Environmentalist Says UMC Must Divest from Fossil Fuels to be Faithful to Scripture

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A United Methodist Insight Special

Internationally known environmentalist Bill McKibben says he can't claim a church office any higher than Sunday school teacher, but he still knows scripture. And to his reading, the Holy Bible compels The United Methodist Church to give up its investments in fossil-fuel companies.

Considered the godfather of today's global environmental movement through his seminal 1989 book "The End of Nature," McKibben spoke for nearly half an hour during a 90-minute March 7 webinar co-sponsored by Fossil-Free UMC and the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement. The session was moderated by the Rev. Richenda Fairhurst, a United Methodist clergywoman and creation care advocate who authors the "JustCreation" newsletter. Also contributing to the "Conversation on Divestment" were the Rev. Sharon Delgado, a United Methodist clergywoman and convenor of the Fossil Free UMC campaign, and Cathy Velasquez Eberhart, a UMC EarthKeeper and a leader of UM Creation Justice Movement.

Crafting his talk around a scripture framework, McKibben gave the online audience of around 100 participants four reasons that the UMC should give up its fossil-fuel investments.

Reason One: 'We're in a lot of trouble'

"We're in a lot of trouble," the environmentalist began. "Our weather records go back about 200 years, but 2023 had the hottest weather on this planet since humanity began etching symbols on bones 125,000 years ago, according to scientists studying ice cores and geology."

McKibben cited the increase in weather-related disasters:

  • 2023 flooding in such disparate places as California, his home state of Vermont and typically desert-like Libya, where massive rainstorms burst dams and washed 10,000 people out to sea where they drowned in an hour.
  • Increased wildfires, such as those that burned through thousands of acres in the Texas panhandle days before the webinar;
  • Extreme heat, with 2023 ranked as the hottest year ever since humans became the planet's prevalent species.

"Climate change is the biggest moral challenge ever because the people who suffer the most have done the least to cause it," McKibben said. "All of Africa produces only10 percent of the greenhouse gases fueling climate change, while the USA produces 25 percent."

Reason Two: Divestment encourages renewable energy

Second, McKibben said that fossil-fuel divestment plays a major role in the world's shift to renewable energy, especially solar energy.

"God gave us the sun that shines down on earth for free," McKibben said. "In the past 10 years scientists and engineers have dropped the cost of alternative fuels by 90 percent. That's a 'water-into-wine' kind of miracle that allows us to imagine bringing the climate crisis to a halt."

Again, McKibben cited statistics on the effects of burning fossil fuels:

"We could rely on the energy from heaven instead of the burning hell we've created, and we could do it in short order," the environmentalist said.

Reason Three: Time is running out

Third, McKibben said, fossil-fuel divestment must be done fast because the Earth is rapidly reaching climate tipping points from which there is no return.

"God gave us a beautiful planet but it has limits," said the environmentalist. "If we melt all the Arctic sea ice (leading to sea level rise affecting coastal cities), nobody has a plan for how to re-freeze it."

Reason Four: Fossil-fuel companies lied to us

Finally, McKibben said, fossil-fuel companies have not working "in good faith" on climate change solutions.

"The fossil-fuel industry has spent the past 30 years systematically building an architecture of climate change denial," said McKibben. "Fossil-fuel companies' scientists predicted back in the 1980s what the world temperature would be like in the 2020s (from burning oil and gas). They built their drilling rigs higher to compensate for sea level rise, but they didn't tell the rest of us."

The environmentalist tagged economic profit as the reason behind fossil-fuel companies’ resistance to alternative fuels.

"God gives us the sun for free," McKibben said. "Once you put up a solar panel, the sun gives energy. You can't make as much money with solar as you can when you control coal and gas; that's why fossil-fuel CEOs are the richest in the world. They're working hard to gain control of political systems to stop dramatic change."

McKibben said while the UMC has operated on a "hopeful idea" to keep engaging with fossil fuel companies such as Exxon through shareholder petitions on alternative energy, the companies "have made it abundantly clear they won't come around as long as they can keeping digging up stuff and setting it on fire."

McKibben, who co-founded the environmental activism organization 350.org, contended that divestment is "a powerful statement from people who matter that they no longer want to participate in this particular 'shell game.'" He cited $40 trillion in divestments from universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford and from governments including New York City, Quebec province in Canada, and the state of Oregon. Later in the conversation, McKibben, a Harvard alumnus, noted that his alma matter – "a hedge fund with a college attached" – has a $50 billion endowment staffed by up-to-date financial professionals and still chose to divest from fossil fuels.

"Even we Sunday school teachers have read in the Bible that we're to protect creation," McKibben said. "It's the first thing God asks us to do. We need to act with boldness and overturn a table or two of this particular set of money-changes in God's temple of creation."

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, a media channel she founded in 2011 to amplify the news and views for and by marginalized and under-served United Methodists.