What a year. 2015 brought a wave of victories for the climate movement, tools to enhance our divestment campaigns, and challenges for us to up our game. Before we sign off for the year, the Fossil Free team wanted to share some thoughts on what a few of the accomplishments, events and trends of 2015 mean for our work in the new year. kxl

We defeated Keystone. In early November, President Obama finally rejected the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. It’s a testament to the power we’ve built over the last several years that this is the first major fossil fuel project ever rejected on climate grounds. This victory is the product of countless brave individuals standing up for their rights, their land, and their futures — from the indigenous communities where the fight started to the divestment campaigners who locked down to the President’s front gate in 2013. There are a few lessons we can take from this win and apply to our divestment campaigns.

  • President Obama set the stage for higher standards on Climate Leadership.  President Obama set a precedent that we expect to see repeated in state houses and board rooms for years to come. From here on out, the climate movement has proof that we can take on and win “unwinnable” fights.
  • The more pipelines we kill, the riskier investment in carbon becomes.  The main financial argument for the Divestment Campaign is that increasingly, we’ll need to keep carbon reserves in the ground — even more so with the new global target of 1.5 degrees celsius of warming agreed to at the Paris climate talks. That means a lot of financial risk for investors in companies whose value is determined in large part by the quantity of those carbon reserves — it’s called “stranded assets”. If, suddenly, enormous fossil fuel projects like the Alberta Tar Sands can’t be brought to market, either because it’s too expensive to produce, or because infrastructure like the Keystone XL Pipeline is rejected on climate grounds, coal, oil and gas companies are going to lose a lot of value, and fast. You can bet financial advisors around the world are reassessing the risk associated with fossil fuel investments across the board.
  • Intersectional organizing gets the goods. The Keystone XL fight brought together indigenous organizers mobilizing and suing for land rights, direct action-oriented climate activists, and policy wonks, among others, to agitate for shared outcomes. Whether on college campuses or capitol hill, we are stronger when we work together. Now is a good time to think about the partners and allies you can work with on your campaigns — whose interests or vision do you share? Who has the power to help you win?

The Fossil Fuel Industry is struggling, and everyone is talking about it. California and Massachusetts pensions had lost billions on their fossil fuel investments in just the last year. 36 Oil & Gas Companies filed for bankruptcy in 2015. Oil prices are the lowest we’ve seen this decade, and fossil fuel companies are gambling big on expensive fails like Shell’s $7 billion blunder in the arctic. What does this mean for divestment?

The debt-ridden fossil fuel industry will continue to be a poor investment (and a socially unacceptable one) as long as oil prices are low. The industry doubled down over the last decade when prices were high, and leveraged lots and lots of debt based on those projections. Same story with the coal industry who, a bit further down the road, is racking up the bankruptcies. Divestment has always been about aligning an institution’s investments with its values, but with the industry bubble finally beginning to pop, the financial argument is looking pretty good, too.

CVN0hl9XIAAZl11Paris won’t solve our problems, but it gave us some new tools. This December, delegates from over 200 countries agreed to a new framework to take on the climate crisis — limiting warming to 2*C and aiming for 1.5*. The agreement is not legally binding, and individual countries’ commitments add up to nearly 4* of warming, which puts us in a world of trouble. But the shared global commitment gives us a starting point to work from. From here on out, each new mine, well and pipeline is directly working against the Paris agreement, and so do our targets’ investments in the companies building these projects. This year, we hit a new milestone, with $3.4 Trillion of assets under management now divested fully or partially from fossil fuels. In 2016, we expect to see even more divestment commitments, continuing to build on the momentum of 2015.

But with such strong warming limits set in Paris, we have to ask ourselves, what comes next? How do we both draw a clear line around what we choose not to invest in, and also shine a light on what investments we want to see instead? In 2016, 350.org will be working with partners fighting for climate justice and building a new economy to lay out a clear pathway for reinvestment in a just transition. Because, with so much on the line, it’s not enough to just reject the fossil fuel economy. We must also find pathways to building a new, clean economy that works for people and communities most impacted by the climate crisis. We can’t wait to share this work with you.

Our movements are working together, and we’ve got our eyes on the prize. In November of this year, we took action in the streets of DC with partners at United We Dream, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, and Divestment Student Network among many others to call for justice on climate, race and immigration. This year, we saw movements for justice and equity organize for power and shift narratives in the press, in elections, and at the dinner table. We recognize that the roots of injustice are deeply intertwined, be it the climate crisis, the war on black people in the US, or the ever more xenophobic language surrounding migration. We see our fights bound together, and are eager to dig into increased collaboration on a local, national and international level in 2016.

Fiduciary Duty works in our favor. This year, the US Department of Labor and the US Department of the Treasury updated their definitions of fiduciary duty to support nonprofits and pension funds investing in accordance with their values. It falls within this new interpretation of fiduciary duty to prioritize investments that serve the common good. The Department of Labor definition of fiduciary duty has been adopted as the standard definition for most advisors and trustees of funds. In 2016, don’t let your fund managers tell you that fiduciary duty is a barrier, when in fact it is a tool for divestment!

The first binding divestment law was passed in 2015. This summer, the California state legislature passed the first piece of divestment legislation in the country requiring the 2 largest public pensions in the state, CALPERS and CALSTRS to divest from coal. While local organizers are still agitating for the state to divest from oil and gas (as well as ban fracking in the state), this legislation sets a precedent for using the state house to mandate climate action. It also cracked open public pensions as a ripe sector for divestment campaigning. New divestment legislation will be introduced in 2016 in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and Hawaii.

There are times when the winds shift, your sail billows, and all of the sudden momentum seems to be in your favor. 2015 was a powerful year for our movement, and we have no intention of slowing down.

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