Degrees of Change is a series following Fossil Free Newcastle and their campaign to make the university’s investments policy reflect the reality of climate change
By Jack Elliot Marley
There’s an old phrase about “taking coal to Newcastle” that says a lot about this city and its past. Newcastle was a place pressed to the coalface of the Industrial Revolution, and its relationship with fossil fuels helped shape Britain and the world. You can still see the marks it left behind on our campus. Stephenson, Parsons, Armstrong- our lecture halls honour names that are synonymous with innovation, discovery and the pioneer spirit of this corner of the world. But in the flip book of the mind they also generate impressions of a bygone era, with steam engines that stutter into life and factory chimneys that heave black clouds into grey skies. Newcastle’s history is as vivid as its present is vibrant, and our university helps remind us that as students here its legacy is our legacy, and its story envelops our own.
Now the year is 2015, and it is a pivotal year for the fight against climate change. The world meets in Paris next month to strike a deal, and its outcome may determine whether or not we condemn ourselves to a climate that is beyond anything we have ever experienced as a species. Clamouring on the periphery will be Fossil Free- an international band of activists dedicated to the divestment of public money from coal, oil and gas companies. Divestment means taking money from the old, and giving it to the new. It’s rare that one word can encapsulate the demands of so many in a single campaign, and doubly so in this case, as Fossil Free is a movement dominated by numbers.
There are three that require particular attention. 2°C- the generally agreed limit to which it would be safe to allow the planet to warm; 565 gigatonnes- the amount of carbon we can still pour into our atmosphere and retain a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees; and 2795 gigatonnes- the amount of carbon currently resting in the reserves of the fossil fuel industry.
To these sobering figures Fossil Free Newcastle, our university’s branch of the global campaign, adds three more. £6.9 million- the sum Newcastle currently has invested in fossil fuel interests; £6.6 billion- the cumulative figure of all British university investments in hydrocarbons; and £1804- the equivalent amount that every student unwittingly invests in the sector through commitment of their fees, which is close to a fifth of the cost of a year’s tuition.
Degrees of Change is your guide to the defining issue of a generation. What follow are the stories of the people behind the slogans- their myriad backgrounds and motivations, and how they find common cause in the drive for divestment. As a student campaign, Fossil Free Newcastle may be unparalleled in its broad base of appeal. To those involved, it’s evidence that they’re rooted on the right side of history. But will that prove enough within an education system that is so heavily indebted to the past?
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