Cohousing-L Mailing List: fossil fuel divestment

[hrb885 (hrb885]

I am writing to inquire whether any cohousing communities have chosen to divest 
any of their operating or reserve monies from funds or banks that may support 
fossil fuel investments. 

At Eastern Village Cohousing in Maryland we recently made such a decision and 
as a result are in the processing of transferring the proceedings of our CD’s 
as they come due from Ameriprise to the Self Help credit union in North 
Carolina. We heard about Self Help from one of our members as well as from the 
Green America web site. We even have been able to receive a higher interest 
rate through Self Help than we would have had we renewed with Ameriprise. 

Our community spent several months vigorously discussing this move before a 
decision was made at our Membership Circle meeting in August to go ahead with 
the divestment. 

I am not aware (at least based on a google search) of any cohousing or condo 
association in the country that has taken such an action.

We thus hope that our action can be a catalyst to encourage other communities 
to divest from fossil fuels as a means of raising consciousness about the need 
for urgent action on climate change.

We are also thinking of proposing a panel on climate change for the 2017 
national conference. If other communities have taken action on climate change 
and would like to share what was done perhaps they can contact us to explore 
participating in such a panel next year. In addition 
we will be exploring what else we as a community can do to collectively fight 
climate change, so any ideas would be welcome. 

Herb Simmens