Health & Fitness
Somerville & Fossil Fuel Divestment
Climate change is the most devastating issue that our world faces right now, and we all feel that Somerville can do it's part to say 'We don't stand for this,'" Shoshana Blank of Fossil Free Somerville told the Somerville Neighborhood News.
SNN FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT VIDEO LINK
SOMERVILLE, MA, April 24, 2014 – Across the country and across the planet, a movement urging institutional investors to sell their shares in oil and coal industry companies is taking shape.
Earlier this month, 93 Harvard professors asked the university – which controls the largest university endowment in the country – to divest from all fossil fuel companies, saying: “We know that fossil fuel use must decrease. To achieve this goal, not only must research and education be pursued with vigor, pressure must also be exerted. If there is no pressure, then grievous harm due to climate change will accelerate and entrench itself for a span of time that will make the history of Harvard look short.”
That same day, writing in The Guardian newspaper, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu called for “an apartheid-style boycott to save the planet.”
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Closer to home, the mayor and a group called Fossil Free Somerville” are making the same appeal.
“Climate change is the most devastating issue that our world faces right now, and we all feel that Somerville can do it’s part to say ‘We don’t stand for this,’” Shoshana Blank of Fossil Free Somerville told the Somerville Neighborhood News.
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Many members of the Board of Aldermen have indicated that they would like the city to divest its retirement fund of all fossil fuel holdings. While the ultimate decision lies with the five-person Retirement Board, many aldermen would like to debate and vote on the issue, but have been forbidden to do so by the City Solicitor.
“We may have some moral influence by speaking out.” Ward 5 Alderman Mark Niedergang explained. “We were told by the City Solicitor, who had asked the State Ethics Comission, that we were not allowed to discuss it and that we were not allowed to take any formal action as a board, despite the fact that other cities have already done this.”
Niedergang acknowledged that he was risking a reprimand, a fine, or worse by speaking out.
“I think that divestment from investments in fossil fuels is the only sane thing to do. It’s both ethically and financially and economically the intelligent and right thing to do,” he said. “I think these are bad investments.”
Five municipalities in the state, and a total of 22 cities nationwide, have voted to divest from fossil fuels, according to Blank.
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