1,000-strong anti-fossil free petition handed in to King’s

MORE than 1,000 students and staff have signed a petition demanding King’s College London to divest from their fossil fuel investments.  

Students and staff marched over Waterloo Bridge to hand the petition to Vice Principal Chris Mottershead this afternoon.

The petition calls on College leadership to exclude the fossil fuel industry from its investment portfolio and to pledge to be transparent about its relationship with it.

Dr Mark Horowitz and Tytus Murphy, two PhD students leading the campaign, presented the petition to Mottershead in a meeting to discuss their proposal.

Murphy said: “All I know is that we are running out of time and we don’t have time to hide behind smokescreens.”

Currently KCL invests more than £8 million in major oil and gas polluting companies, including Shell and BP.

The Fossil Free campaign is part of a global movement encouraging institutions to divest   stocks, bonds or investment funds from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels.

The movement hopes that an “apartheid style” boycott will raise public awareness about the global climate crisis and trigger a large scale move towards cleaner renewable energies.

This year, public figures including KCL alumni Archbishop Desmond Tutu have spoken out on the importance of environmental divestment.

Fossil Free KCL aims to follow in the footsteps of Glasgow students who successfully lobbied for their university to become the first fossil free academic institution in the UK this October.