100 signatures reached
To: Warwickshire County Council
Warwickshire County Council: Divest From Fossil Fuels
1. Immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuels.
2. Divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.
We are calling on Warwickshire County Council to commit to divesting investments and pensions from fossil fuels, to institute and abide by ethical investment policies that prevent profiting through causing social harm.
Why is this important?
By continuing to grant social legitimacy to the burning of fossil fuels, our council is complicit in driving unprecedented climate change. The warming of our planet is harming people by the millions through the more frequent extreme weather events hitting communities across the world.
We must do all we can to keep fossil fuels in the ground to avert runaway climate change and stop our climate warming above the 2 degrees C. We are already seeing the disastrous effects of climate change across the globe. Allowing companies to explore and drill for more fossil fuels like Fracking or drilling in the Arctic, can only lead to more damage to our climate and fragile eco-systems.
Scientists have recently estimated that fossil fuel reserves still in the ground are approximately three times the size of that which can be burnt to have a 50:50 chance of staying below the agreed target of 2 degrees C of global average warming. Therefore, actions to avert catastrophic climate change will soon deem investments in fossil fuel reserves ‘stranded assets’. This represents substantial risk for investors and pensioners.
It is for these reasons that the fossil fuel divestment movement is the fastest growing divestment movement the world has ever seen.
Currently Warwickshire County Council has £88,368,000 invested in Fossil Fuel investments:
£33,107,000 in direct investments including:
1 BP PLC ORD USD0.25 £9,815,000
2 BG GROUP PLC ORD GBP0.10 £7,322,000
3 RIO TINTO PLC £6,998,000
4 ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC B SHS £5,742,000
5 TULLOW OIL PLC ORD GBP0.10 £2,012,000
With a further £55,261,000.00 projected in indirect investments.
Institutions across the world are already committing to divestment including: Oxford City Council, the British Medical Association, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Warwick University.
PLEASE SIGN if you believe Warwickshire County Council should Divest from Fossil Fuels.