Co-authored by Josh Creaser* and Charlie Wood
Last weekend, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) made history when its Chief Minister - Andrew Barr - committed to divest the Government's investments in coal, oil and gas companies, making it the first state or territory in Australia to do so, and the 350th worldwide.
On the same day, the ACT also became the first Government in Australia to set a 100% renewable energy target. The ACT is no stranger to leadership on climate policy. It also has the most ambitious emissions reductions target in the country and one of the most ambitious in the world.
Yet, all of this local climate leadership in the ACT Assembly is incredibly ironic given the climate craziness playing out just a stone's throw up the road at Parliament House. Whilst the Territory sheds fossil fuel companies from its investment portfolio and aims sky-high on solar and wind, up in the House on the Hill, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his team are busy declaring coal good for humanity. Doggedly, they are throwing their support behind foreign mining giants and multi-billion dollar coal projects, labelling renewable energy offensive and wrecking the policies that would help steer us off a path to climate catastrophe and give our kids a chance at a brighter future.
But no matter how hard Prime Minister Abbott campaigns against climate solutions, he will now have to take his seat at Parliament House, knowing that the ACT will soon be 100% powered by renewable energy and free of investments in the fossil fuel companies that he's hitched his political wagon to so hard.
Of course, the ACT's climate ambition is not simply a case of progressive politicians setting progressive policies. Certainly, Canberra has its fair share of progressive politicians. But it takes a progressive community to demand progressive politics.
Legislating the city's world leading emissions reductions target in 2011 was in large part thanks to a strong community campaign - Canberra Loves 40% - that engaged broad sectors of the ACT community over many months.
So too was the case with last week's fossil fuel divestment announcement. Twelve months ago, Chief Minister Barr dismissed fossil fuel divestment as "gesture politics, that I find frustrating." But Fossil Free ACT campaigners persisted and it is due to their two years of hard work that, on Saturday, Barr committed his Government to divest.
Indeed, in committing to divest, the ACT positions itself not only as a national leader but as a global leader. From San Francisco to Stanford, the Rockefellers to RaboBank and the $900bn Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund to Norway's Capital Oslo, financial heavyweights worldwide are shedding their fossil fuel investments. These investors recognise that to profit from climate wreckage is morally and financially irresponsible. In committing to go 100% renewable, the ACT is positioning itself alongside some of the smartest economies in the world, like Denmark and China, who see that there's a brighter future for their economies in industries that don't wreck the planet.
In committing to divest, the ACT is also charting a financially responsible path. Markets have financed future fossil fuel extraction on the false assumption that what fossil fuel companies have asked investors to fund can safely be burnt. But of course, if we want a liveable future, the vast majority of fossil fuels must stay in the ground. Leading international authorities, like Citibank, HSBC and the IMF, are catching on to this and warning of the financial risks that continued investment in fossil fuels pose.
You need only look at the performance of companies like Whitehaven Coal, currently in the ACT's portfolio, to see this in action. Whitehaven recently posted a quarterly loss in the hundreds of millions - the manifestation of a deeper trend that analysts are increasingly saying will spell the end of coal. With financiers like the World Bank and entire countries like Norway getting out of fossil fuels, the ACT is in good company as it backs away from this sector of the past.
Company like that serves to highlight, again, the illogic of the Abbott Government's attachment to fossil fuels. The ACT is a beacon of hope in Tony Abbott's sea of climate despair. It is an example of the kind of climate leadership that Australia could take and it's a shining case-study in the benefits that flow when Governments listen to their constituents rather than to the vested fossil fuel interests that are crippling our democracy, undermining our communities and wrecking the fragile climate that allows us all to call this beautiful blue planet home. Imagine the positive future we could create if all of our state, territory and local governments were to follow the ACT's lead.
*Josh Creaser is a campaigner with 350.org Australia and was closely involved in the Fossil Free ACT campaign.