Divest Now

By Pam McVety, January 2019


​Happy New Year to one and all.  Each new year gives us opportunities, blessings and challenges.  And in some ways, a new year is like a new beginning, an opportunity for us to decide to do things differently with our lives. This is such a year—and we need that opportunity right now.  

My home in Florida area was slammed by Hurricane Michael in 2018.  What you may not know, now that our story is out of the headlines, is that we are still recovering and that, for some, the recovery will take decades. And what many don’t know is that we will face more, and more violent, storms in the years to come.

Today, blue tarps are still covering many of our rooftops. Our friends and neighbors are still rebuilding, arguing with insurance companies, filling out papers for FEMA, sleeping in tents, and depending on the charity of friends and neighbors for places to sleep.  Many jobs have been taken from us, too. One of the most devastating and long-lasting impacts of Hurricane Michael is the destruction of timber farms. From the Gulf Coast up through South Georgia, hundreds of thousands of acres of trees are lying on the ground. More than half a million acres of trees in Bay, Calhoun, Liberty, Gadsden, Jackson and Gulf counties are gone.  With this loss goes jobs, income and diminishing chances of recovery any time soon. This is a monumental tragedy that is painful and life changing for far too many of our brothers and sisters.

None of us wants to repeat this tragedy, but as long as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico continue to warm, they are guaranteed to fuel ever more powerful hurricanes.  This is our new reality. Our world has changed and will not change back until we alter our own choices.

When we face a disaster, our church is first in line to help us recover.  But it is last in line, or not in line at all, in embracing the new global reality.  It continues to invest in fossil fuels. For decades it has committed its investment managers to meetings with fossil fuel companies—and these companies keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars to convince us that they are not responsible for our climate crisis, that fossil fuels have nothing to do with the carbon emissions that are heating up our world.  Most of us know that this is a big, dangerous lie, but still we have not rid ourselves of our fossil fuel investments.

Our church’s response to climate change is like living in a two-story house with the heat running on the lower floor and the air conditioning running on the top floor.  This is stupid. We are funding the monster called climate change and at the same time we are paying for the damage it is causing. It is time to get on the same side of the ledger by divesting ourselves of our fossil fuel holdings now.  

As we start this a new year, we can rid ourselves of our investments in fossil fuels.  We can take a life-saving, planet-saving path. We don’t have to wait to make this decision at the 2020 General Assembly.
Our money people can make this choice today.

Pam McVety is a grandmother, biologist and member of Fossil Free PCUSA.

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