Fossil Free University of Auckland

We demand that the Vice-Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon actively supports divestment from coal, oil, and gas #ForAllOurFutures

[uoafossilfree-blog]

14 students occupy Vice Chancellor’s wing, 29 May 2017 | the March for Divestment from fossil fuels, 31 May 2017

[uoafossilfree-blog]

University of Auckland Graduates want their degrees to be fossil free | May 2017

[uoafossilfree-blog]

An Untitled Fossil Free Poem by a core team member

Author’s note: I wrote this in a fit of boredom, musing about the Fossil Free campaign and the University of Auckland’s inaction, fuelled by the sheer arrogance on the part of the powers that be. That divestment isn’t important enough to act on. The implicit assumption being that it won’t affect them. I guess I didn’t really know what I was writing when I first put pen to paper. But looking back I think there is a simmering anger at the lack of respect for the world around us and the life that is threatened by this inaction on climate change.

--

The ocean burns. Migration shifts. It’s a conspiracy – Loony lefties. Guess someone forgot To tell the birds. Look at you, Stiff shirts, Neck ties, All collared up Covered up. You think, Your cufflinks, Your power suits Will protect you? We are coming for you The flies you keep swatting away. Well, we are gathering speed, picking up People along the way. Soon it won’t just be us. Soon this urban heat island Won’t be an island. Soon the earth will scream, Loud enough for you to hear her. Loud enough that everyone will hear her. Can you hear her now? She’s already screaming. Listen closely, To the tingling in our bones, As she chokes and sputters Clawing at our Throats. Tuvalu. Bangladesh. Marshall Islands. Oil clogs our arteries, Our relatives in the sea. Soon. The screams will reach a crescendo Soon the world will turn away From men like you. Men who had power, And did nothing. Men who said – It’s out of my hands.

Feeling inspired, upset, creative, angry, driven, hopeful? Join us on Wednesday 31st May at 12pm to take action on climate change at the University of Auckland. Click here to march with us and demand Vice Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon actively supports divestment from oil, coal and gas companies.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Fossil Free University of Auckland core team member Erica Finnie speaking about Leadership on Climate Change , September 2016

[uoafossilfree-blog]

New insights from the Fossil Free Fellowship

Our Fossil Free Auckland Uni campaigner Erica Finnie shares insights about developing the skills to run an effective campaign. Erica is completing a BSc(Hons) in Environmental Science and will be in November 2016 representing the New Zealand Youth Delegation at COP22: the annual United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, where leaders will plan real climate action following the bold promises of the 2015 Paris agreement.

Repost from 350.org.nz/blog

I’ve just spent a week on the fringe of the Dandenong Ranges National Park in Belgrave, Victoria with some of Australia’s most inspiring campus activists. This was the second training retreat as part of 350.org Australia’s Fossil Free Fellowship, a six-month training in community organising. It’s been nearly three months since I started the fellowship in July, and it’s pretty overwhelming to reflect on how our campaign has grown.

The community organising model I’ve learnt in the fellowship has been fundamental to strengthening our campaign. Community organising is a leadership practice to enable others to achieve a shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. The aim is to move beyond mobilisation and engage activists to lead and have autonomy over campaigns. Community organising is a vital approach to shift power imbalances and address the complexities of climate change: climate justice won’t happen overnight and we need to involve supporters who will lead change long-term.

We’ve been campaigning for fossil fuel divestment at the University of Auckland since November 2014. Our campaign has relied on a small core team of committed volunteers, whose hard work has led to a petition of 3,000 calling for divestment; support from the Faculty of Science Sustainability Network; endorsements from a range of students’ associations and clubs including AUSA; and increasing awareness of climate change and fossil fuel divestment on campus. It’s been an incredible amount of work for a small team, and I’m incredibly proud to be part of it.

The fossil free fellowship has allowed me to understand the importance of sustaining, strengthening and growing our campaign team. This isn’t a semester-long battle. In order to achieve divestment from fossil fuels, we need to demonstrate overwhelming support from students, staff and alumni to the University Council and University Foundation. We need a core team of volunteers with shared values and skills to run an ongoing campaign that can be sustained beyond semester timelines. Building strong relationships and growing our team has been the focus since July, and wow-it is going well!

We’ve grown our team to over 10 core members and another 10-15 regular contributors who come to meetings, take leadership on tasks and actions and keep the campaign running. Our petition is 3170 signatures strong and has flourished since we started a weekly petition stall on campus. 191 staff members have signed an open letter calling for the University Foundation to divest. We held a great speaker event to celebrate those showing leadership on climate change, and calling for Stuart McCutcheon to do the same. We’ve shared lots of skills through training workshops within the team and through collaborating and sharing resources with other campus teams.

