Students at the University of Edinburgh, involved in the worldwide ‘Go Fossil Free’ divestment campaign, staged a demo on the university’s campus earlier today.
The students have been calling on the University to follow Glasgow University’s example and shed its stake in companies involved in extracting oil, coal and gas, whose products are directly causing climate change.
The protest was intended to highlight that the University continues to invest about £30 million of its endowment fund in those companies. The protest was held outside a staff committee meeting which was being held to discuss the university’s response to the students’ demands.
The ‘Go Fossil Free’ campaign is a global movement urging institutions to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. Assets worth $50 billion have already been removed by Churches, Universities and philanthropic funds from all over the world.
Just this week announcements have been made by the Church of Sweden as well as the Rockefeller foundation. The campaign is endorsed by the Executive Secretary of the UNFCC Christiana Figueres, the U.N. Special envoy for climate change Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both Robinson and Tutu are honorary graduates of The University of Edinburgh.
The students say that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report makes clear that burning fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm dramatically. They believe that we are already witnessing the impacts.
A spokesman said: “Given current trends, we are on track to exceed a 4 degree Celsius rise in global temperature, which means the spread of dangerous diseases, the disruption of rainfall patterns vital for food supply, the loss of bio-diverse rainforests and coral reefs, as well as frequent extreme weather and sea level rise resulting in more flooding. Scientists tell us that to avoid this scenario requires dramatic and urgent reductions in global fossil fuel emissions.
“The logic of our demands is simple, if it’s wrong to wreck the planet then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. It’s high time for the University of Edinburgh to do the right thing and stop investing in fossil fuels.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
