1. Fossil Fuel Divestment

2. “We’re in the same place we’ve been
in for a quarter-century: scientific
warning followed by political
inaction.”
“People perceive – correctly – that
their individual actions will not
make a decisive difference in the
atmospheric concentration of CO2“
~Bill McKibben

3. Greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly rising.
Warming temperatures will likely result in:

4. Rising Sea Levels

5. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees

6. Increased fires in Amazon (produces
10% of world’s Oxygen supply) and
other forests.

7. Loss of biodiversity

8. Draughts

9. Uninhabitable heat in many areas

10. Increased hurricane intensity and frequency

11. Melting Himalayan ice sheet
(2 billion people in Asia will lose access to water)

12. Increased starvation due to decreased land suitable for
agriculture

13. “The human community has never faced
such certain and devastating consequences
if action is not taken. Apart from nuclear
war, climate change dwarfs all previous
threats to humanity in its scope and
extent.”
~Rev. Fletcher Harper

14. Divestment is removing unethical stocks, bonds, and
investment funds from one’s portfolio.
Divestment from companies that did business in South
Africa during the Apartheid helped weaken the ruling
government and allow equality to emerge.
Divestment from fossil fuels is a promising movement
towards halting climate change. It increases public
conversation, demonstrates the desire for renewable
energy sources, and reduces the power of fossil fuel
companies over policy.

15. To reduce probability of 2°C increase in
global temperature to 20%, 886 GtCO2 could
be burned between 2000 and 2050. A third of
that budget was burned by 2011.
Governments and global markets treat
approximately 5 times the global budget as
tradable assets.
If the international agreements to target less
than a 2°C raise are maintained, 80% of assets
will be unburnable and stranded.
The Economically Prudent Choice

16. Pension investments in something that
destroys the planet a person is supposed
to enjoy their retirement on is absurd.

17. 33 United States cities have passed divestment resolutions
Seattle, WA
San Francisco, CA
Portland, OR
Eugene, OR
Berkeley, CA
Richmond, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Madison, WI
Bayfield, WI
State College, PA
Ithaca, NY
Truro, MA
Provincetown, MA
Providence, RI
Cambridge, MA
Northampton, MA
Ann Arbor, MI
New London, CT
Amherst, MA
Sudbury, MA
Concord, MA
Framingham, MA
Oakland, CA
City of Brisbane, CA
Ashland, OR Belfast, ME
Palo Alto, CA Great Barrington, MA
Minneapolis, MN
Corvallis, OR
San Luis Obispo, CA
Boulder, CO

18. “We know how much we can burn, and we know
who's planning to burn more. Climate change
operates on a geological scale and time frame,
but it's not an impersonal force of nature; the
more carefully you do the math, the more
thoroughly you realize that this is, at bottom, a
moral issue; we have met the enemy and they is
Shell.”
~Bill McKibben

19. References
Carbon Tracker Initiative. 2011.
http://www.carbontracker.org/report/carbon-bubble/
McKibben, Bill. 2012. “Global Warming’s Terrifying New
Math”. Rolling Stone.
http://350.org/