Guest Post: Bold Moves Against Fossil Fuels in Washington, DC

Guest post by DC Divest -- a local, citizen-run, all-volunteer campaign to get the District of Columbia government to stop investing in fossil fuel companies.

The deadlocked congress in our nation’s capital can make positive change in our country feel hopelessly out of reach. But people power on the local scale has made meaningful steps in fighting a battle that the whole world is facing: climate change. DC Divest, a citizen-run, all-volunteer campaign, is making headway in Washington toward getting the District to remove investments in fossil fuel companies from its portfolios.

DC Divest is just one of hundreds of fossil fuel divestment fights across the globe who mobilized in response to 350.org's call to action to begin local campaigns. Over 20 DC residents who are passionate about getting our city to take bold climate change action have come together, meeting regularly to plan actions and strategize to convince the DC government to protect its residents and pension holders from climate disaster.

At the urging of DC Divest, six DC Councilmembers co-introduced the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act of 2013 last September. The legislation directs the DC Retirement Board and the District’s Chief Financial Officer to withdraw holdings in the 200 privately held companies with the greatest reserves of fossil fuels from DC’s retirement funds (for police, firefighters and teachers) and the Health Annuity Trust. In November, thirty-six community members, financial experts, and climate scientists testified in favor of fossil fuel divestment at the DC Council’s hearing on the bill.

There is a history of divestment in the District of Columbia. The DC Council passed a resolution in 1983 mandating divestment from companies doing business with South Africa to pressure on its government to end Apartheid. And we modeled the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act off of a bill unanimously passed by the DC Council in 2009 mandating divestment from companies doing business with the governments of Sudan and Iran.

While DC Divest draws inspiration and ideas from the university and college divestment movement, our fossil fuel divestment campaign faces a different set of challenges. First and foremost, city and state investment portfolios, while funded with taxpayer money, are the pensions of the people who serve our city. So, it’s critical for these campaigns to engage with those pension holders and and present them with the many studies that show that divesting from fossil fuel companies improve returns -- that change is needed and beneficial.

Second, Washington DC is home to diverse communities – life-long residents of all races and ethnicities, immigrants from many countries, diplomats, students, non-profit workers, government employees, and of course, many, many lawyers. As such, it is crucial for divestment activists to reach beyond our communities into others and connect with people on issues of mutual concern.

Since the XL Dissent, we've been doing just that to grow community support for the bill. We’ve engaged in events leading up to the DC elections to get public officials and candidates to talk about climate change, and gathered the support of 19 national and local environmental and religious organizations for a sign-on letter in support of fossil-fuel divestment to Mayoral candidates.

There is much more that needs to be done. The DC Council will likely not mark up the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act until May. In the meantime, DC Divestors are engaging with residents throughout the District to highlight how ending the city's over-reliance on fossil fuels can improve the health, safety and financial security of all residents (except perhaps the fossil-fuel lobbyists on K Street).

If we succeed in getting the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act passed, we believe it will be a victory that will inspire campaigns worldwide and show a stark contrast to our Federal Government, which seemingly would rather let world citizens perish than take one penny away from a runaway fossil fuel industry. And yet, we know that divestment here and everywhere is only one of many steps needed to avoid climate catastrophe. With the relationships and skills we're developing through DC Divest, we plan to continue to spur climate action in the District until we're safely on a path of climate sanity.