Thursday, April 28, 2016

Divest the Virginia Retirement System, VRS


Divestment Overview:
Divestment means getting rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous.  The most successful divestment campaign was the South African Apartheid campaign that helped overturn the Apartheid government and usher in an era of democracy and equality.

Fossil fuel divestment takes the fossil fuel industry to task for its culpability in the climate crisis.  Beginning on college campuses, the fossil fuel divestment campaign has spread to: (data from http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/)
  • Faith-based Groups – 27% 
  • Foundations – 25%
  • Pension Funds – 13%
  • Governmental Organizations – 13% 
  • Colleges, Universities and schools – 12%
  • NGOs – 6%
  • For-Profit Corporations – 2% 
  • Health – 1%
VRS Background:

The Virginia Retirement System (VRS) manages 67 billion dollars and approximately 820 employers participate in the system, including state agencies, public colleges and universities, local public school divisions and political subdivisions that have elected to participate. Political subdivisions include counties, cities, towns, special authorities and commissions. As of June 30, 2012, VRS had approximately 342,000 active members and 163,000 retirees and beneficiaries. 

On February 14, 2015, Global Divestment Day, 350 Loudoun launched the Divest the VRS campaign.  Our petition brings the divestment movement to the VA General Assembly, which governs the VRS.  Like other divestment campaigns, ours directs the Virginia General Assembly to pass legislation requiring the VRS to:

1. Immediately cease making new investments in in the top 200 fossil-fuel companies, as identified by Carbon Tracker and updates;

2. Promptly pursue responsible alternative investments in a public and transparent manner;

3. And within five years, divest from equities, bonds and commingled funds that include the top 200 fossil-fuel companies & updates.

Please sign our petition and support it by circulating it within your groups.
 
You might also wish to petition your local government to adopt a resolution requesting the VA General Assembly to divest from fossil fuels.  350 Loudoun’s divestment campaign also includes petitions to the Town of Leesburg and to the County of Loudoun. 

Fossil Fuel Divestment interesting facts: Divest the VRS Petition has been signed by members of:
  • Employed teachers
  • Retired teachers 
  • VA Commonwealth Attorney
  • Clergy 
  • Faith based climate change activists
  • Environmental groups
The Rockefeller Foundation divested within 1 month of the September, 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City. Momentum for divestment is growing.

GoFossilFree.org reports that within a 10 week period just prior to the Paris Talks, more than 100 institutions made new commitments to divest from fossil fuels, bringing a total of more than 500 institutions representing over $3.4 trillion in assets into the divestment campaign.

On October 8, 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring the $291 billion CA Public Employees retirement funds, CalPERS & CalSTRS, to divest from thermal coal.  These funds are the largest pension funds in the world.

To sign the Divest VA VRS, please go to:


FACS Member


Friday, April 15, 2016

Incoming FACS Executive Director Rebecca Elliott on Her First Few Weeks

FACS Executive Director Rebecca Elliott
It’s a tremendous honor to join Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions as its Executive Director. 

These first weeks have been very exciting.  Just today, I met with a funny, boisterous green team leader who is ready to take the next steps with her congregation, and who wants FACS’s help to think through what those next steps might be.

Whether it’s exploring advocacy for better policies or holding the first environmental movie night in your place of worship, we at FACS want to help.  And to better understand how that help would make the most difference, I would love to chat with you. 

Please send me an email; I’d very much appreciate an opportunity to schedule coffee or a phone call.  We can talk through what your interests are and how FACS can help fulfill them.  I can be reached at info@faithforclimate.org

Until then, please allow me to share some information on my background.

Professionally, I come most recently from Catholic Climate Covenant, where I helped Catholic people and institutions work together to address climate change.  Although I am not Catholic, it was very exciting to be at the forefront of the U.S. response to Pope Francis’s recent encyclical “On the Care of Our Common Home.” The encyclical itself is beautifully wrought, and it’s wonderful to see the new conversations about creation that it has started among people of faith.

Personally, I find sustenance in my family life.  I have two young children and an older godson, who is very present in our lives. I attend a tiny Christian church.  The vision of my church is based on the beatitudes, which call us to serve and love one another. 

