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To: Vice Chancellor

Swansea University: Divest from Fossil Fuels!

🎉🎉 VICTORY! In March 2019 People & Planet announced that the Swansea University has divested from all fossil fuel companies!

An absolutely huge congratulations to the Swansea Divest campaign for their tenacity & commitment to climate justice. Without them this win would not have been possible.

Now students are demanding Swansea aligns its careers services with its green image & excludes oil, gas & mining companies from student recruitment. The campaign was recently successful in getting the university to stop advertising campaigns on behalf of extractive industries, now they must be excluded from jobs boards and careers fairs too!

📢 Add your voice & amplify the call for Fossil Free Careers here https://peopleandplanet.org/petitions/fossil-free-careers/fossil-free-careers-swansea

Keep us winning 👉 www.peopleandplanet.org/donate

We want Swansea University to:

• Make an immediate statement of principle, expressing its intention to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies within five years
• Immediately stop making new investments in the industry
• Instruct its investment managers to scale back the university’s existing holdings in the fossil fuel industry over the next five years.

Why is this important?

The world in which the students of Swansea University are to graduate into is currently threatened by the reality of climate change. Already the world is suffering the effects of 1°C rise in global average temperatures. Last year, Arctic sea-ice cover had retreated to its lowest levels since the beginning of satellite records, and the average global sea level was 1.4in above the 1993-2010 average. The world is experiencing more severe draught, wildfires and flooding, which impact the world's poorest most severely; the World Health Organisation estimates that climate change is causing at least 140,000 deaths per year. The fossil fuel industry is unequivocally driving us towards a global climate crisis, and we will not keep dangerous climate change at bay without halting our extraction of fossil-fuels.

The university has both a moral and a financial duty to its students to withdraw its investments from the fossil fuel industry. The moral case is clear: if it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. Furthermore, fossil fuels are a dangerous investment. The value of companies like Shell, BP and Chevron is based on the assumption that they will be able to dig up and sell their fossil fuel reserves. But if the world gets serious about stopping climate change, that would mean keeping 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and the assumption that forms the basis for these companies' value will be undermined.

We call on Swansea University to lead the way on this issue, and protect the future of its students by divesting from the fossil fuel industry now.

Swansea, United Kingdom

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Updates

2022-08-18 05:05:26 -0400

Petition is successful with 825 signatures

2014-04-06 20:00:59 -0400

500 signatures reached

2014-02-16 15:06:06 -0500

100 signatures reached

2014-02-14 10:18:59 -0500

50 signatures reached

2014-02-14 07:12:27 -0500

25 signatures reached

2014-02-12 16:54:58 -0500

10 signatures reached