OK, so I have to make a confession.
Every time I rehearsed this speech,
I got to the point where I almost started crying.
What I want to talk with you about moves me a lot.
And what moves me
is the beauty and the power of people like you and me
standing up together
to solve a problem that seems impossible to tackle.
This is me a couple of years ago.
I was deeply unsettled and overwhelmed by global warming.
I knew it was there, but it seemed very far away and abstract.
And at the same time, I was closely surrounded by its cause:
our global economic system
that is based on digging out and burning fossil fuels -
coal, oil and gas -
which holds responsible for two thirds of our global carbon emissions.
Now, living a normal life in Germany,
I was part of the system every day,
from my consumption to the food I eat, the travel, like in the picture,
the waste I produce.
In fact, I felt that I was so much involved in it
that I didn't even have the right to oppose it.
I was global warming in a way.
And no matter what I would do to reduce my personal consumption,
it would never be enough to solve the problem.
I felt helpless when I thought of it,
and so for a long time, I preferred not to think of it too much.
I'm sure you are aware
that global warming is an increasingly urgent topic.
It's proceeding much more rapidly then expected just now,
and although we have no time to lose,
our political leaders don't seem to take the necessary steps
to break free from those fossil fuels.
Although there are some pretty good options on the table
like introducing carbon taxes,
ending subsidies in the fossil fuel industry -
that are really high, especially in Germany -
or an obligatory carbon footprint label on all the products that we buy
so we actually have a choice
and we foster competition among companies to reduce their emissions.
We get none of this.
And this is even more confusing and unsettling to me.
And I kept asking myself,
"Is there anything I as an individual can do to open the door to change?"
Well, I found there is.
Two years ago, I signed a petition at 350.org.
It's a US based NGO
fighting climate change by building a grassroots movement.
And this movement really excited me.
I saw people taking creative public action.
They were many, they were doing it together,
and they didn't at all seem sad or desperate or aggressive.
They looked like they had a lot of fun.
And I fell in love with that movement.
Now, I have children and I have a job -
I'm a service design strategist -
but at this point,
I didn't at all think about how I would be able to come up with the time
to put some effort into this.
I just knew I wanted to be part of it.
I wanted to end my paralysis.
On the map of 350.org, I found Fossil Free Berlin,
which is the local campaign in the town where I live.
It's a city actually.
When I got to meet these beautiful people,
I learned that their goal
was to get the city of Berlin to divest its capital reserves from fossil fuels.
Just like you might be right now, I was asking myself,
What is this 'divestment'?
I had no idea.
But by now, I've found out three quite amazing things about it
that I want to share with you.
Number one:
Divestment is to pull out our money from the fossil fuel industry.
It's basically the opposite of an investment
because the investments that we have
are being withdrawn from companies that dig out or burn fossil fuels.
Those are companies like Shell, NVE, BP, ExxonMobil, Total -
you get the picture.
It's basically a boycott, simple as that.
Now you may say,
"That sounds like a good idea,
but I don't even own shares in these companies."
I also thought that I didn't,
and then I had to found out that I did.
Not because I ever took that decision and thought it was a really good idea,
but because the ones who received my money did:
public administration, my bank,
my insurances, my pension fund.
No matter who I give my money to,
some of it goes to the fossil fuel industry,
in the form of loans, shares, project finance, bonds.
Today there is almost no exception.
Now, I realized this makes me a stakeholder,
and as a stakeholder I can interfere.
I can tell them that I don't want this.
Chances are better if I don't do it on my own
but together with other people who are in the same position.
And this is how the divestment movement works:
individuals get together
and ask their institutions to divest from fossil fuels.
It's something very simple and obvious we are asking for.
It's to divest from those companies
that are at the root of the system that we need to change.
And it's usually not that much;
it's just between five and ten percent of all investments that needs to be moved.
It's a totally realistic goal, and we can reach it.
So, now you may say,
"Well, if it's not that much money,
who cares?"
And even worse,
"If these institutions divest
somebody else is going to buy their shares, right?"
It's true.
The fossil fuel industry is very big,
and there will always be investors who don't care.
So, will the fossil fuel industry even take any notice of what's going on?
How can divestment actually change anything?
Well, this brings us to the second thing that I learned about divestment.
It's not about money.
But it can cause something else;
it can cause moral bankruptcy.
