03 Oct 2019 Climate change is the apartheid of our times
According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, corporations, financial institutions and socially conscious citizens must pull us back from the climate change abyss. They have the muscle to make renewables mainstream and reposition fossil fuels as the tobacco of the energy industry. Sadly, the leaders of some of the largest contributors to climate change show little interest in human rights and justice. Companies must step into the gap. The financial sector, in particular … If they don’t want to do it voluntarily, activists must insist that they do it.
According to Desmond Tutu, the South-African Anglican cleric, known for his anti-apartheid and human rights activities, climate change is the human rights challenge of our time.
On the website of the Tutu Foundation, he states that “over the 25 years that climate change has been on the world’s agenda, global emissions have risen unchecked … The most devastating effects are visited on the poor, those with no involvement in creating the problem. A deep injustice”.
According to the experience he gained in the anti-apartheid movement, the tactics used against firms who did business with South Africa must now be applied to fossil fuels to prevent human suffering. Institutional investors, such as ICCR, who fought apartheid with divestment from those companies doing business in former South Africa, remember well. See below the link to the contribution by an extreemely engaged ICCR member, Timothy Smith, Senior VP and Director of ESG Shareholder Engagement at Walden Asset Management.
According to what Desmond Tutu writes in the FT as of October 3, 2019: 
“Corporations, financial institutions and socially conscious citizens must pull us back from the climate change abyss. They have the muscle to make renewables mainstream and reposition fossil fuels as the tobacco of the energy industry“.
“Yet energy companies are continuing to explore for new fossil fuel
reserves that environmental scientists say we will never be able to use”.
“Sadly, the leaders of some of the largest contributors to climate change
show little interest in human rights and justice… Companies must step into the gap. The financial sector, in particular … If they don’t want to do it voluntarily, activists must insist that they do it”.
For further information, see the following articles:
https://greenmoney.com/45years/
http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/2017/03/28/desmond-tutu-climate-change-human-rights-challenge-time/
https://www.ft.com/content/094f028a-de24-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc