FossilFreeUMC

William Myers

In 2023, The California-Nevada Annual Conference passed two resolutions linking climate change with the financing of fossil fuels.  The first was the petition to add “fossil fuels” to the list of United Methodist ethical investment screens, which Fossil Free UMC is now working to pass at General Conference.

The second resolution was inspired by The World Council of Churches initiative, “Climate-Responsible Finance: A Moral Imperative towards Children,” which links the impacts of climate change on the world’s children with the strategy of engagement with banks that are invested in fossil fuels. It is a call to churches and church members to take responsibility for the fossil fuels emissions produced through our banking and investment practices. This campaign is an example of a broader conversation taking place globally about intergenerational justice, not just to protect the children of the future but to address the impacts of climate change on children now.  

William Myers, a member of the Fossil Free UMC Coordinating Committee, has been part of these larger conversations, which involve the World Council of Churches, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and other global institutions. William shares here why he is so passionate about taking action to address climate change, including divesting from fossil fuels, for the sake of the children:

One of the most important ways we show love to our children is to protect them from violence, especially death and harm perpetrated against them by adults. Such protection is everywhere considered a basic right of all children.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, human caused climate change is identified as a form of violence against children. It also qualifies under the international definition of “child maltreatment” published by the World Health Organization, which addresses what we call “child abuse” as a child health issue. There also is a literature in which child health and protection experts designate human caused climate change to be a form of child abuse. From these global perspectives, the suffering of children under anthropogenic climate change is much more serious than merely an unfortunate side effect of climate policy differences; it is in principle a violent crime. 

Why? First of all, for well over a decade, children have been reported by epidemiologists to comprise the vast majority of climate change victims of death and harm to health. For instance, UN-assisted research shows that young children under five years of age accounted for half of the over 43,000 total deaths attributed to the impact of climate change in Somalia in 2022.

Around the globe, most child deaths and other harm from the effects of climate change occur in poor countries contributing almost none of the carbon emissions, primarily from burning of fossil fuels. It is a case of the rich killing the poor, out of sight and out of touch. But not out of ignorance. For well over 30 years the world’s nations and fossil fuels corporations have been repeatedly and systematically warned by a well-mobilized scientific community about the lethal effects of carbon emissions–most of them from fossil fuels–on human health, especially children, and the environment. That information has been so completely packaged and transmitted that today there is no such thing as a government or fossil fuels corporation that is unaware of its likely effects on the health of people, especially children. 

That suggests government and company decisions to continue or expand fossil fuels production for profit can logically be regarded as amounting to premeditated murder and other injury as part of so-called “structural” violence against children that is perpetrated by organizations and other social structures. There is already a published academic and legal literature exploring this perspective. Legal mechanisms are not yet well developed to prosecute such “structural” criminality in courts of law, but they are being explored and under development.

While for the moment it seems unlikely that the financing of such nefarious activity will be similarly targeted, those investing money in fossil fuels might want to consider whether they wish to be recognized as knowing financial supporters of lethal and other violence against children that is increasingly being viewed as criminal and that is formally declared inconsistent with children’s fundamental human rights.   

For more on Intergenerational Justice and children, see #7 of our general talking points, Ten Reasons Why The United Methodist Church Should Divest from Fossil Fuels.

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    William (Bill) Myers is retired from the United Nations, where he helped UNICEF and the International Labor Office promote the protection of children and their rights. He has also served various non-profit agencies. Currently he is involved locally and internationally in inter-generational efforts to protect the young and future generations from threats of the intensifying climate crisis.