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To: City Council and city pension fund managers

Divest Cincinnati, OH from Fossil Fuels!

**The City of Cincinnati** should immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuels, and divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.

Why is this important?

Our local government has a responsibility to divest from an industry that’s destroying our future, and reinvest in solutions to climate change.

We can not count on the federal government, even as extreme weather events like the record rain fall in the Duluth area last Spring overwhelm local budgets. We have the solutions, but we won’t see any political progress on the issue until we can weaken the power of the fossil fuel industry.

All 88 counties in Ohio qualified for drought relief from the USDA due to the summer drought of 2012, a year that set a new record as the hottest year in the US since temperature recordings began. A total of 1369 counties in 31 states sought drought relief, and our planet will continue to warm from climate change driven by global warming.

Wisconsin scientists have published scientific reports showing that the temperature in Wisconsin will increase 4-7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. Ohio won't be much different.

Fossil fuel companies are planning to ship tar sands oil, the dirtiest most toxic fossil fuel on the planet, across the Great Lakes, only to sell it to China, NOT in the US. A tar sands oil spill in the Great Lakes could have the same or worse economically devastating impact on the Great Lakes and the State of Ohio, as the BP oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention destroying entire ecosystems and the economies dependent on them.

The bottom line is this: divestment is the only moral choice for governments that care about their citizens. Solving the climate crisis is the only practical choice for governments that care about their solvency. It's time to divest from fossil fuels now!

Cincinnati, OH

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2015-02-12 10:16:15 -0500

25 signatures reached