Degrees of Change
A journalism project following the ultimately successful student campaign to encourage Newcastle University to divest its endowment assets from fossil fuel companies. Degrees of Change tells the story of the people behind the slogans - their myriad backgrounds and motivations, and how they found common cause in the drive for divestment.
Making History - An introduction to the city that coal built
There’s an old phrase about “taking coal to Newcastle” that says a lot about this city and its past. Newcastle was a place pressed to the coalface of the Industrial Revolution, and its relationship with fossil fuels helped shape Britain and the world. You can still see the marks it left behind on our campus. Stephenson, Parsons, Armstrong- our lecture halls honour names that are synonymous with innovation, discovery and the pioneer spirit of this corner of the world. But in the flip book of the mind they also generate impressions of a bygone era, with steam engines that stutter into life and factory chimneys that heave black clouds into grey skies. Newcastle’s history is as vivid as its present is vibrant, and our university helps remind us that as students here its legacy is our legacy, and its story envelops our own.
A Woman's Place is in the Revolution - FemSoc and the perfect storm of inequality
Women the world over (but especially in poorer countries) find their institutional barriers to economic and social parity met with the rising tide of climate change. 75% of climate refugees are women, most fossil fuel companies are exclusively owned by men and on the world stage, women occupy less than a fifth of all government positions...
“If it’s an economic issue, then it’s going to be a feminist issue” said Jess Poyner, a third-year architecture student in the audience. Among her ideas for change are ensuring that more women from poor and isolated communities are assimilated into debates about climate change. When so many of the world’s poorest are expected to absorb most of the pain from climate change, feminism can’t just content itself with a few shattered glass ceilings in penthouses. Nor can it rely on powerful elites to take the lead.
“All social justice movements are entwined within climate change, but more Hillary Clintons aren’t necessarily going to make a difference.”
Farewell Divestment Week - Forming a community of action
Divestment week, like the movement it represents, has succeeded in humanising an issue rooted in cold arithmetic. The past week saw, for the first time ever, students of all backgrounds and aspirations talking frankly and openly about climate change. Even the word “divestment” itself, perhaps once reminiscent of little more than dry boardroom speak has captured the imaginations of young people long accustomed to business-as-usual. Divestment implies ownership, choice and the freedom to decide, something alien to a generation whose opportunities have been stifled since birth by debt. Debt for having the audacity to pursue further education, and debt for an economic system that is consuming beyond our planet’s physical limits...
“We could deliver a petition with 100 names or 10,000”, said campaign leader Rob Noyes. “What’s important is making clear this matters to us.”
Connecting the Dots - The journey from graduation to environmental devastation
Diniy Rosli graduated this summer with a degree in marine biology. As is customary, his congregation included speeches that hailed a promising future for all the graduates. The world’s shelf seas, like the North Sea that lingers a metro ride from the city centre, were a common theme, along with the oil and gas that lie buried deep beneath them. Outside the day was calm and pleasant; a good day to talk about the future.
On the 29th of August Diniy returned to Brunei - the small and densely forested tip of the island of Borneo; the home he had left for England and a degree three years earlier. Homecoming for students is often a strange mingling of new and familiar sensations, but Diniy’s experience was overshadowed by something wholly different.
“When I got back home, the first thing I noticed was that the whole sky was grey, and for some reason, much hotter than I remembered. It wasn’t until two or three days later that I realized that it wasn’t going away.”
Where the Red Line Falls - For whose future are we fighting?
COP21 was billed everywhere in the media as the world’s last, best chance of actually doing something about climate change, but at the time of my journey into France the outlook was bleak. Talks had begun to falter with vanishingly little time left for leaders to arrive at anything meaningful. Specific values and dates for emission cuts were jettisoned for bland, non-committal “statements of intent”. Debate was spiralling past agreed deadlines and into the early hours. Every day the draft text got a little shorter, and every day less of the problem was addressed. Seeing all of this from afar was described simply by one source within Fossil Free Newcastle as “abject frustration and disappointment”. But the kind of direct action pressure groups had advocated before the attacks was no longer viable in their aftermath. From French police, stretched taut with angst, the message was clear: stay away from Paris.
Knowing they risked arrest, three Newcastle students travelled to the French capital at the end of last term to join the thousands demanding an ambitious climate treaty. With only a sleeping bag, some clothes and my notepad, I set off after them.
The End of the Beginning - The countdown to summer break, and eternity
When I began following this campaign in the autumn I was invested with the idea that Newcastle was ground zero, the historical epicentre of the coal era and the ultimate birthing place of the climate crisis. As my thinking went, this red brick was fired in the same kiln that fuelled an empire’s rise and lit our path into the modern age. Stephenson, Parsons, Armstrong- the names that decorate maps of our campus suggest we cling tightly to this heritage, even if we grudgingly acknowledge it’s a history that has burdened us with carbon pollution and a future that looks dimmer every day. As such, Newcastle had it in itself to shake the world again by disavowing the ghosts that still haunt these halls and letting in the fresh air of clean energy. But as I have come to realise throughout all of this, things are rarely as simple as they seem, and in Newcastle’s case there is more to be feared of the living, than the dead.