has profound implications for many industries and policy makers, but perhaps most dramatically for the future of the multi-trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry, particularly the oil and gas majors (the coal industry now being in terminal decline regardless).
Renew Economy 17th Dec 2018 read more »
Trillions of dollars of investments are being taken out of carbon-intensive companies. Governments must now take notice. The list of institutions that have cut their ties with this most destructive of industries encompasses religious institutions large and small (the World Council of Churches, the Unitarians, the Lutherans, the Islamic Society of North America, Japanese Buddhist temples, the diocese of Assisi); philanthropic foundations (even the Rockefeller family, heir to the first great oil fortune, divested its family charities); and colleges and universities from Edinburgh to Sydney to Honolulu are on board, with more joining each week. Forty big Catholic institutions have already divested; now a campaign is urging the Vatican bank itself to follow suit. Ditto with the Nobel Foundation, the world’s great art museums, and every other iconic institution that works for a better world. Thanks to the efforts of groups such as People & Planet (and to the Guardian, which ran an inspiring campaign), half the UK’s higher education institutions are on the list. And so are harder-nosed players, from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (at a trillion dollars, the largest pool of investment capital on Earth) to European insurance giants such as Axa and Allianz. It has been endorsed by everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Barack Obama to Ban Ki-moon (and, crucially, by Desmond Tutu, who helped run the first such campaign a generation ago, when the target was apartheid).
Guardian 16th Dec 2018 read more »
Ministers face a pair of legal challenges to their planning rules on fracking this week, from a national environmental group and the son of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. The government used its revamped planning rulebook to tell local authorities in July that they should recognise the benefits of shale gas and facilitate its extraction. Business secretary Greg Clark also proposed removing the need for exploratory wells to get planning permission, to speed shale projects through the planning system. The high court will first hear a challenge from Friends of the Earth, which has been granted a judicial review that the group hopes will force the government to change its planning policy. The case hinges on whether ministers and officials unlawfully failed to assess the change’s environmental impact.
Guardian 16th Dec 2018 read more »