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The campaign around the world to divest from fossil fuels has really heated up this year. Students at Swarthmore, Yale, Harvard and University of Washington among many others demanded their institutions put their money where their mouth is and stop investing “in an industry that is actively destabilizing the future that our education is meant to prepare us for,” as one student at Swarthmore put it.
“Coal is in fact a bad investment” – for California, divesting from coal made a lot of sense http://t.co/m2SeqRUf5u pic.twitter.com/CicdPmyDnL
— 350 dot org (@350) September 3, 2015
Not all of the campaigns so far this year have been successful, but to date, 397 institutions have at least partially divested—including foundations, faith groups, pension funds, governmental organizations, universities, nonprofits and for-profits. One notable case came from the Norwegian Parliament, which took the unprecedented step of mandating that its sovereign wealth fund (the richest in the world) divest from coal burning and coal producing companies. And, in the past few weeks, there have been some more major divestment victories: 1. California Assembly votes to divest pension funds from coal California lawmakers passed a bill on Wednesday that requires the state’s two largest pension plans—California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS)—to divest their holdings from thermal coal.
ICYMI: California voted to pull $500b out of coal. Biggest divestment in the U.S. by far. http://t.co/gBFKZXbsQN pic.twitter.com/PBZGfJ9NPI — Karthik Ganapathy (@kartpath) September 3, 2015
“Coal is the fuel of the past and it’s no longer a wise investment for our pensioners,” said assemblyman Rob Bonta, who presented the bill before the assembly. “I’m pleased that my colleagues agree: it’s time to move on from this dirty energy source.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RKwxNTc4x8 The measure to divest CalPERS and CalSTRS—the largest public pension funds in the U.S.—is part of a legislative push in California to address climate change. “What a signal of hope amid California’s relentless drought and the planet’s hottest summer,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. “That California—Earth’s eighth biggest economy—will begin to pull its money out of fossil fuel stocks is a sign about what technologies are the future, and which are the dirty past.”