25 signatures reached
To: City of Greater Shepparton
Divest Shepparton from Fossil Fuels
1) Investigate and disclose the full carbon exposure of its investments, including holding funds with financial institutions that fund fossil fuel developments;
2) Stop any new investments in fossil fuel extraction from the top 200 coal, oil and gas companies;
3) Develop a plan to move its portfolio away from fossil fuels and away from financial institutions that fund fossil fuels within 5 years.
Why is this important?
Climate change is not simply an environmental problem, but an issue of social justice, intergenerational equity, and the viability for future human endeavors. It is now widely understood that we cannot safely burn even one-third of global fossil fuel reserves without dangerously warming the planet for several thousand years.
We are already witnessing the increasing impacts of a warming planet more and more consistently; in the last year alone our country experienced record-breaking heat, droughts, and extreme rainfall. These events had a grave impact on hundreds of thousands of people and cost our country billions of dollars. Experts agree that global warming caused by humans burning fossil fuels will continue to accelerate and intensify these tragic climate disasters.
Through its current investment portfolio, City of Greater Shepparton is facilitating and profiting from the continued and expanding extraction and burning of fossil fuels, despite the harm that these practices are known to be causing to many millions of people worldwide. It is unethical and immoral for our council to be investing in, and profiting from companies that will condemn the planet to climate disaster. Therefore, we are calling on City of Greater Shepparton to divest from the fossil fuel industry.
We believe divestment not only makes sense morally, but increasingly also financially, given the decrease in oil prices and associated investments and likelihood of a ‘carbon bubble’ bursting. Continued investment in companies that extract fossil fuels represents a significant risk to City of Greater Shepparton as these companies will face large devaluations when the world moves to lower emission energy sources.
Let's strengthen City of Greater Shepparton’s commitment to sustainability and social justice by going fossil free.