Tell Public Pensions: Hold polluters accountable!

Public pensions need to do much more to help tackle the climate crisis and reduce climate risks in their portfolios.

Every year, public pension funds, which manage the retirements of public employees like teachers and firefighters, vote at public companies’ shareholder meetings. The ballot includes who should be on the boards of directors and shareholder proposals on a range of issues, including actions that are critical for addressing the climate crisis. To vote efficiently on thousands of company ballots, pension funds follow their proxy voting guidelines, which lay out what a pension believes are best business practices and how they’ll vote on key issues like climate.

Public pensions collectively hold a lot of voting power at major polluters’ annual elections. They also have a major reason to vote for strong climate proposals: to provide secure retirements for decades to come, we’ll need to help protect the economy from climate chaos. Climate-driven impacts on the economy are already significant: according to one recent peer-reviewed study, the climate crisis inflicted a global economic toll of $16 million an hour in extreme weather damages between 2000 and 2019. (1)

Holding corporations accountable for their climate-wrecking behavior is a key way to reduce this risk to workers’ retirement savings.

All pensions can do more to protect pensioners from growing climate and environment-related financial risks. Strengthening proxy voting guidelines is a key way to ensure stronger climate votes in 2024 and beyond.

Take action: Send a message to your state’s public pension fund to vote for climate action.

If you are a public pension member, please include that in your personal message!

1) Newman, Rebecca and Noy, Ilan (2003), Nature Communications, “The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change | Nature Communications”

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Pensions: Engage your power as a shareholder and address climate change

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Dear Public Pension Trustees and Staff, As stewards of our public resources and the retirement savings of many in our communities, I am calling on you to be proactive leaders 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 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. Climate change poses major risks to our communities and our retirement investments. A growing number of financial experts predict that if global warming trajectories continue, we will lose significant economic output and investment value in the coming decades. Some US funds have taken public strides forward, such as announcing net-zero pledges, investing in climate solutions, or defending the right to invest responsibly. These are critical steps forward. However, all funds have an opportunity to strengthen their climate policies in proxy voting guidelines. I am calling on you to sharpen your proxy voting power to hold companies across key sectors accountable by updating your proxy voting guidelines with clear language to support proposals on climate action, director accountability, climate-related lobbying, Indigenous rights, biodiversity protection, and environmental justice. 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 current and future 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 for you to engage your full power as a shareholder to help avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis is now. Thank you.

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