Loretto Earth Network News Divest/Reinvest Summer 2013
Vol. 21, No. 3
Rev. Fletcher Harper of GreenFaith: The Moral Case for Divestment By Maureen Fiedler SL
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s storm clouds gather (literally!), climate change is more and more in the news. At Interfaith Voices, we are always interested in religious responses to crises like climate change. So, when I read an article urging religious groups to divest from fossil fuel stocks (coal, oil and gas) as a response to the climate crisis, I sought an interview with its author, Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest who is the Executive Director of GreenFaith – an interfaith environmental coalition. He did not disappoint. (See: http://greenfaith. org/). Early in the interview, I asked him why he left his life as a parish priest to work with GreenFaith, and you could hear the passion in his voice as he laid out a trilogy of reasons. “Like many people of faith, I’ve had some of my most powerful experiences of God outdoors …” He rejects emphatically the lure of consumerism, and cares deeply for the poor and most vulnerable of Earth who are most affected by pollution today and will be most affected by climate change and its ravages. For example, he cited estimates that there will be between 50 million and 100 million refugees globally in 50 years … just from climate change! Carbon emissions from fossil fuels are, of course, the major cause of climate change, and so he argued that there is a serious moral question
involved in profiting from investments that threaten life as we know it on Planet Earth – as strongly as do fossil fuels. I asked questions I have heard voiced in Loretto. “Aren’t there other alternatives? What about the way that religious groups have traditionally dealt with problematic corporations? Why not use timehonored shareholder resolutions to force these companies to face the facts?” He knew immediately what I meant, and commended the long work of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and their successful work with shareholder resolutions on a number of issues over decades. However, he said that the “most skilled shareholder advocates” have been trying the same strategy with fossil fuel companies for more than 20 years, and have gotten nowhere. That’s because fossil fuel companies have refused to recognize the real dangers of climate change. (Indeed, some of them have bankrolled the movement to debunk climate science). He called divestment a way of “delegitimizing” an industry, or to use a religious word, “shunning” it. He noted that many religious groups divested from tobacco stocks for just that reason, and in the 1980s, they divested from companies working in South Africa.
The fossil fuel divestment movement, he said, is moving strongly on college campuses, and several religious groups are actively considering it, including the Unitarian-Universalists, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church USA, among others. But divestment is not enough. Religious groups, he said, need to reinvest in a clean energy future. And first on the list, he said, is “greening” their own religious facilities: putting renewable energy into houses of worship and other buildings. The savings, he noted, would represent a good return on such an investment. In conclusion, he said simply, “Money matters.” When he wanted to start a serious discussion about some topic in his former congregation, he tied it to money. “Money matters,” he noted. That’s why divestment matters. To listen to the interview on Interfaith Voices, go to: http://interfaithradio. org/StoryAudio/Choosing_Not_to_ Profit_from_Coal__Oil_and_Gas