As you might expect, some of my response to that call has meant living more lightly on the Earth.  At home, we garden, compost, and raise chickens and bees. We drive an electric car, have switched to clean energy, and eat vegetarian food.  Even though we make an effort to reduce our contribution to climate change, I am very aware of how much bigger my footprint is than the footprint of my brothers and sisters in poverty.

I hope that by working together with my neighbors, I can connect with the good spirit that moves us and makes greater things possible.  My first few weeks here at Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions have really affirmed the goodness of this community.

Eric Goplerud, Jean Wright, Scott Peterson, and all of my new friends on the Community Council have been very welcoming. New friends among Northern Virginia’s congregations have also opened their doors and their arms, demonstrating the loving spirit that makes this work such a joy.

I hope to add you to that list of new friends.  Please do be in touch at info@faithforclimate.org

Yours in hope,

Rebecca Elliott
http://www.faithforclimate.org/

Monday, February 22, 2016

Care for Creation by Planting Native Plants

In Genesis, after God created night and day, the Earth, seas, sky and all of the animals, He was pleased with what he saw. Could we say the same about what we are creating in our yards or our contributions to public spaces? There are two simple steps to aid in the care of creation:
1.     Take the Healthy Yard pledge to reduce pesticide use, conserve water, protect water quality, remove invasive plants, plant native species and support birds and other wildlife on your property.

Native plants – unlike many hybrids and cultivated plants – support wildlife, benefit pollinators and improve water quality. Loss and fragmentation of the native landscape in Northern Virginia has impacted the ecological integrity of our region. Wildlife habitat, water quality, air quality as well as the historic, natural character has suffered. Although much of Northern Virginia is now pavement or lawns, gardeners can make a difference in the ecological sustainability of our region by planting native plants.
The Plant NoVA Natives campaign features plants that have appealing foliage, berries and flowers that can make your landscape unique, attractive and welcoming for people and local wildlife. Native plants are also easy to maintain when given the appropriate growing conditions because they naturally adapt to our local soils and climate.
Consider putting some milkweed in the ground and help sustain the amazing migration of Monarch butterflies to Mexico. Plant coneflower or Black-eyed Susans and the goldfinches will thank you. Attract Ruby-throated hummingbirds with Cardinal flower and Coral honeysuckle. The Plant NoVa Natives web site includes more information about the wildlife value of our local plants.
Kristy Liercke, Member of FACS Community Council and
Emmanuel Lutheran Church’s Creation Care Ministry

Monday, February 8, 2016

We all live below the same sky, breath the same air, stand on the same Earth

We all stand on the same Earth
We all stand on the same Earth
In December, I shared Christmas dinner with my daughter, her husband, their two dogs and my wife.   We spoke with our daughter in Portland by phone.   A simple and familiar family evening, sharing our lives, celebrating our past and anticipating a shared future.   Christmas is special in my family, a time for sharing love, celebrating life, birth, and a holy time.   We went outside, looking up at the full moon, wisps of clouds obscuring the stars, infusing a glow to the sky, and around us colored lights wrapped trees and porches.  Returning inside, we made pierogis, a traditional Slavic potato dumpling, and honored our parents who are no longer living by sharing a traditional Christmas meal.  

Under that same sky, breathing the same air, standing on the same Earth – are our mothers, brothers, sisters, ancestors and children – who are afraid, who are hurt, who are violated and killed.  Under the same sky, breathing the same air, standing on the same good Earth.   Victims already of spoiled sacred land and water, of punishing storms and vicious droughts, of the grasping greed of companies immorally sucking the Earth dry.  

