General Synod Fossil Fuel Divestment Discussion Paper This Discussion Paper provides full references for the fossil fuel divestment motion and explanatory note submitted to the General Synod / te Hinota Whanui 2014 of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.1 Executive Summary Climate change is already upon us and will intensify rapidly. Its worst impacts will be felt by people in poor communities in vulnerable regions, including the Pacific Islands. To keep global warming to 2°C or less, we need to make a decisive break with fossil fuel dependency, the United Nations and other authorities conclude. Up to 80% of known reserves of coal, oil and gas will need to be left unexploited. Churches and other faith communities are in a position to exercise moral leadership on this urgent issue through dis-investing from the fossil fuel industry. Dis-investing from the fossil fuel industry will: • align the Church’s investment policy with our mission “to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth” and “to seek to transform the unjust structures of society”; • demonstrate that the Province stands in solidarity with its neighbours and Church members in Polynesia who are already beginning to suffer the effects of climate change; • give tangible expression to the Church’s existing commitments to be an ethical investor; • give tangible expression to the policy of “carbon neutrality” advocated by our Bishops in their statement on climate change published in April 2006; • draw attention to the urgency of the need to break with fossil fuel dependency. Fossil fuel divestment is not the only step the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia will need to take to play its part in the transition to a low-carbon economy. But it is an important and meaningful step that must be taken if the Church is to maintain its credibility as a prophetic voice on the issue of climate change. We cannot call for urgent action on global warming and at the same time seek to profit from the fossil fuel industry. The case for fossil fuel divestment is not predicated on legal or financial arguments. However, it is important to note that divesting is legally permissible and financially prudent as well as being morally and theologically mandated. Independent legal advice provided by LeeSalmonLong Barristers and Solicitors states that there is no legal impediment, as a matter of fiduciary duties, to the trustees adopting the policy contained in the motion. The legal advice notes that this is especially the case if the policy can be implemented without risk of significant financial detriment because there is a wide enough pool of alternative 1 This document is a revised version of the Auckland Diocese Fossil Fuel Divestment Discussion Paper, dated 17th July 2013. investment options. And, in fact, financial analysis shows that a “negative screen” on fossil fuel companies is unlikely to compromise, and may improve, risk-adjusted returns over the medium to long term. The Anglican Dioceses of Auckland, Waiapu, Wellington, Waikato & Taranaki, and Dunedin considered the case for divestment at Synod meetings in September 2013, and all five Diocesan Synods voted to divest. This motion is presented in the hope that General Synod will extend this record of leadership by resolving without delay that Church funds should no longer be invested in the fossil fuel industry. 1. Climate Change: An Overview of the Current Situation We are currently on course for catastrophic global warming within the lifetime of our grandchildren. The most recent Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) finds that the evidence for global warming is “unequivocal” and that it is “extremely likely” (95% confidence) that human influence has been the “dominant cause” for global warming since 1950.2 Modeling included in the IPCC AR5 shows that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase to roughly 650 ppm by the end of the century, leading to an average temperature increase of between 4°C and 6°C. The IPCC AR5 reflects the prevailing view of the scientific literature. Despite the popular perception that scientists are divided in their views about the fundamental cause of global climate change, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are in agreement. A recent systematic review of 11,944 abstracts from peer-reviewed climate science papers published from 1991–2011 found that of abstracts expressing an opinion on anthropogenic climate change, 97% endorse the consensus position that humans are causing global warming, with less than 2% of abstracts rejecting this position.3 Large surveys of scientists have independently found that 97% of actively-publishing climate scientists endorse the consensus position that climate change is driven by human activity, with the large majority of earth scientists in agreement.4 1.1. Impacts Kiribati in the South Pacific is one of several island states already affected by rising sea levels. Negotiations are reportedly underway to relocate the entire island community to Fiji in what may 2 Website: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/, accessed 1st Feb 2014. 3 Cook J, Nuccitelli D, Green SA, Richardson M, Winkler B, Painting R, Way R, Jacobs P and Skuce A. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environ. Res. Lett. 8 (2013) 024024. 4 Doran P and Zimmerman M. Examining the scientific consensus on climate change. EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union 90 (2009) 22–3; Anderegg W R L, Prall J W, Harold J and Schneider S H. Expert credibility in climate change. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107 (2010) 12107–9. become the world’s first “climate-induced migration of modern times.”5 In a public statement last year, the President of Kiribati said: In the Pacific, the degree of our fragility and insecurity will increasingly be due to climate change and the implications it poses on various aspects of our lives ranging from food security, health, increasing salinity in our water lens, our resources as well as our very survival and existence.6 The Kiribati experience offers just one snapshot of an emerging global crisis. A 2013 report published by the World Bank expresses grave concerns about the direct threat posed by global warming to vulnerable human communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. The report notes that: many significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and in some cases multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea level rises, more severe storms, droughts and floods are expected to have further severe negative implications for the poorest. […] High temperature extremes appear likely to affect yields of rice, wheat, maize and other important crops, adversely affecting food security. Promoting economic growth and the eradication of poverty and inequality will thus be an increasingly challenging task under future climate change.7 Climate change will not only have economic impacts, it will also adversely affect human health. A high-profile review in leading medical journal The Lancet describes climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st Century,” having “its greatest effect on those who have the least access to the world’s resources and who have contributed least to its cause.”8 A group of leading New Zealand health professionals echoed this assessment in a landmark study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, which concluded that New Zealand “must commit to substantial decreases in its greenhouse gas emissions, to avoid the impact of climate change on human health, both here and internationally.”9 1.2. Fossil fuels and the transition to low-carbon economies The Copenhagen Accord signed by world leaders in 2009 acknowledges the scientific view that global atmospheric temperature rises should be kept below 2°C to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”10 5 “Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat”, The Telegraph (UK), 7 Mar 2012. Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/kiribati/9127576/Entire-nation-of-Kiribati-to-be- relocated-over-rising-sea-level-threat.html, accessed 13 July 2013. 6 Website: http://www.climate.gov.ki/2013/03/04/global-collective-action-needed/, accessed 13 July 2013. 7 Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience. A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2013), p. xv. Website: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/14000, accessed 16th July 2013. 8 Costello A, Abbas M, Allen A, Ball S, Bell S, Bellamy R et al. Managing the health effects of climate change: Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission. Lancet 373 (2009): 1693-1733. 9 Metcalfe S, Woodward A, Macmillan A, Baker M, Howden-Chapman P, Lindsay G, et al. Why New Zealand must rapidly halve its greenhouse gas emissions. N Z Med J. 122(1304) (2009): 72-95. 10 The Copenhagen Accord. Published in the Report of the Conference of the Parties on its fifteenth session, held in Copenhagen from 7 to 19 December 2009: Addendum (UNFCCC, March 2010), p. 5. Website: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/11a01.pdf, accessed 5th July 2013. Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Low Carbon Economy Index 2012, Too Late for Two Degrees?, found that