Ashley Acord Tactic #3 petition against fossil fuel investments in oil stocks

Ashley Acord

Dr. Kubal

Social Movements M/W 3:30pm- 4:45pm

Petition Fossil Fuel Extraction

            I am part of the environmental activist group called S.A.F.F.E. here on Fresno State campus. Our group is committed to being more environmentally conscious with our decisions regarding fossil fuel usage and rising energy consumption in the hopes that this will cause continuous environmental improvement. We believe we have a chance of doing this by focusing on decreasing our use and dependence on fossil fuels. By making small commitments as a community we can help make a difference on a global scale. Some of the ways we believe we can do this are by: Reducing, Reusing, Recycling, carpooling, driving less and making a commitment to planting something. By encouraging fellow students to do the same, we feel we can make a change.

So, we thought for one of our designated movement tactics that we could use a petition to help raise awareness of a specific issue we have on campus. We designed our petition to focus on the divestment of our Fresno State campus investing in fossil fuel stocks all together.  We are following in the steps of CSUSF in hopes of displacing our funds to renewable energy stocks as they did. By doing this, we will help encourage other colleges that have yet to extract support of these stocks. Once the support declines they will have no choice but to drill less oil and extract less fossil fuel from our earth. Take the money away, take the production capabilities away.

As always getting investors that are looking for profit margins to decide to take a decline in those profits for the benefit of a cleaner air future is a daunting task, but with the mass capability in numbers of students, it is possible if we take a stand and push the pressure in this direction toward divestment. We mailed a hard copy of our petition to the President of Student Affairs and are eager to obtain a reply from him regarding our concerns and the petition. I feel confident it will at least let him know that students here on his campus are aware of these investments and that we do not agree with them.