Over 50% of refugees are children
A few examples:   As my family shared Christmas, in nearby Montgomery County Maryland, an emergency meeting of mostly Hispanic immigrants packed a room.  Fear of recent immigration raids brought them together. Families who came here to escape violence, poverty, gangs, destruction of their lands and waters – they fear to send their kids to school.  Students are afraid they'll be deported from their classrooms.  People are afraid to go to local stores for fear of being targeted.   Juanita Cabrera Lopez, FACS’ former outreach manager, now organizes Mayan and other First World Peoples to confront the big businesses and governments that despoil sacred lands and waters in Guatemala and Mexico to plant palm oil plantations and dig out minerals.  Degraded earth and water force families to move to survive.  The UN estimates that more than 50 million refugees crossed national boundaries last year, and 38 million people were forcibly uprooted and displaced within their own countries.  Just over half of all refugees are children.   More children and families will be uprooted by war, disease, violence, poverty, environmental degradation as the climate becomes more disrupted. Raiding families who have come to the US to escape violence and give their kids a better life is counter to every value that our religious traditions stand for.     

We all live below the same sky

Another example: In Fredericksburg Virginia, a few days before Thanksgiving, a community meeting discussing expansion of the Islamic Ummah of Fredericksburg was disrupted and broken up by bullies.  “Every single one of you is a terrorist. I don’t care what you say.  You can smile at me, you can say what you want, but every Muslim is a terrorist,” he shouted. “Shut your mouth, I don’t want to hear your mouth.  Everything that I can do to keep you from doing what you're doing will happen.”   A deputy sheriff ended the meeting.   A member of the mosque said to the press: “It is so sad that people are so ignorant, and unfortunately I understand their fear, all of us have fear, including the Muslims, because the people who did [the Santa Barbara killings] are not Muslims.”  She continued: “Why did your great grandparents come here? Because of religious persecution and that’s exactly what you are doing to us. We try to do everything nice to please God, to please humanity."   Muslim parents are afraid to send their children to Sunday school at the center because of the threats.   A few days later, a hoax explosive device was found at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in the Falls Church, Virginia.  Are we not all children of God?  Are not all of our children precious – our legacy and our hope?  Two weeks after the fake bomb was found, members of FACS joined hundreds of Christians, Jews and Muslims at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in solidarity.  Two truckloads of blankets, coats and sweaters were gathered for refugees.   We all stand on the same earth, under the same sky, and honor our sacred brotherhood.  

On the West Coast, the Lummi and other native peoples in the Pacific Northwest are fighting against an enormous proposed coal port, one of the largest in the world, which would destroy a 3,500 year old Lummi village site and important native fisheries in Northwest Washington, near the Canadian border. Master carver Jewell Praying Wolf James fashioned a 19 foot totem pool that is journeying more than 5,000 miles across the continent.  Tribal leaders, spiritual leaders of many faiths are speaking out against the juggernaut of energy development and energy transportation.   The Lummi and First World Peoples in Alberta and British Columbia are confronting threats to their lands, air and water from the enormous increase in US and Canadian fossil fuel energy extraction – the Alberta tar sands, coal mines in Montana, the fracked oil fields in Dakotas – and the drive to send these carbon polluting fuels to markets across the world.   Their fight is for us – we all live under the same sky, breathe the same air, stand on the same good earth.  And our faiths call for us to fight with them, for all of us and for our children.

I will close with words from Jewell Praying Wolf James, the Lummi totem pole carver: 

You ask, what can we do?
We need you to talk to your congregations, talk to your children, that God created the earth and therefore it’s sacred.
You are the ones who vote your politicians into office, they are the ones who can tell the regulators “no!”
We’re calling on everyone to use your voice. Do you need permission to stand up?
We have to do this:
One people
One time
One place,
One God
One prayer!

With Blessings

Eric Goplerud
Executive Director,
FACS

Monday, February 1, 2016

A Self-Imposed Carbon Tax? What kind of a crazy idea is that?

Maybe it’s not so crazy.

Carbon pollution
What’s your carbon footprint?  Most of us don’t really know.  We’re concerned about global warming and agree that much of the cause is the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  And we recognize that all of us share in the responsibility of lowering our contribution.  But until we start measuring our individual production we don’t really know if our contribution is increasing or decreasing.  It’s sort of like dieting.  Many of us realize we should lose some weight.  And we start on a program of dieting and exercise to hopefully shed some pounds.  We pat ourselves on the back for eating healthy salads for lunch and feel proud of the exercise routine we have initiated at the gym, but then we sneak in a bowl of ice cream (maybe 2 bowls) before bedtime.   Until we step on a scale we don’t really know if we are losing weight or fooling ourselves with good intentions.

