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Here is another very useful resource for anyone interested in energy and climate change.

The London School of Economic is regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world and is the best for economics. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is highly regarded for its work on the economic impact of global warming.

At a lecture in July 2018 Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder of the institute, gave a lecture on the Mythical peril of divestment from fossil fuels. He carried out a study to gauge the impact of divestment from the fossil fuel sector and found there was no negative impact at all. Furthermore, with significant pressure to reduce emissions and usage of fossil fuels he suggests now is the time to get out of coal, oil, and gas.


He concludes,
Investors with long-term horizons should avoid oil and chemical stocks on investment grounds.  It is time to divest from fossil fuels.

I'm going to recommend some divestment resources. The first is Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis - ieefa.org

I hope readers of this blog find some inspiration and will pursue divestment within their own church, university pension fund or local council. Over the years I have read a lot on divestment and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis ieefa.org is one of the best sources of information and Tom Sanzillo, their Director of Finance, is very quotable.

Recently the ieefa.org released a report —“The Financial Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment”— that gives an up-to-date and robust reasoning for divestment. The article IEEFA update: Divestment 101 provides a useful summary of the report and this graph which shows the poor performance of fossil fuels over the last 5 years.

THE WORLD is on fire. Wildfires have raged from Athens to the Arctic. Heatwaves have broken records in Africa, Japan, North America and Europe. Sadly, the wildfires and heat have led to lives lost and property destroyed.
In Ireland, we suffered a very wet winter, and the wettest decade in 300 years. This has been followed by the worst drought in 40 years. Armagh broke its 175-year-old temperature record on 27th June with the heat reaching 30.4 celsius.

Climate change is hitting hard and farmers and vulnerable people are struggling. The Church of Ireland offered prayers for the farming community, but is that it?

Ireland has one of the worst environmental records in Europe (Irish Times 1st August), so where is the call from the House of Bishops for governments, both north and south, to accelerate the response to climate change, reduce pollution and prevent environmental degradation?

As Bishop N.T. Wright said, “God is the Creator God, he doesn’t want to say, ‘Okay, creation was very go…

The Catholic Bishops' Conference has announced that the Catholic Church is to divest from fossil fuels. This is the second major church in Ireland to announce full divestment following the decision by the Church of Ireland to divest at its General Synod in 2018.

The decisions by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland put further pressure on the other mainline churches in Ireland to also divest from polluting fossil fuels.
The Bishops' Conference spokesperson said, “Today, on the eve of Pope Francis’ historic visit to Ireland, I wish to announce the decision of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference to divest from fossil fuels. The Bishops’ Conference has signed the global Catholic fossil free pledge and today begins the process of divesting its resources from all fossil fuels. In doing so, we are responding directly to Pope Francis’ call in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Sí (on care for our common home) by moving away from fossil fuels “without delay” (paragrap…

An excellent article on church divestment in the Financial Times today. The Church of Ireland's decision to divest at this year's general synod gets a mention.

"We have to do something about it when we have the evidence [that global warming is happening]. And our investment portfolios have to reflect that,"

New Wine Ireland is a Christian conference that takes place in Sligo each year. It aims to help local churches change nations.

I spoke at a seminar this year along with David Ritchie, the Chief Executive of the Church of Ireland's Representative Church Body. The seminar was on how local churches can help care for God's creation. The audio of the seminar is available from New Wine Ireland but I have put the text of my talk and a video of the slides below. The Church of Ireland also released a press article giving a summary of the seminar.


It's time to Care for Creation
Introduction Today David and I are going to give you two short and complementary perspectives on God’s creation and the actions we can take in response to environmental issues. Then we’ll take questions and hear what you have to say.

I’m going to cover three points:
A call to careA call to act, and Time to Take action So first,

[Slide 1] A call to care Conferences like New Wine are great at stirring us up an…