Church leaders and civil society groups advocating clean and renewable energy sources on Thursday appealed to banks and financial institutions funding coal projects to withdraw their support for the development of this dirty fossil fuel.
“By asking these banks to withdraw from coal, we are asking them to withdraw the support they are granting to our collective demise. These financial institutions have the option to either help coal-fired power plants poison our people and our planet, or to shift the balance in favor of having clean energy for everyone. To choose what is good and right for all is their moral obligation,” said Bishop Broderick Pabillo, Auxiliary Bishop of Manila.
According to the group, we barely have a decade to avert a looming catastrophe brought about by climate-changing carbon emission.
In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its special report on a global temperature rise of 1.5°C, which served as a wake-up call that impacts excessive carbon emission of the past are much worse than previously thought.
Despite the threat it brings, the 1.5°C rise from pre-industrial levels is already the best possible scenario still left for humanity, as it translates to a greater chance of survival for more climate-vulnerable communities and species in comparison to less ambitious or business as usual global pathways, the statement pointed out.
The catch, however, the IPCC warned then, is that the world has roughly twelve years left to create a radical shift to low-carbon societies if we still want to grab hold of the 1.5°C lifeline.
And the 12-year deadline, beginning 2018, required that the use of coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, must be reduced from its 2010 levels by 78% in 2030, and to near zero by 2050.
For climate-vulnerable Philippines, this is not a matter that can be comfortably postponed or delayed. The emergency needs to be addressed now, the statement said.
Also, the statement indicated that in the Philippines, 13 local banks, including the top ones, have lent or underwritten US $6,303 million to coal interests from 2017 to 2019.
“As renewables continue to become even more viable, and as the global response to the climate crisis strengthens with the expected rise of policies restricting coal’s playing field, coal is on its way to become mere stranded assets and liabilities. These banks, are only setting up trouble for themselves,” the statement pointed out.
For his part, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos said, “We join hands with the many communities and organizations who have long been resisting the dominion of coal and other fossil fuels in issuing a challenge to the banks funding coal –that they can choose to be bringers of hope instead of destruction.” —LBG, GMA News
