1000 signatures reached
To: New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer
Divest New York City from Fossil Fuels!
New York City should immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuels and divest from direct ownership in any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.
Why is this important?
Hurricane Sandy decimated the New York City area, causing $65 billion in damage, causing power outages, destroying homes and leaving a path of wreckage from the Rockaways to Riverside Park. It's time for NYC to stop investing our pension funds in oil, gas and coal, and go fossil free!
We know that Sandy was fueled in part by Atlantic waters that were 5 degrees warmer than average, a result of human-induced climate change. Our city government is taking steps to make our city an example of low-carbon urban living, from painting bike lanes to mandating energy retrofits -- and much much more must be done.
And yet, New York City's pension funds for city employees, teachers, police, firemen and school employees are all invested in coal, oil and gas companies that dump carbon into the atmosphere for free, and rig the political system so that they can continue to do so.
If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. After Hurricane Sandy, New York City should be a shining light in the fight to combat climate change -- to do that, it's pension funds must divest from fossil fuels.
A report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative has claimed that the world can only burn 800 more gigatonnes of carbon equivalent and stay under the two degree Celsius limit. A recent analysis of the world's current fossil fuel reserves, drawing on research by Oil Change International, has shown that if the world were to burn all current fossil fuel resources, then it would burn 982 gigatonnes of carbon equivalent. This means that we can no longer develop and build fossil fuel infrastructure; the age of fossil fuels must end immediately, if we have any hope of staying under two degrees Celsius. Our pension funds must follow suit and knowing that there can be no world in which the fossil fuel companies persist, we call upon New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer to commit to immediately freeze all investments in fossil fuel companies and divest the pension funds from these companies within five years.
Read more about the need to divest and end all fossil fuel infrastructure here https://newrepublic.com/article/136987/recalculating-climate-math
Over 3000 people from New York City have signed petitions calling upon Comptroller Stringer to divest the New York City pension funds from all fossil fuel holdings.
To get involved in the campaign, go to 350nyc.org