It’s the same with the production of carbon dioxide.  Until we systematically measure our production of carbon dioxide we don’t really know if we are successfully reducing our production or fooling ourselves.

What has this got to do with a carbon tax/carbon fee you say?  Well, maybe a little bit and maybe a lot. A diet is self-imposed with the objective being to lose weight.  This carbon tax is self-imposed with 3 objectives:  1.) Create a fund to be used on projects that will offset our own carbon dioxide production.)  2.) Create a self- awareness of our own carbon footprints.   3.) Probably most importantly, it will enhance the credibility of those who lobby in behalf of climate warming reduction legislation.  Their arguments are strengthened when they are able to explain to legislators “This is what we are doing and we think others should be doing likewise.”  Unless we are taking this action it is rather weak to advocate that others take similar action.

The Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions (FACS) has established a Self-Imposed Carbon Tax Fund to assist in carrying out the above 3 objectives.  Participants measure the amount of carbon dioxide they produce using the table below.  They then obligate themselves to pay into the fund a penny (or whatever amount they deem appropriate) for every pound of carbon dioxide they produce.  The funds are then expended on carbon dioxide reduction projects such as home insulation, LED light bulbs, purchase of carbon offsets, planting trees etc.  Groups who have received grants thus far:  1) Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment (ACE) $874.19 and The Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP) $500.

Obviously this project cannot, in and of itself, be expected to solve global warming.  It can, however, serve as an example of what individuals and groups can do actively and symbolically to address the threat of global warming. And, it is another step in reducing one’s own individual carbon footprint. Start calculating your Carbon Tax/Carbon Fee today! For more information, contact me at: daveparsons@mindspring.com.


Dave Parsons, Member

Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Some Reflections Post COP21 and the Paris Climate Agreement

[Note: This blog post is an edited version of tweets and notes from my stay in Paris for the COP21 climate conference December 6-12, 2015. The unedited version can be read by clicking HERE]

 

The Setting:  Paris was a City of Christmas Lights.  The Eiffel tower flashed stroboscopically every hour – while displaying messages about climate change issues.   Many of those present at COP21 expressed a sense of being present at a world historic event.  The conference center was filled with drama throughout the week.  

The drama built in the final days:  The biggest issues were termed “differentiation, ambition, and finance” (in other words, the obligations of developing countries, the target maximum warming level, and who would pay).  Successive draft agreements with scores of alternative phrasings set side by side in brackets were printed and poured over by negotiators and observers – could any one of these wording differences sabotage an agreement?

Dramatic Conclusion:  Early afternoon on December 12, 2015 – a day after the conference had been scheduled to end – the proposed final version was distributed to 196 parties (country delegations). Multiple wording choices had been eliminated in a final up-or-down version of the document.  The drama reached its peak when the conference president, French Foreign Minister Luarent Fabius, said: “I’m looking at the room, I see the reaction is positive, I’m hearing no objection, the Paris climate agreement is accepted!” The conference plenary hall, where all delegations were present, rose as one to their feet with cheers and applause. But it was a long and difficult process to get there.

Problem of Consensus: For years it seemed dubious that a COP forum could reach a meaningful agreement.  Consensus on formulations involving more than one hundred countries is very unusual.  What could be done for climate negotiations if there were just a couple of holdout countries?  In a bankruptcy, a judge can compel holdout creditors to accept a “haircut”. The UN Security Council can take action against a country that is acting in a way to threaten the peace or the security of populations (particularly genocide).  Plausibly, in an extreme scenario, action for global climate protection could become a Security Council matter. Should complete consensus determine global climate agreements?  But consensus has been the COP rule and somehow had to be worked with. 

The Role of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs): In the agreed framework - a key difference from the earlier Kyoto Protocol - each country submits an INDC with its greenhouse gas mitigation, climate adaptation commitments and how it will achieve them. It is new to this agreement that every country – developing as well as developed - will present their plan to the world and update it at least once every five years with the condition that each country’s new plan is strengthened.  Also, the INDC process gave a recognized forum for countries that want to take a lead to continue to do so, being able to point to agreements of other countries, even if not binding.