I feel incredibly privileged to learn from the Fossil Free Universities team: Ray, Vicky, Keith and Mark; and other Australasian students involved in fossil free campaigns at their universities. The training, theory and support I’ve had have contributed to a more structured campaign at the University of Auckland.

• Have you seen our new video explaining why we care about stopping investment in coal, oil, and gas companies, and what you can do to help?

• Add your name to the petition here for The University of Auckland to stop funding climate change.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Today marks five years since New Zealand’s worst environmental disaster - the Rena oil spill. Each year since has been the hottest on record, and yet the University of Auckland continues funding climate change through fossil fuel investments. Sign the petition now for UoA to divest: www.bit.ly/divestuoa

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Wednesday Davis

My story begins a long time ago. From my mother being a GreenPeace activist involved in developing charcoal-based biofuels, I was exposed to the world of sustainability and climate change at a young age.

However, living in a very polluted city in China during middle school was the first time I truly realised how polluted our world is and how much it needs to change.

Going from clean and ‘100% Pure’ New Zealand to a city where you couldn’t drink the water, or walk barefoot outside, or even see the sun through thick clouds of smoggy pollution, really changed my perspective.

The rain was acidic and left dirty water spots on cars and windows. The local river was brown and you couldn’t put your feet in the water, and I had an asthma attack within a few days of living there from the air. Is this a world I wanted to live in? No.

When returning to New Zealand it was amazing being back. But within a year, New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster, the Rena oil spill, happened not far from my home in Mount Maunganui. My weekends were spent cleaning thick, sludgy puddles of oil off the beaches. It was a summer of not being able to swim in the water or be able to do anything about it except help clean.

I had never supported oil drilling, but seeing first-hand the effects that even a small spill could have on the natural environment made it clear: the extraction of fossil fuels must stop and we need to look after our environment in any way that we can.

And so I decided that my way to help promote a clean and sustainable environment was to form an environmental committee at my school. Throughout high school I tried but wasn’t successful, but coming to the University of Auckland and meeting the Fossil Free UoA team earlier this year was inspiring. I’m now looking forward to the rest of semester, creating discussion, and actively taking a stand against the investment in fossil fuels by our Universities and Banks.

I care about divestment because I want to see a future where we invest in sustainable energy sources and work towards a sustainable future. Where children don't have to swim in polluted waters or clean oil off their beaches, and can safely drink the water in their homes. Where ultimately, children can see the sun and stars without the pollution we create from fossil fuels every day.

________________

Sign the petition now for The University of Auckland to stop funding climate: www.bit.ly/divestuoa

[uoafossilfree-blog]

On Friday 23 September Dr John Wood, Chancellor of University of Canterbury, accepted our petition of over 2000 signatures. Students showed their support for divestment from fossil fuels. Thanks all for being there and showing you care! Photo credit: Christian Michelsen.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

      Mariah Alyssa Medel

Fossil Free really changed a lot of things for me.

I had never actively participated in an environmental group before, but with the feeling of wanting to do something good, I signed the petition, and watched ‘This Changes Everything’ at the first 2016 community event. And it did.

First I was just taking care of the stall, but quickly became part of the Core Team. It was one of the best feelings ever, finally being passionate about something incredibly important, and most crucially, actually doing something about climate change.

The vote in my Filipino Students’ Association general meeting to gain official support for the fossil free campaign has probably been the most defining moment of my time at FFUoA. It showed the harsh reality that not everyone is going to be as passionate about divestment as myself. Let’s just say, a lot of tears were involved (I’m a very emotional person). It was frustrating because I didn’t know why I cared so much. I had only been in Fossil Free for a week, but I was already so affected by it in that short amount of time.

But I know now this is because of the amount of faith I have that I’m doing the right thing. I know that may not fly with a lot of people. But to me, it’s the right thing to do. I always repeat this over and over: it is one step. Divestment can’t create miracles on its own. And maybe, if we all play our part in this, perhaps we can create that miracle. One step is always better than none. It’s better than accepting that that’s the way things are; that it’s the direction our society and world is going.

I don’t want another Typhoon Haiyan where everyone feels grief and sadness, and acceptance of just another natural disaster that we have no control over. I want people to know that disasters of such intensity are tied to climate change. They’re a consequence of our carelessness combined with nature’s way. Not just ours (Filipinos), but everyone’s actions. They may not occur often, but when they do, they hit terribly. They affect millions. So many lives. We may not feel it as much here in New Zealand, but it still exists.

