APRA AMCOS joins anti-coal movement

With the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris gets to be held November 30 to December 11, APRA AMCOS has joined the global fossil-fuel divestment movement. It sends a message to companies mining coal in Australia and the banks which back them that it is wrong to keep doing so in the face of global warming.

APRA AMCOS will move its holdings to financial institutions committed to fossil-free investment. It’s a step already adopted by thousands of associations and companies including the Australian Guild of Screen Composers, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, the Uniting Church of Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Australian Academy of Science.

The copyright collecting society’s Sydney-based CEO Brett Cottle AM explained, “By diversifying our investments away from institutions which support fossil fuel projects we aim to join those companies who want to send a strong message to the banking world that passive acceptance of inaction on climate change is simply no longer acceptable.”

Some of APRA AMCOS’ 87,000 songwriter and composer members as Missy Higgins, John Butler, Adalita, Nigel Westlake and Ash Grunwald have already stopped dealing with errant institutions on a personal level.

Missy Higgins said, “It’s insane, in this day and age, that banks are still using our money to accelerate climate change. I’ve written to my bank and taken steps to divest, I know many other musicians have, too, and it’s brilliant to see APRA AMCOS now leading the charge.”

Rob Hirst also applauded APRA AMCOS’ decision saying, “Where we lodge our loot turns the tide from greed to green.”

Green Music Australia’s Director, Tim Hollo said, “APRA AMCOS’ leadership is incredibly inspiring. It’s fantastic to see not just so many musicians coming on board with this campaign, saying ‘coal is wrong in an age of climate change, and we want nothing to do with it,’ but also the hugely positive reception they are finding from their fans when they talk about what they’re doing.”

Green Music Australia, along with Market Forces and 350.org, set up Amplify Divestment. It is mobilising musicians, as culturally influential people, to take part in the movement inspired by the words of Bill McKibben, who said, “If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage.”

APRA AMCOS board Chair Jenny Morris added, “Musicians have always had an important role in shining a light on uncomfortable truths and there has never been a more important one than this: coal is out of key with the clear warnings of climate scientists, and it is now out of time.”

Overseas campaigns are challenging financial institutions to reveal just how much they have invested in coal, oil and gas. Since 2005, the year the Kyoto Protocol came into force, bank financing for coal mining companies increased by 397%, according to a BankTrack report. Global coal production has grown by 69% since 2000 and by 2013 had reached 7.9 billion tons per annum.