Presbyterian Church to retain its investments in fossil fuels

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Environmental activists say they’ll keep trying to convince the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to shed its investments in fossil fuels after its General Assembly voted decisively last week to maintain such investments.

The biennial General Assembly, after lengthy debate during its meeting in St. Louis, defeated a proposal on Friday that would have divested entirely from the fossil-fuel industry. Instead, the assembly voted to use its status as a shareholder to continue advocating among such corporations for reductions in actions causing climate-warming emissions.

The final vote of 409-106 was a formality after a previous procedural vote of 332178.

Nobody speaking in the debates denied the scientific consensus that carbon emissions from fossil fuels are causing climate change, including increasingly disastrous storms and droughts. The only question was what to do about it.

Those in the majority said the church could be more effective “at the table” with the industry. Allen Kitchen of the Beaver-Butler Presbytery in southwestern Pennsylvania said even those who consider the fossil-fuel industry as inherently disastrous should follow the example of Jesus in biblical stories in which he engaged in dialogue with “morally repugnant” tax collectors and extortionists.

But divestment advocates were deeply disappointed, and several staged a “die-in” outside the entrance to the meeting hall after the vote, seeking to illustrate the lives expected to be lost by disasters and drought aggravated by climate change.

“Sadly, some people think we have time to debate and sit at a metaphorical table for years to come,” said the Rev. John Creasy of the Open Door, a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh’s East End. Rev. Creasy was one of the advocates for divestment, which also was endorsed by the Allegheny County-wide Pittsburgh Presbytery.

Rev. Creasy said his next goal is to help churches adopt cleaner energy and other practices to demonstrate that the carbon-free “future we’re talking about is actually possible and happening.”

And he will continue to advocate for divestment. “We’ll be back in two years,” he said.

The denomination has about 1.4 million members nationally and about 26,000 in the Pittsburgh Presbytery. Despite declining numbers, it remains one of the largest Protestant bodies in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Separately, the General Assembly responded to the #MeToo era with a measure that “confesses its failure to listen to the long-silenced voices of survivors of clergy sexual misconduct” and pledges reforms.

The measure includes calls for: mandatory training on sexual misconduct for denominational employees; ongoing transparency on how many misconduct cases are brought; provision of resources to churches on healing from sexual trauma; and the establishment of a task force to monitor these actions.

The fossil-fuel measure affirmed existing policy that hasprompted the church’s office of Mission Responsibility Through Investment to file dozens of shareholder resolutions and other actions. As of late 2017, the church had about $166 million of its pension and foundation funds invested in corporations on an index of fossil-fuel producers, a tiny fraction of a trilliondollar industry.

The denomination has joined in shareholder resolutions that, for example, contributed to ExxonMobil urging — unsuccessfully — that President Donald Trump keep the United States in the Paris climate accord; Phillips 66 issuing a humanrights report; and Marathon and Valero agreeing to issue sustainability reports.