In particular, I remember the 8th November 2013. I was watching the news and seeing people of my country suffering, and worrying if my relatives were all right, asking: is someone I know there? I watched children on the street crying for their family, dead bodies lying limp on the streets, the horrible aftermath. And also a feeling of hopelessness - that it was going to happen again, because it was starting to become a tragic norm.

I felt like there was nothing I could do to change it, or to lessen it. Nothing I could do to help because I was so far away.

But here I am, taking this step. Because living sustainably isn’t going to create change at the rate we need it to. The system needs to change, and with that, it’ll be easier for all of us to change too.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Student group Fossil Free University of Auckland held the ceremony in the University quad in front of around 100 students, representing the way the University is undermining its students' research into climate change, by investing in the very companies causing the damage.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Áine Kelly-Costello  

I've been blind my whole life. As such, the importance of standing up for equity and fairness was instilled in me long before I even knew words like 'equity'.

In my first year of uni, Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, came to speak to Aucklanders. I had never taken more than a passing interest in climate change campaigning before, despite staunch agreement with the breadth of research on the impact of human-caused climate change.

That night, though, I was inspired by McKibben’s tireless advocacy and simple message. He explained how we can only afford to burn another 565 gigatonnes of CO2 before we start hitting particularly dangerous levels of global warming, but that despite this, companies already possess fossil fuel reserves to the tune of 2795 gigatonnes. Naturally, about four fifths of said reserves need to stay in the ground to prevent the sort of climate change that no one wants to experience. That, in turn, means that the fossil fuel industry should be leading the transition to renewable sources of energy - something they are not doing. Which is where fossil fuel divestment comes in.

On some mundane day in late 2014, I was engaged in the most conscientious pursuit of Facebook newsfeed scrolling when a post from 350 Aotearoa popped up asking if anyone would like to be involved in a divestment campaign at Auckland Uni. Without a second thought, I emailed, feeling guilty all the while that I didn't have any particular campaigning, nor environmental justice-type background. I was simply put myself forward. Here was a campaign with a clear goal for a cause I believed in - that I wouldn't even have to set up.

Or so I thought. I ended up being wrong about the set-up part, but it turned out I was far from the only person keen to give the idea legs, once the word started spreading. Fast forward two years to September 2016, and we have a 3000-signature-strong petition from students, staff, alumni and the public calling on our university to divest. We've written numerous letters to the University administration on the subject, brought our concerns to the University Council and garnered the support of over 15 student associations and clubs. Most importantly, we've had hundreds of conversations about the need for our university to take more leadership in demonstrating its public opposition to the main driver of human-caused climate change.

Meanwhile, Auckland Uni's administration are demonstrating little beyond disinterest on the subject. This is probably my last semester at UoA, and the material lack of progress on divestment is frustrating. But in this knowledge, I am all the more proud that I could play some part in making divestment at UoA a position that the university administration are well aware is in high demand by the university community, despite their reluctance to act. Unbeknownst to them, their reluctance has only strengthened my leadership and communication skills. It’s lead to lively discussion on the merits of ethical investment generally within the wider university community. And above all, their inaction has made me and all my fellow divestment campaigners even more determined to show our university that we insist they take leadership on climate change seriously, by stigmatising the industry that is wrecking our planet.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Our Fossil Free UoA core team member Erica upskilling on leadership and organising at the Fossil Free Fellowship 2016 hosted by 350 Australia

[uoafossilfree-blog]

     Fossil Free Fellowship

Three members of Fossil Free university groups in New Zealand went to a training for students involved in divestment campaigns. This was the experience of Erica from Fossil Free University of Auckland.

By Erica Finnie

In July, Charlie, Jess and I travelled to Sydney to take part in the first training workshop for the 6 month Fossil Free Fellowship 2016. This was a week of intensive workshops run by 350 Australia focused around community organising. We had specific workshops around telling our own stories and the story of our campaigns, building relationships, tactics, strategy and timelines. This introduction to the fellowship has given us the foundations to build strategic divestment campaigns in New Zealand that are grounded in theory.

The training has helped me to identify my own strengths and develop these to take a stronger leadership role in the University of Auckland divestment campaign. My greatest learning has been how to tell my personal story of why I care about climate change. I have spent a lot of time since the training reflecting on why I stay involved with 350, and learning to articulate this to others to motivate them to get involved.

We’ve put a number of my learnings into practice and had a hugely successful start to semester, with 67 new members and a strong core team of over 20 volunteers. We want to grow a sustainable network of young climate activists on campus, and provide skills and ongoing training to run a successful divestment campaign.

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Our movement celebrates leadership on climate change and calls on Vice Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon to step up and divest The University of Auckland from fossil fuels. 15/9/16

[uoafossilfree-blog]

Photo credit: Christian Michelsen