Divestment In Fossil Fuels,
The Unitarian Universalist Association voted to divest its investments in fossil fuels including oil, natural gas, and coal at its General Assembly in Rhode Island in June. In spirit I think it's not a terrible idea. In practice I doubt it is anything more than a symbolic gesture in the short and maybe in the longer term.
Very few people walk to our services (my estimate is 0) on Sundays. We don't stream our services on the Internet. We have no charging stations for electric cars. I see a lot of Toyota Prius cars in the parking lot. We still get our electricity from natural gas and nuclear power provided by Florida Power and Light and there is a significant group of folks that aren't very sure about nukes. We are in a relatively pastoral place, relatively unserved by public transportation. No Hummers, F350, and there was a member that ran his diesel car on used cooking oil and it did smell like French fries.
The roof of the sanctuary and the grounds could be filled with solar panels and I presume we could see power back to FPL, but that costs money as well.
We live in Florida and if we stopped the AC or up north and stopped heating our buildings in the winter I could see lots of people staying home, at least in the summer down south and during the winter up north. Driving fewer miles on Sunday could make a bigger impact for families pocket books, than divesting an endowment of fossil fuel related companies. In some ways this is already happening, a small group is meeting in North Dade rather than driving to UUCM. There may be some theological issues there but distance and time is also an issue.
Ideas do change peoples behavior. I believe in conservation,driving less, recycling, alternative energies, smaller cars, more walking, public transportation, bicycles, smaller houses, turning up the thermostat in the summer and wearing sweaters in the winter and yes I'm concerned about climate change.
I would be happier with more concrete actions and fewer symbolic actions, but agreement about changes and then getting them to stick is difficult.
The next page bemoans a surprising $1.3 million deficit in the parent organization because a couple of expected major gifts weren't received.
Maybe that gift included Exxon stock or some other offensive product of Capitalism. I have no evidence regarding what happened with these major gifts, but my experience is that major gifts are usually complicated things and usually have strings attached and to account for them as part of an operating budget is risky,
Very few people walk to our services (my estimate is 0) on Sundays. We don't stream our services on the Internet. We have no charging stations for electric cars. I see a lot of Toyota Prius cars in the parking lot. We still get our electricity from natural gas and nuclear power provided by Florida Power and Light and there is a significant group of folks that aren't very sure about nukes. We are in a relatively pastoral place, relatively unserved by public transportation. No Hummers, F350, and there was a member that ran his diesel car on used cooking oil and it did smell like French fries.
The roof of the sanctuary and the grounds could be filled with solar panels and I presume we could see power back to FPL, but that costs money as well.
We live in Florida and if we stopped the AC or up north and stopped heating our buildings in the winter I could see lots of people staying home, at least in the summer down south and during the winter up north. Driving fewer miles on Sunday could make a bigger impact for families pocket books, than divesting an endowment of fossil fuel related companies. In some ways this is already happening, a small group is meeting in North Dade rather than driving to UUCM. There may be some theological issues there but distance and time is also an issue.
Ideas do change peoples behavior. I believe in conservation,driving less, recycling, alternative energies, smaller cars, more walking, public transportation, bicycles, smaller houses, turning up the thermostat in the summer and wearing sweaters in the winter and yes I'm concerned about climate change.
I would be happier with more concrete actions and fewer symbolic actions, but agreement about changes and then getting them to stick is difficult.
The next page bemoans a surprising $1.3 million deficit in the parent organization because a couple of expected major gifts weren't received.
Maybe that gift included Exxon stock or some other offensive product of Capitalism. I have no evidence regarding what happened with these major gifts, but my experience is that major gifts are usually complicated things and usually have strings attached and to account for them as part of an operating budget is risky,
Comments
Post a Comment