Respected medical journal The BMJ drew praise online from climate activists and medical professionals for its newly-announced fossil fuel divestment campaign.
“Thank you for your leadership,” pediatrician and child psychiatrist Elizabeth Pinsky wrote Friday on Twitter.
In an editorial published January 23 and entitled “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.
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