Author: Climate Action Committee

The effects of climate change are being felt full force in our communities and around the world. Learn how we can all make a difference both individually and collectively by tackling this crisis. Bookmark this Climate Action Blog for information on local climate action efforts in Calaveras and Tuolumne county.

Email us @ tsclimateaction@gmail.com to add your voice.

We received an email from Jonathan Sprout with this music video that he co-created with Emmy winner Rodney Whittenberg titled Wilderness. They filmed it in the Yosemite and Sierra Nevada region. The award-winning film promotes the protection of the Wilderness.

Quietly and without fanfare, on September 9, Harvard University announced that it would divest its vast endowment from fossil fuels. For the world’s richest university to divest is a triumph for climate activists. But Harvard’s announcement is hardly unique. To date, more than 1240 institutions globally with assets over $14.5 trillion have committed to divest or have divested from fossil fuels, including the University of California system, New York state’s pension funds, the Maine Public Employee Retirement System, Norway’s Government Pension Fund, over 400 faith institutions, and many civic associations and nonprofits.

Divesting is Good Economics
The divestment movement aims to break the hold that the fossil fuel industry has on economies and governments. Increasingly though, divestment decisions are based largely, if not solely, on economic self-interest. In the early 1980’s, fossil fuel stocks comprised seven of the top ten companies in the S&P 500. Today, no fossil fuel company is in that class. For the past decade or so, the energy sector has lagged almost every other industry on the world market, causing investors to lose billions. In contrast, funds that have divested from fossil fuels have not experienced negative consequences–investment returns were either neutral or positive.

As the world moves away from fossil fuels, that sector is becoming more volatile and riskier. The price of renewables continues to fall dramatically while that of fossil fuels has remained fairly constant, and may increase if more nations adopt carbon pricing and other regulations in response to the increasingly catastrophic impacts of climate change. According to researchers at Oxford, if solar, wind, batteries, and hydrogen follow their current exponentially increasing deployment trends for another decade, we will likely achieve a near-net-zero emissions energy system within 25 years. In the words of Mark Schlissel, the president of the University of Michigan, this means that “fossil fuel assets will diminish in value . . . perhaps more quickly than many realize,” and that there is a “growing appreciation of the long-term financial risks” of fossil fuels investments among investors.

Banks, insurance companies & institutional investors are taking notice
There have been important successes. According to recent commitments, no major U.S. bank will fund drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager,
announced a sweeping new set of policies which purportedly aim to put climate change and sustainability at the center of its business model, including divesting from companies that make more than 25% of profits from thermal coal. Vanguard, the mutual fund giant, has committed to the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, publicly pledging to slash its emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions across all of its investment products by 2050. Globally, 31 insurers have vowed to restrict underwriting for coal projects. Several insurers have also stopped underwriting projects producing or transporting oil sands.

But there is still a long way to go. For instance, BlackRock remains the largest investor in coal, oil and gas, and forest-destroying agribusiness. It is also the largest investor in the companies behind 12 contested coal, oil, and gas expansion projects that would blow through half of the remaining global carbon budget to keep us in line with Paris targets. Vanguard, despite its announcements, still has no formal coal exit policy and no proactive plans to address environmental issues, and the group appears to be significantly trailing its peers on the road to net zero. Insurance companies are still underwriting fossil fuel projects.

To divest or to influence companies from within?
Some especially large pension funds and institutional investors that want to keep pouring money into fossil fuels argue that divestment is not effective and that it is better to influence fossil companies through the leverage they can exert as shareholders, such as by supporting climate-friendly shareholder resolutions. Activist investors have had a few recent wins. Notably, activist investor Engine No. 1 spent roughly $12.5 million to win three board seats at Exxon Mobil Corp. However, the big institutions that have argued for using their leverage have often dragged their feet when it comes to supporting climate-friendly shareholder resolutions.

How is California doing in all of this?
Here in California, CalPERS and CalSTRS are the nation’s two largest pension funds. In 2015, SB 185 was enacted, requiring both funds to divest from companies that receive at least half their revenues from coal mining. A recent report has found that the pension funds have only divested a small portion of its coal-related holdings. Recognizing this, our Sierra Club Motherlode Conservation Committee in its last meeting in August voted in favor of a resolution that supports a Sierra Club California campaign for total CA divestment from all fossil fuels, including CALPERS, CALSTRS, and all other state, city and county funds.

What can you do?
So, if you are interested in joining the divestment movement, how do you do it? A few possibilities:

1. Join an organization, such as:
– Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition: https://stopthemoneypipeline.com/
– Fossil Free California: www.fossilfreeca.org
– Fossil Free Future: https://fossilfreefuture.earth/

2. Urge elected officials to support legislation or resolutions calling for divestment of public funds.

3. If you are part of a pension fund, you can urge your pension fund to divest.
– There are existing campaigns to get CalSTRS and CalPERS to divest: https://fossilfreeca.org/divestment-campaigns/.
– President Biden recently signed an executive order that calls for the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board to review whether to remove fossil fuel securities from the TSP (the federal employee pension fund). There have also been several bills introduced in Congress to allow TSP members to divest.

4. Divest yourself. Here are some resources to help you do it:
– https://fossilfreeca.org/move-your-money/
– https://stopthemoneypipeline.com/move-your-money/
– https://mazaskatalks.org/divestyourself

We need to talk about climate change. You probably don’t need convincing that climate change is real and a crisis. Heatwaves—the number one weather-related killer in the U.S.—are more frequent and intense, droughts are longer, fire seasons are more severe, storms are more intense, there is less ice and snow cover, sea level is rising, and oceans are acidifying. All this is happening now, not in some distant future, and it’s hurting most those who did the least to cause it—the poor and marginalized here and around the world.

