This is a cross-post from Scott Chernoff, a student divestment activist from Green Mountain College in Vermont
The Vermont Senate Committee on Government Options held a hearing today on bill S131, which is a bill to divest the State’s Retirement Funds from Fossil Fuel companies (woot!). Although this was only one of multiple hearings on this bill, there were only 4 of us able to testify today in the tiny room, including a lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute. After a ridiculous testimony from the oil lobbyist, I said this to the committee:
I speak on behalf of all youth concerned about our ability to thrive on a planet with a dangerously disrupted climate.
Internationally, we are moving towards a new global treaty in 2015 to limit global carbon emissions with the goal of preventing a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise – a threshold predicted to be the brink of disaster both globally, and certainly will be locally. Under business-as-usual, the International Energy Agency predicts we will reach 2 degrees by 2030.
Our country is not ready to sign onto a new global climate accord, and the State Department recognizes this, and uses it as an excuse for not taking ambitious action on the international stage on climate change. They are waiting on domestic action first on climate change. They want to see the political will present here in the US to support cutting our carbon emissions and support transitioning the way we produce energy.
read the rest at We Are Powershift…