Role of Agreements among Subsets of Countries:  In addition to the individual country INDCs in the COP negotiation process, key groups usually involved big-emitters of greenhouse gases (rather than regional groupings as in recent trade agreements).  As the World Resources Institute reports, China is by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, accounting for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gases.  But the US share is
over 14% - more than double China on a per capita basis. Add European Union emissions to those of the US and China and half of greenhouse emissions are accounted for. Adding India, Russia, Japan, and Brazil, accounts for over two-thirds of all emissions.  From the viewpoint of reaching agreements these seven actors are relatively few compared with the 196 countries that were parties at the COP21 meetings.

Small numbers agreements can provide a big start:  Probably most important was September’s US-China agreement announced during Xi Jingping’s White House visit, that China ensures its carbon pollution peaks by 2030, while US emissions fall at least 26% by 2025 (from 2005 levels).  It is clear that this and other pre-COP21 joint statements of agreement mattered.  Such bilateral or small-group agreements were complemented by larger-coalition formation that evolved during the process of COP21 itself, notably including the “High Ambition Coalition,” which grew to include the US and more than 100 other developed and developing countries. 

High Ambition Coalition: While prior declarations have emphasized a goal of keeping temperature increases to now “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, this Coalition pushed for explicit recognition of a new aspirational target: a promise to “pursue efforts” to contain increase to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.  By the way, the weakened “pursue efforts” language seems to have been in part a compromise with Saudi Arabia which wanted no mention of a 1.5-degree aspiration because it implies the need for relatively rapid phase out of fossil fuel use.  And apparently China disliked the High Ambition 1.5-degree proposal also, calling it a kind of performance (i.e. a publicity stunt).   But the very fact of making 1.5C a reference point may have real effects.

Central Role of Market Mechanisms and Technological Progress:  The agreement commits countries to transition to non-carbon based economies by the end of the century.  This is credible in part because of the central role of market mechanisms; parts of the agreement – perhaps even its signals - facilitate and incentivize private capital flows into renewable energy and other climate-benefiting investments. Private initiatives also spur complementary green energy investments, as seen from the fanfare accorded to the Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Coalition (dubbed the 30-billionaires club).

Importance of Agriculture: Attention is needed also to agriculture, which causes almost 25% of greenhouse gas emissions.  The agreement features a prominent role of preserving and reestablishing nature in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a cost effective way - that also supports the nearly half of humanity that depends on natural resource based livelihoods.  It appropriately stresses better planning of human land use, but also highlights the value of preservation of intact ecosystems and biodiversity in nature.  Incentives are to play a key role.

The UN Remains Centrally ImportantIt is not obvious, but simply agreeing to state shared aspirations could lead to real change.  Today, individual countries provide substance, and agreements move up toward multinational agreements as different groups of countries reach accords, which was critical to the culmination of COP21.  But the UN is providing real leadership, through a framework for setting goals and targets that reflect scientific knowledge; basic behavioral economics suggests that reference point setting can make a real difference.  Smaller sets of countries can build up agreements that result in movement toward these goals.  

Role of Local Communities: Local governments and other state actors, environmental campaigners, and corporations in various sectors can build on the 1.5C degree goal as a framework for pushing policy and philanthropic goals, or taking corporate actions that create good will (and even may end up saving money).  For example, an often-seen protest sign read “Keep it in the Ground” – apparently some estimates suggest that ¾ of all fossil fuel reserves will have to be left un-mined or undrilled to prevent greater than 1.5C warming.  Talking with a few of these campaigners (some of them students active in the divestiture movement), and sensing their fervor, my guess is that this movement grows quickly.