Many people get it. The problem is urgent. But they don’t know what to do about it. Climate change can seem too big to tackle or too depressing to think about. Others feel they have no control over what politicians and big organizations do. Some think that nothing we do at this point matters because the planet is already locked into a hellish future.

The good news is that scientists believe that if we stop emitting carbon, temperatures should stabilize fairly quickly. And there are things we all can do to limit climate change – both in pushing for change at a policy level and acting at an individual level.

So what can you do? We, the Climate Action Committee of the Tuolumne Chapter of the Sierra Club, will be publishing a series of articles, here and in future emails and newsletters, about what we can all do right here and now, in the Motherlode, to help tackle the climate crisis. We are going to talk about climate change solutions, and how you can be a part of them. We hope to inspire you to act and to feel connected to a committed, growing community that cares.

Start Talking!
One thing you can do about climate change right now is to talk about it. Yes, just talk about it. It turns out that more than 7 in 10 Americans believe climate change is happening, 6 in 10 are worried about it, but two-thirds of Americans rarely, if ever, talk about climate change with the people they care about. Surveys show that only about 35% of Americans discuss global warming at least occasionally, and only 25% hear about it in the media once a week.

So if most of us are worried about climate, why aren’t we talking about it more? Typically, it’s because we feel we “don’t know enough,” “don’t want to talk about scary things,” “it won’t make a difference,” or we “don’t want to cause an argument.”

That is a problem. We humans are highly social. Researchers have found that people tend to believe what those around them believe. Talking about climate change signals to our friends and neighbors that climate change is real and is a priority. Once they see that climate is important enough for you to talk about and act on, it’s easier for them to believe it is real, talk about it with others, and act on it, even when you are not around. This helps spread awareness and raise concern to the society-wide levels that attract the attention of policymakers and the media.

There is lots of evidence that social behavior is contagious. For example, one of the best predictors of whether people will install solar panels isn’t age, race, income, or political affiliation, but whether their neighbors have solar. Another study found that half of respondents who knew someone who gave up flying because of climate change said that they fly less because of that example. Those influenced by a “non-flyer” explained that the bold position to give up flying had: conveyed the seriousness of climate change and flying’s contribution to it; crystallized the link between values and actions; and even reduced feelings of isolation that flying less was a valid and sensible response to climate change. Read about it here. This kind of contagious talking and acting on climate change is necessary to make change on a large scale.

You’re Ready, But What Do You Say?
The most important thing is to start by talking about why it matters to you. This could be a personal story about how climate change affects you or those you love, or an appeal to shared values or things you have in common with someone, such as parenthood, faith, etc., and why that should lead to caring about a changing climate. (hayhoe) This also means listening, so you know what the other person cares about and how you can connect with them.

Talking about the underlying science of what causes climate change is generally unnecessary since around two thirds of the US public already believe in climate change or worry about it. The challenge, then is usually not awareness, but inspiring people to act.

Start with undisputed facts. When talking with someone who is unaware or unsure, you don’t need tons of data. You can communicate the science of climate change with some undisputed facts.

The physics of climate change have been understood for 150 years: carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels trap heat in the atmosphere, heating up the earth.

Since we began burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels have increased far beyond any level in the last 800,000 years, and global average temperatures have already increased by 1°C, an increase that leads to a dramatic rise in the number of extremely hot days.

We need to make big changes right now to keep temperature rises below dangerous levels.

Create Urgency by Talking About What’s Already Happening.
Climate change isn’t some awful possibility that might occur in the distant future. It’s here already. For example, the seven warmest years in the 1880–2020 record have all occurred since 2014, while the ten warmest years have occurred since 2005. Extreme weather such as heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall are increasing in frequency due to climate change. Here in California, wildfires have increased in size by eight times and the number of acres burned has increased by 500% since 1970.

Make Climate Projections Personal and Concrete.
Climate projections are typically stated in averages, which mask the variability in impacts. For example, if we carry on emitting as we are now, in the Motherlode, we can expect that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which feeds most of our water reservoirs, will decrease by 64% by 2100. Increased warming will continue to suck moisture out of forests, rangelands, and soils, leaving us even more vulnerable to fire. And, by around 2070 we can expect approximately 67 days of temperatures above 100.0 F, despite only having 15 such days from 1961-1990.

Namedrop.
Thousands of prominent scientists, economists and businesses acknowledge the reality of human induced climate change. The world’s biggest oil and gas companies acknowledge the reality of human-induced climate change. Investors are asking the CEOs of companies to consider the impact of their operations on climate change and the environment. Experts and decision-makers across the world, say climate change is the biggest risk facing them (and have done for many years). Insurance companies understand that climate change brings tremendous risks.

Share Ideas for Making an Impact.
Finally, when you talk about climate change, you can give people ideas for what they can do about it. Talking about it is meaningful. Voting and encouraging others to vote for candidates who care about climate change is meaningful. Joining organizations that are working on climate change is meaningful. Opportunities are endless, and in this series, we are going to talk, and talk, and talk to you about what you can do and how it helps. Thank you for listening.

For more detail, see: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/how-to-talk-about-climate-change-5-tips-from-the-front-lines