And you can see an example of moral bankruptcy
if you look at the end of the South African apartheid regime.
In the 80's, students in the US
succeeded in asking their universities to divest from companies
that were doing business with the South African apartheid regime.
And those universities divesting
and talking in public about why they had done so
led to other institutions following:
faith organizations, unions, cities, investment funds.
It spread like a virus.
And this public dissociation was, according to Nelson Mandela,
a crucial factor in ending apartheid.
And Willem de Klerk, the last president of the apartheid regime, can be quoted:
"When the divestment movement began, I knew that apartheid had to end."
[F.W. de Klerk, last president of the apartheid regime]
This is a political leader acknowledging
that once people are ready to move their money
in order to make a moral statement,
they will have their way.
Think about the power that gives to us.
And there is yet a third thing I came to understand about divestment:
it's a precondition for change.
Remember I said earlier that we don't see the necessary political steps?
Well, here is why.
We as a society
currently depend on the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
Because we invested in them everywhere.
Our wellbeing depends on their dirty business.
Currently, as it is, if they fall, we lose our money.
On the other hand,
we know if they remain profitable, the planet will be boiled.
Which one is worse?
We need to understand
that ending this dependency is a precondition
for taking the necessary steps to stop global warming,
for rebuilding our economy
and changing it into one that is based on renewables.
Divestment is not going to solve all the problems immediately,
but it's the first necessary step towards solving them.
And the virus is spreading.
This is what this powerful and wonderful movement
has been achieving in the past 18 months;
all of these institutions have decided to divest.
It's started with a lot of universities in the US,
Yale being the latest example.
Then there was the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund.
They decided to divest their 900 billion portfolio last year.
There were over 60 cities, such as Seattle, Oslo, Copenhagen
and Munster, being the first German city, to take that decision last year,
where responsibles said,
"It was surprisingly easy and quickly done."
And then other huge institutions followed:
The Rockefeller Foundation, The Guardian Media Group,
The British Medical Association,
a lot of faith organizations and the Church of Scotland.
And even the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
who would not call it "divestment," but that is really what they do.
So, the entire sum
adds up to 3.4 trillion US dollars
that are committed for divestment right now.
Now, what about my hometown, Berlin, and the campaign I'm in?
We are not on the list yet,
but we had a meeting with the senator for finance last week.
And he said that he began looking into divestment
just shortly after we launched our campaign,
and he expects it to be done by the end of this year.
We're ten people in a four million town.
Now -
(Applause)
Getting him to talk to us
obviously was a lot of work in the past year.
And I did most of that work at nights and on weekends
because of my family and my job filling my days.
It was very exhausting, but I could not stop.
It was also a challenge for the people around me,
and my husband at times, frankly, almost went nuts.
Thank God, he is here today.
So, over the last winter, I decided to take a climate sabbatical.
I was lucky I could do that.
I wanted more time during the day for the Berlin campaign,
and also, I wanted to do something else,
I wanted to address my own pension fund - Versorgungswerk der Presse -
and make them divest.
I sent a letter to them last fall,
and shortly after, they replied
saying that they had decided to divest partly from coal.
Sometimes it can be that simple; it was just one letter -
and of course, the threat to tell the entire German press about it,
but OK.
(Laughing)
But it is just a first step; it's really too little.
I want my pension to be clean,
and that's why I want them to go all the way.
So I built this website,
and I'm mobilizing journalists and other supporters
to send divestment letters
to the Versorgungswerk der Presse through this website.
I hope you will check it out.
And if you think it's a good idea, contribute.
Now, there is really no need
to go all the way crazy over divestment like I did.
You can actually get things going with fairly little effort.
And that's why I want to encourage you to take action.
Look around you -
the person next to you might be a member of the same pension fund
or a customer of the same bank as you.
You can get together and start by writing a letter.
If you are not sure how to do it, send me an email - we'll get it done.
Now, I've lived in Hamburg, and I know that it's a wealthy city.
If you have money, make sure it does the right thing,
and then go and tell everyone what you did and why.
If we let our financial institutions know
that we do not want to benefit from global warming anymore,
we will set in motion a change process.
I guarantee: the more we are the better.
And my dream is that one day when we are looking back,
the fossil fuel industry will be quoted this:
"When the divestment movement began, we knew that fossil fuels had to end."
[The fossil fuel industry]
Thank you.
(Applause)