Jude Sampson finds climate resilience in community-building

Written By Peter Allan

By Patricia Lane

These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity.

Jude Sampson finds resilience in community.

In high school, Sampson co-led the organizing of 10,000 people in the 2019 Fridays for Future Halifax climate strikes. This 20-year-old is now encouraging their university, Dalhousie, to divest from fossil fuels.

Tell us about Divest Dal.

Since 2013, hundreds of students and faculty have tried petitions, marches, information sessions, debates, occupations, protests and economic analysis to convince the university’s board of governors to divest Dalhousie’s endowment fund from fossil fuels.

In 2019, the governors adopted ethical sustainable governance (ESG) guidelines and slightly decreased fossil fuel investments, but the results are disappointing. The guidelines are used to select only the least-offensive fossil fuel companies, which is a strategy misaligned with our Paris targets, and the change in investment is insignificant given the depth of the climate crisis.

This year, we want to place the issue on the agenda of the next board meeting. At the very least, we hope they will study its performance in comparison with other divesting universities, like the University of Toronto.

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Peter Allan
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