Time to make the faux fur fly

The growing movement to get churches and universities to divest their share portfolios of fossil fuels would have to go down as one of the most pathetic, naïve campaigns in history.

As a journalist who has worked in the fossil fuel industry for many years I can tell you selling their shares is not the way to hurt the industry.  Many of the major fossil fuels companies are buying back their own fracking shares for Christ sake!

So here’s a bit of inside information for Bill McKibben, 350.org, and all those municipal councils, churches and universities who have joined or are joining the fossil-fuel divestment movement – stop splashing around in the kiddies’ pool.

If you really want to hurt the fossil fuel industry I have two words – faux fur (“fake fur” for those too young to remember Brigitte Bardot).

If you really want to hurt the “big polluters” don’t boycott their shares, boycott their products.

And what better way to start than by mobilising Hollywood and the fashion industry. Faux fur is pure fossil-fuels, it’s made from petrochemicals and coal.

Get Hollywood to go back to Mink. How hard can that be? They may not openly admit it, but you know the women would love it! Have you ever felt a Mink coat?

And for the men, bring back hunting! Oh yes, if you’ve ever tried it, you will know deep down how much you’d love to go back.

Think of the environmental benefits here in Australia if we could turn all our feral animals – rabbits, foxes, camels, pigs, deer -- into furs. The bilbies would be dancing in the forests.  

Believe me if you can get celebrities and the fashion industry to go fossil-fuel free that will do far more damage to share prices than a few unis and churches selling their interests.

Promoting divestment of fossil fuels while continuing to be a loyal fossil-fuel customer is only cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If your objective is fossil-fuel free, you need to get out of the kiddies’ pool, put your togs on and swim some laps.

Fashion is just the beginning. Once we get rid of faux fur, spandex, nylon, polyester etc, you could then take it to the next phase.

 Google “How to turn my car into a chicken coop”.

I guarantee if you can get that movement going the oil companies would start divesting their own shares.

Then it’s time to focus on going 100 percent renewable energy for our electricity.

Again, as an insider, I can reveal that this is a lot easier than they are telling you.

They are distracting you wind and solar – again, kiddies’ pool.

Apart from being hopelessly inadequate – wind and solar are both dependent on fossil fuels for their raw materials – silicon, lubes and greases. So forget about them.

Real renewable energy comes from hydro and biomass – we need more dams and more wood.

For relatively little cost we can convert Hazelwood into a wood burner.  This has proved to be a very effective tactic for meeting renewable energy targets in Europe.

Even Australia exports wood pellets to Europe to help meet renewable energy quotas and in some cases burning wood is cheaper than coal.

Well we could really ramp up this energy by burning wood for baseload power in our coal plants. Think of the jobs created by resurrecting our timber industry. Then watch what happens to the price of coal shares.

If you are serious about going “fossil-fuel free”, don’t get churches to divest of their shares, get the congregations around the world to divest of fossil-fuel products.

For Lent, Catholics could rid themselves of their synthetic clothes, plastics, smart phones, computers, TVs etc.

Go back to hunting for Lent! Then watch who divests of fossil fuels.

Dive into the deep end, really go fossil fuel free.

If you don’t, you’re obviously a “climate sceptic” who doesn’t care about our planet.