Protests and petitions were never really my thing. I’ve never owned a Che Guevara t-shirt and my haircut would be entirely appropriate for a police officer. But the more I read about climate change, the more I felt like I was part of a society and an economy going in the wrong direction. Specifically, plummeting downward. And unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life avoiding eye contact with children and mirrors, I knew I had to do something more than cast an occasional ballot.
About this time I became aware of the fossil fuel divestment movement. Students from over 20 universities across the country are attempting to convince their schools to divest their endowment funds from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years, and immediately freeze any new investments in those companies. And I thought, hey, I have a couple of university degrees, maybe I can help.
But first you might be wondering why exactly these students and I are so worked up about climate change and fossil fuel companies. The answer boils down to 3 numbers: