On Friday 24th March, UK Divest is holding a day of action to push councils all over the UK to divest their pension funds from the fossil fuel industry. Argyll & Bute Council is a member of the Strathclyde Pension Fund, which invests around £836 million in big polluters like BP and Shell.
The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of our pension funds contributing to climate change, they can be a key part of the solution.
Thanks to the efforts of campaigners, over 1,550 organisations have already begun divesting $40.51 trillion from fossil fuels, including the Welsh Parliament, 101 UK Universities, 5 local councils, the Church of Scotland and the country of Ireland.
Councillors in Glasgow, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire have also passed motions calling on the Strathclyde Pension Fund to stop gambling millions on fossil fuels and instead invest now in the transition to a liveable future for us all.
How can I take part?
You can join members of Time for Change Argyll & Bute throughout March in writing postcards to our local councillors, urging them to push for divestment. Politicians receive emails all the time, but it’s much rarer for people to send them physical post, so your message will be harder to ignore. The aim is for each councillor to receive as many postcards as possible, to show the scale of support for divestment across Argyll. You can find out who your local councillors are below.
Writing to your councillors is easy! Just download and print this postcard template and cut it into four postcards. You can send all four to different councillors, or give some to friends and family to encourage them to write to their councillors too.
Next, write a message to your councillor. Here are some examples of what you might want to say about divestment (feel free to edit and make it personal!) :
To have the biggest impact, we are going to send all the postcards to the Council’s offices in Kilmory, Lochgilphead. The address is:
Councillor [name],
Argyll and Bute Council,
Kilmory,
Lochgilphead,
Argyll,
PA31 8RT
Before you send your postcard, take a photo of yourself holding it and send it to us at info@timeforchangeargyllandbute.org. You can also post it on social media with the hashtags #TimeToDivest and #DivestFromCrisis. We’ll share all the photos on the day of action (24th March) to show how much support there is for divestment in Argyll!