Under a timely and symbolically sunny sky Friday in St. Petersburg, activists and elected officials gathered to laud the city's decision to stop investing in the nonrenewable energy industry, at least partially.
The city invests about one percent of its investin' moneys — nearly $6 million out of $450 million — in companies that make money off substances they dig from underground and out of mountains and subsequently burn.
“Taking your investments out of dirty fuels is a good idea," said Tim Heberlein, an organizer for the Suncoast Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "And it's one that's gaining steam.”
Supporters of divestment said it was reprehensible to let oil, gas and coal companies profit from encouraging excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“It is not morally, ethically, economically smart to allow companies like Exxon Mobile and other folks in the fossil fuel industry to make money altering the climate of the planet," said Florida director with the green nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It is simply unacceptable.”
St. Pete joins cities like Seattle, Eugene, Oregon and Cambridge, Massachusetts in doing so, and those who advocate for renewable energy and stronger action on climate change see divestment as a step in the right direction.
“Here we are in the Sunshine City in the Sunshine State," said State Rep. Dwight Dudley (D—St. Pete). "And we want to preserve the beauty, this paradise that we call our state, our city, and our mayor and our enlightened City Council are moving forward to do that. It's a wonderful thing.”
The event had been planned to pressure Mayor Rick Kriseman into taking the city's money out of fossil fuel stock, but Kriseman issued a statement over social media pledging to do that very thing.
“Mayor Kriseman has been recognized for standing up to Big Oil. He's been recognized as an environmental leader, and he supports what [progressive activist group] Awake Pinellas is telling us today, and other groups, to work for a fossil fuel-free world,” said Ben Kirby, a spokesman for Kriseman.
At the podium earlier, Dudley lamented how the state legislature's behavior on climate, or lack thereof, stands in sharp contrast to the action progressive cities like St. Pete are taking.
“The legislature clearly ignores the people," he said. "Unless you're the rich, the powerful, the politically connected, you've got no voice in Tallahassee. They've been working to thwart democracy by threatening the judiciary, threatening and thwarting fair districts, gerrymandering, and defiling, fighting the law that the people passed. So we can't have very high expectations for Tallahassee, can we?”
Glickman wondered aloud about why there's even still a debate on whether climate change exists.
“Every so often someone will come to me and say 'I don't believe in climate change.' And I say, 'well, you don't believe or not believe in climate change,'" she said. "You might believe in the virgin birth or not, but that's a tenet of faith. But climate change is simply parts per million in the atmosphere and it is like your height and your weight. It is simply a measurement.”
The activists then urged the city to divest an even bigger chunk of money, its pension fund, from the fossil fuel industry as well.
St. Pete City Councilman Karl Nurse, who is leading that charge at the dais, said that'll be a little tougher, but that one way to work around it is to demonstrate how risky of an investment fossil fuels are, given how they fluctuate — and often plummet — in price.
“My point is that investing in fossil fuels is a high-risk investment," he said. "And, it reminds me a little bit of the Stone Age, in that we didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones. And we're not leaving the fossil fuel industry age, candidly, because we're running out of fuel … because the cost of fossil fuels, once you include the cost of pollution, is much more expensive than renewable energy, and renewable energy is dropping in price at dramatic rates.”
At the moment, it appears as though Kriseman might be on board.
“The mayor is open-minded and would be happy to think about it, talk it through with Councilmember Nurse," Kirby said. "Obviously, pensions are a little bit harder to control from the city point of view, but he's certainly open-minded to exploring opportunities with the councilmember.”
To those working on climate, divestment is one of many things that needs to take place in order to mitigate climate change's impacts.
“We have an unsurpassed opportunity to confront climate change and to create a cleaner, more prosperous and more just society," Heberlein said.. But it's going to take all the tools that we have. Tough negotiations in Paris, a strong clean power plant at home. A solar energy power initiative in Florida. And hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets demanding … a more sustainable society, and a more sustainable source of energy.”
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2015.