Tell Public Pensions: No new money for the world's dirtiest fossil fuel companies!

As the climate crisis deepens, fossil fuel companies show no signs of slowing down their polluting projects. But they can’t do it without help from big investors, including public pension funds.

To pay for their dirty projects, fossil fuel corporations must raise billions of dollars by selling new corporate bonds or shares to investors or getting loans from banks. Public pension funds, which manage the retirement savings of public employees like teachers and firefighters, help fossil fuel companies raise more money, mainly by buying bonds, which funnels workers’ hard-earned savings into new drilling, pipelines, and polluting power plants.

But our public pension funds don’t have to be part of the problem. They can be part of the solution, investing in climate solutions while protecting workers’ retirement savings. Pensions have the power to prevent dirty deals, by committing not to buy newly issued bonds or shares from companies expanding fossil fuels, stopping the flow of money that enables toxic pollution and climate chaos.

Public pension funds are managed by state and local officials who are accountable to pensioners and taxpayers. Fund managers have an obligation to protect workers’ savings for the long term, but too often they’re focused on short-term returns and fail to act on the growing threat that climate change poses to these investments. This needs to change — and the most important thing pension funds can do is stop providing new money to the most climate-destructive companies, unless they change course.

Take action: Send a message to your state’s public pension fund to stop the flow of money supporting fossil fuel expansion.

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Stop Investing New Capital in Fossil Fuels

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Dear State Treasurers, Comptrollers, and Public Pension Financial Officers: As a steward of our public resources and the retirement savings of many in our communities, you need to be a proactive leader in addressing the growing climate-related risks that jeopardize our economy and our savings. As a major investor, your decisions have significant influence on the practices of many companies, and on the growth and stability of the resources that you have a fiduciary duty to manage for the long-term. Your investment and proxy voting decisions help determine whether companies have strong climate targets and implementation plans that are credibly aligned with what’s necessary to preserve a habitable planet and a prosperous future. The climate crisis is worsening, and it’s being driven first and foremost by the expansion of fossil fuel development. This expansion is only possible because fossil fuel companies that are unable or unwilling to change course continue to access new capital from banks and investors, including pension funds. Too many investors are also not using their shareholder voting power to hold polluting companies accountable. Climate change poses major risks to our communities and to our retirement investments. A growing number of financial experts predict that if current global warming trajectories continue, we will lose a significant amount of economic output and investment value in the coming decades. In order to fulfill your fiduciary duties of care and loyalty, you need to use your power to take action to mitigate climate risks. That starts with the financing that our public pension funds provide to dirty energy companies and other big polluters. If corporate polluters continue to pump more and more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, it will not only have disastrous effects for our planet, but also for our economy and life savings. You have an obligation to do what you can to prevent that. I am calling on you to fulfill your fiduciary duty by changing the investment practices of our public pensions in order to help mitigate the growing systemic and systematic risks that climate change poses. To do that, we need to stop the flow of capital to the biggest polluters by committing not to buy newly issued bonds or shares from companies expanding fossil fuel production. It also means you need to use your proxy voting power to hold companies across key sectors accountable to demonstrate real climate action, not just disclosure of their own risks. I am calling on you to use that shareholder power to move companies to reduce their climate impacts and to not use our public resources and savings to provide additional capital to the companies putting our investments in jeopardy. As public pension fund trustees and managers of public resources, you have a fiduciary responsibility to manage beneficiaries' savings in a manner that mitigates climate-related financial risks. This is your responsibility, not only to people around the world and future generations, but to your beneficiaries who will lose out if you do not put the long-term value of their portfolios over the short-term profits of companies wrecking the planet. The time is now for you to stop investing new capital in fossil fuels and to engage your full power as a shareholder to help avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Thank you.

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