Divestment campaigners storm Engineering Building at University of Edinburgh
I guess University of Edinburgh didn't like the divestment campaigners hanging out the windows of their Engineering Building or perhaps it was the at least 300 alumni
pledging to withhold donations to school fund.
Good News:
The announcement follows a three-year campaign by The University of Ediburgh People & Planet student group, which has been calling for the university to divest from the world’s top 200 fossil fuel companies. The University of Glasgow, Bedfordshire University and SOAS, University of London have all committed to divest from fossil fuels, whilst the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has committed to divest from coal, and Oxford University has spurned coal and tar sands investments.
Since Edinburgh University first announced its decision not to divest two weeks ago, students have staged dozens of actions including pickets, marches, rallies, banner-drops, die-ins and a ten-day occupation of the university’s central management building. The students have also received endorsements from environmental groups Friends of the Earth Scotland, World Wildlife Foundation Scotland and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, as well as from several MSPs and a Nobel laureate author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to the Kyoto Climate Summit.
Although the university had said on May 12, that they would not divest they have made a complete turnaround.
The University announced today that it is writing to three of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers to inform them that it intends to fully divest from their activities within the next six months, giving the three companies the opportunity to respond in the next four weeks. It is not know what, if any, response from companies might change their stated intent to divest.
Activism works!