British Medical Journal Praised for New Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign

“Thank you for your leadership,” pediatrician and child psychiatrist Elizabeth Pinsky wrote Friday on Twitter.

In an editorial published Jan. 23 titled “Investing in Humanity: The BMJ’s divestment campaign,” the journal’s executive editor Kamran Abbasi and editor in chief Fiona Godlee explained how fossil fuel divestment can restore hope that’s “not yet abandoned in our world today” but “merely besieged” and exert pressure on politicians and the industry putting the planet’s — and therefore humanity’s — health in peril.

The publication will not accept funding or advertising from the industry, Abbasi and Godlee wrote. “We will also explore how else our business might be dependent on fossil fuel companies and take steps to end any such reliance. The BMA [the journal’s owner] has no direct holdings in tobacco or fossil fuel companies.”

“We are clear that income from companies that produce fossil fuels is revenue that The BMJ does not want now or in the future,” they added.

The editorial praised other medical organizations like the AMA who have already pledged to divest from fossil fuels. “Health professionals and medical organizations should not accept the world as it is,” wrote Abbasi and Godlee. “Taking action is a duty to the people we serve and to future generations.”

The piece was also a call to action.

Abbasi and Godlee encouraged other medical professionals and health organizations to sign an online declaration of intent to divest from fossil fuels and to back that action up with divestment in personal finances.

“Divestment offers us an opportunity to end despair and disempowerment, to begin to reclaim our world from misguided political and commercial agendas,” the editorial said. “By divesting now we wish to restore hope for the future wellbeing of our planet and for human health.”

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, shared the editorial on social media, writing, “Fossil fuels are the new tobacco.”

“The footnotes alone are devastating to the climate delayers’ case,” he added.

Others welcomed the new campaign as well: