Keep it in the ground - campaign updates

The University of Washington will remove direct investments in thermal coal from its $2.8bn (£1.8bn) endowment, following a vote by the board of regents, its governing body.

In a statement on Thursday, the board’s chair Bill Ayer said: “The regents take very seriously their responsibility for managing the university’s investment portfolio. It has made divestment decisions only a few times on matters it felt represented important values. That we decided to divest from coal companies today reflects the seriousness of the climate change problem.”

Thermal coal is mainly used in power generation.

The decision follows a three year campus campaign. Alex Lenferna, who has lead the effort, said: “The University of Washington’s divestment from thermal coal represents one important step forward towards climate justice.”



In other news

It’s been a week of ups and downs in the divestment world.

Edinburgh University rejected calls for full divestment from fossil fuels on Tuesday, prompting protestors to occupy the finance department. The university has the third largest endowment in the UK.

andrew perry (@andy_pee_tho) Graciela Chichilnisky arrives at @EdUniPandP #edunidivest pic.twitter.com/Fh2WafPT4q

Libby Brooks, our Scotland correspondent, filed this update on the protest:

The Nobel-prize winner who was the lead author on the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change joined the on-going student occupation at Edinburgh University on Friday. Graciela Chichilnisky, the Argentine American mathematical economist and an authority on climate change, gave her support to the student activists who have been occupying the university’s finance department in protest at Tuesday’s decision by the university court not to divest from fossil fuels. Chichilnisky, who is understood to be visiting the country on a speaking tour, will address the students at around 9am on Friday morning. She has engagements during the day but has insisted that she will return to spend the night with the occupation. This may bring her into conflict with university authorities who yesterday reneged on their agreement to allow open access to the occupation. Asked whether Chichilnisky would be bringing her own sleeping bag, Kirsty Haigh, student campaigner with Edinburgh People and Planet and a member of the occupation laughed: “I hope so because we don’t have many spare!”

Activists are protesting outside City Hall in London on Friday after Boris Johnson rejected a motion by the London assembly calling on the institution to divest its pension fund from fossil fuels.

Climate Revolution (@climate_rev) Friday morning, 15 May: Mad as hell? Tell Boris what you think! Join Divest London: http://t.co/KsMNdP9DQc pic.twitter.com/EK7SWce8R3

Elsewhere in the capital, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine became the first health research organisation in the world to divest from coal companies. Campaigners say it is “a good first step” and hope, of course, that it will encourage the targets of the Guardian’s divestment campaign, the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust, to follow suit.

In case you missed it ...

“I want people to hate me,” the controversial climate sceptic Marc Morano tells the Guardian in this week’s episode of “the biggest story in the world”. Tune in for an insight into the political scene in the United States, one of the most significant players in the climate change story. You can download the latest podcast here.

We revealed the eye-watering extent to which taxpayers in the US are subsidising the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, granted by politicians receiving significant campaign contributions from the industry.

Marshall Islands may stop registering oil rigs, says foreign minister Read more

On Wednesday, the Keep it in the Ground team met Tony de Brum, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands. The island nation in the Pacific Ocean is on the frontline of climate change, with the vast majority of people living less than three metres above the sea. He told us that divestment and the Keep it in the Ground campaign “makes a difference ... it lends more credibility to what we are doing [in the international climate talks]”.



Tony de Brum (@MinisterTdB) A real pleasure to meet with @guardian @guardianeco team yesterday working on the 'Keep it in the Ground' campaign. pic.twitter.com/SeNK2jcOnE

We’re happy to have launched a Keep it in the Ground poetry series, curated by UK poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The 20 poems, by various authors, all tackle climate change, starting with “Zoological Positivism Blues” by Irish poet and Pulitzer prize winner Paul Muldoon.

Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger was interviewed on CBC, Canada’s national public radio broadcaster. You can listen to it here.

Get involved

Many of you have told us that you want to divest your own money – be that in your bank, savings or pension. So this week we launched our “divest your life” series, with a guide by money editor Patrick Collinson on how to divest your pension. There is much more to come, including a Q&A and the stories of people leading the charge.

Do you want to divest your life? Sign up here and get the series in your inbox.

Others have been in touch to request news about solutions and alternatives. The world’s most efficient solar electricity system is not a bad place to start. The technology, which uses a zero-emission engine invented by a 19th-century Scot, is currently being tested in South Africa’s Kalahari desert.

More stories of hope are on their way but if you have further requests, send them to the team at keep.it@theguardian.com.