Higher Aspirations as Global Insurance:  Among other things, having such a 1.5 C-degree aspiration provides more insurance: 2 degrees C might be the best available estimate of a threshold for unacceptable damage, but this estimate might be too high.  Extra insurance always costs more, but it can be worth it to reduce the risk of catastrophe.  And in general, targets often get missed by a little bit in relation to a publicized visible reference point: so better to overshoot 1.5 degrees by half a degree than to overshoot 2 degrees by a similar amount.  Another reason to seek more stringency is because technical evaluations have suggested the INDCs submitted so far – even assuming they will be fully realized in practice – still result in much higher expected warming (about 2.6 degrees C). 

Country Insurance:  The insurance theme was sounded in various ways.  As expected, progress and problems of providing rainfall insurance to farmers was discussed.  My interactions at the conference clarified and stressed the need of developing countries for country-level climate insurance, living as they do with increasing risk and uncertainty.  While that point is clear, I hadn’t appreciated the scope of substantial activities already implemented.  Two groupings of countries, one in the Caribbean and the other in Africa, have been willing to pay into such funds despite their limitations, making this a more commercially viable strategy.  Payouts to participating countries have already been made.  But so far, these insurance systems have important limitations.  Participants agreed that there were significant opportunities for improvement; including risk that measurements will be wrong or indeed that the wrong kinds of data measurement will be prioritized.  Likely, there may be some related incentive issues to be resolved.

Some final notes:  Going forward, there are plenty of opportunities for important research projects.  Some address questions about climate insurance.  Others will address unsolved problems in mechanisms for mobilizing and allocating funds for climate adaptation in least developed and vulnerable countries.  Generally, there is a need for more integration between the setting of targets and economic analysis of costs and benefits of alternative strategies to achieve them.  Much research, policy analysis, and political balancing remains to be done.  But this month, in the City of Light there was also Enlightenment.   Enough at least to remind us that the world is not yet covered in darkness. 

Mr. Stephen Smith, Ph.D.
Director. Institute for International Economic Policy, and
Professor of Economics and International Affairs, GWU;

Friend of FACS.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Global Climate Change and Asheville, NC – First Impressions: Taking the Temperature

Catawba Creek, Pisgah National Forest, Old Fort, NC
As I write this blog post at 4:30PM on December 29th, I am comfortably sitting outside our rental house in the mountains of North Carolina; in shorts without a shirt.   Today’s high temp was 720; the average high for this day is 470.  As of today, the December temperatures in Asheville have averaged 11.60 above the historical daily averages for this month.  I was never a math-wiz, but I’m pretty sure 11.60 is a lot higher than the 3.60 upper boundary temperature rise recommended by the IPCC and agreed to in Paris.

We have been living in Asheville for two months now and it really is a wonderful adult playground with many beautiful cascading creeks and rivers.  During our time here I have hiked and biked a lot,  attended the UU Church, two other churches, a Sierra Club meeting, several meetings at the University of North Carolina- Asheville, frequented a few pubs, restaurants, grocery stores, neighbor’s houses, and various other public and private establishments.

I have been observing and occasionally talking with folks about things related to climate change.  My tiny sample size suggests that when it comes to climate change, moderate to liberal leaning middle to upper-middle class white people in Asheville are no different from this demographic in DC/Northern Virginia, Portland, OR, or Northern California. 

This fairly homogeneous group seems to view and, most importantly, act on the challenges of climate change in the following way: a tiny percentage have certainty on the threat posed and are giving it their all, a fraction more are true believers and engaged, still more believe but feel no urgency, about the same number pay some attention but remain skeptical, a few less are highly skeptical and a small percentage of those actively dispute assertions of the magnitude of the issue. 

Together all of these people added up to maybe 40% of this financially and socially capable cohort with the remaining 60% basically saying something along these lines: 

"Hum, yes, now that you mention it, it does seem likely that humans may have influenced the weather which, by the way, has been really nice lately don’t you think?  I sure hope that it doesn’t get too much warmer before somebody figures out a way to turn down the thermostat.  Would love to chat more about this issue, but I hear  my…. neighbor, wife, class, game, stove, garden, beer, movie, play, book, fence, car, child, parent, dog, cat, lawn, bill, boss, hiking group, etc.…… calling me.  Well, good luck to you.”

Roger Helm, Ph.D. Biological Ecology
FACS Founding Member 

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