To: The Colorado State General Assembly and Treasurer

Divest the Colorado State Treasury from Fossil Fuels!

The Colorado State Treasury 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?

We are concerned with the moral and economic issues around being invested in companies that contribute to climate change. Climate change is ravaging our state, nation and planet with more wildfires, drought, higher food prices and extreme weather events. While climate change is severely impacting our quality of life now, it is young people whose future ability to thrive - and even survive - on our planet will be most impacted. Not only are the moral implications becoming more apparent, but the economic issues are also becoming prevalent. Hurricane Sandy relief exceeded $50 billion and in Colorado alone insurers estimated wildfire damage exceeded $450 million to personal property by July 2012.
This would not be the first time Colorado has divested state investments on moral grounds. Several years ago, in 2007, a bill was passed requiring divestment from companies supporting atrocities in Sudan. Here, the bill would be based on economic as well as moral grounds. Moreover, the impact of the legislation to our own quality of life - and that of generations to come, would be far greater.

*Update: The Colorado State Treasury has less than .01% of its $7 billion investment in oil and gas. That means that since a small portion of our investment is in fossil fuels it will have essentially no effect on our overall portfolio if we divest! But that also mean that we still have somewhere around $70 million invested in oil and gas, which is $70 million too much.