Old Boy discusses divestment strategy

“Money talks,” says Selwyn House Old Boy Richard Brooks ’92. “It can also walk.”

 

Speaking to a group of Senior School students on “School of Life” day April 21, Richard was referring to the recent trend toward environmental divestment—the act of selling off investments in fossil-fuel industries.

 

Richard started thinking about climate issues while still a student at Selwyn House. He earned a BS in environmental science at the University of Guelph, followed by a Master’s degree in forest conservation from the University of Toronto.

 

He has worked for a series of environmental organizations, including Earthroots, Greenpeace (where he was a senior manager). In the last few years, he shifted from forest issues to finance issues, and has coordinated major projects for organizations such as Stand.earth and 350.org, where he has been working on divestment and climate finance work in the U.S. since 2016.

 

In 2018, Richard coordinated 350’s successful “Divest New York” campaign, which, in addition to divestment, resulted in a ban on new fossil fuel projects and damages suits against oil and gas companies. In December 2020, New York State’s $226B state pension fund followed suit with divestment.

 

In between, he helped coordinate 2019’s global climate strike, which saw half a million people marching in the streets of Montreal (including many Selwyn House students), with millions more participating worldwide.

 

The aim of all this is “to solve the climate crisis by looking at where the money is flowing.”

 

In his School of Life presentation, Richard summed up the state of the world’s climate: 2020 was the hottest year on record, with many floods, wildfires and other extreme weather. The impact has been twice as rapid in northern regions like Canada. Globally, the crisis is particularly hard on developing countries, where governments and infrastructure are not as strong.

 

In 2015, the Paris Agreement recommended cutting global emissions in half by 2030 and to zero by 2050, with the aim of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

 

“We will have to eliminate industries that emit carbon and methane and replace them with renewable energy sources if we are to avoid seeing many places on earth become uninhabitable,” Richard said.

 

Since the Paris Agreement five years ago, Richard said, 60 of the largest banks in the world have put more than $8 trillion into fossil fuel companies. “Unfortunately, our Canadian banks are near the top of the list. And that’s not even counting pension funds…which have also invested billions in fossil fuel companies.”

 

Banks and pension funds are taking the wrong approach, he says. They are funding coal and tar sands mines, new pipeline projects, fracking operations and expanding deep-water drilling. “We don’t need new infrastructure,” Richard said. “We need to be retiring present infrastructure.”

 

Also, he pointed out, “Many of these projects are violating Indigenous rights at a time when we’re trying to advance reconciliation.” Through destruction of wildlife habitat and human settlements, fossil fuel developments tend to impact poor communities, penalizing those who have done the least to create the problem.

 

He asked Selwyn House students to suggest solutions, which ranged from promoting electric vehicles and investing in solar and wind, to more radical tactics of eco-terrorism or simply letting the free market go wild.

 

Denis Dariotis (Gr. 11) warned that many so-called ESG (Environmental, Social and Guidance) funds that claim to be environmentally friendly are really “a Wall Street scam.” Richard agreed that government action is needed to avoid such “greenwashing.”

 

Hugo Culver (Gr. 11) said he favoured a demand-side approach, in which consumers force the issue by boycotting environmentally harmful companies.

 

Richard agreed that a two-pronged approach is what is needed. “We’re only going to be successful if we tackle it all.”

 

A major part of the solution, Richard says, is “Stopping the money pipeline.” We must move money out of companies that are the greatest emitters, and into climate solutions. The way to do that is to “de-fund and divest.”

 

He describes the New York State pension fund divestment as “A people-powered campaign that took eight years. If New York State can do it, any pension fund or bank can do it.

 

“They did it because of the campaign, but they also did it because it makes financial sense, and they are legally bound to make money for their pension funds. They’ve recognized that investing in coal companies that are going bankrupt…doesn’t make financial sense, particularly in the long term.”

 

“It’s time to put some pressure on Canadian banks.”

 

This must make for some interesting family dinner conversation. Richard’s brother, Old Boy James ’97, works for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.