Tom Hayes
Labour city councillor for St Clement’s

For years, Oxford scientists have been leaders in warning about the threat of climate change.

More recently, we’ve seen these urgings backed up by climate change-related emergencies and damage.

If we accept that climate change is happening and causing harm to people and the planet, we should work to halt the dangerous rise in world temperatures.

Banning ourselves from investing in companies which burn fossil fuels is the newest way of tackling our climate crisis.

Oxford University has thankfully agreed to join Oxford City Council in embracing fossil fuel divestment.

Oxford is one of a number of local authorities working to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, from its use of sustainable design principles in physical planning to promoting community energy projects.

The city council has won an array of awards which recognise its sustainability campaigns.

Fossil fuel divestment takes the battle to cut emissions in a new direction.

The divestment campaign in Oxford is forcing action that most governments won’t take but many people want.

Oxford’s fossil fuel divestment campaign has cross-party backing, which enables the city to further develop the low-carbon values necessary to sustain political action in the long-term.

Part of the campaign’s success lies in delegitimising fossil fuel burning.

As the list of divesters increases to include universities, churches and charities – all with prestige and leadership roles in policy debate – the odds of larger communities outside of Oxford waking up to the power of an idea improve.

What large cities say and do, particularly when those two things match, carries weight in other town halls.

Declaring loudly that we accept the advice of climate scientists to leave more fossil fuels in the ground, unburned, has a wide reaching effect.

Other councils are looking to emulate this new ethical investment policy as they rethink how best to put social and financial value at the centre of their responses to declining public contributions and rising public demand.

Residents in their own areas will hopefully feel as empowered as those in my St Clement’s ward to intensify the battle against climate change.

Some 650 individuals and 180 institutions, holding more than $50bn of assets, plan to divest over the next five years.

The Rockefeller family in the United States, which made a vast fortune in oil, has joined other philanthropists in announcing plans to divest.

An Oxford University report describes the effect of divestment on attitudes in clear terms: It shifts them strongly in the direction of clean, renewable energy.

Inevitably, any decision about investment has to be grounded in reality to have any real impact.

Local government has taken the brunt of cuts for the last two comprehensive spending reviews.

When there are lots of things that councils no longer do that they used to in 2010, it’s fair to ask if it is it right to divest from fossil fuel burners if there is any loss of income. Investors question the wisdom of placing money with firms unable to turn their current assets into future profits.

From a financial point of view investors worry that oil, gas and coal industries are overvalued because their value is calculated using assets they may not burn.

For Oxford City Council, it has been fruitful to diversify into a variety of fund types offering attractive interest rates.

New investment opportunities in renewables are opening up across the county and local authorities are stepping into the market, giving good returns.

Largely because of these opportunities Oxford had no direct holdings in fossil fuel funds to immediately freeze and reinvest in socially responsible companies.

Whatever we do to get our emissions down won’t speed up nature’s cleaning up of the 43 per cent excess of carbon dioxide in the air quickly enough to avoid a warmer world.

Divestment is not the answer to the climate crisis, but it helps and drives debate on our energy future away from its poor state.

And you, as taxpayers, can also be assured that your hard-earned money is being used to bolster, not hurt, investments in meaningful action on climate change.