100 signatures reached
To: Cambridgeshire County Council and district councils within Cambridgeshire including Cambridge City Council
Fossil Free Cambridgeshire - Divest Now!
We are calling on all local councils in Cambridgeshire 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, and to invest in sustainable industries that help to solve the environmental and social problems we face such as the renewable energy industry.
These commitments need to be made now and be fully implemented by 2020 to assist in instituting the drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change and to transition to a more just and sustainable society.
Why is this important?
By continuing to grant social legitimacy to the burning of fossil fuels, rather than investing in transitioning our energy systems to renewables, our councils are 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. Further, changes to the hydrological cycle and rising temperatures are already disrupting food production and water supplies.
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. Its supporters range from Jim Yong Kim, head of the World Bank, to former archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Institutions across the world are already committing to divestment including Oxford City Council, the British Medical Association and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It is time for local councils in Cambridgeshire to do the same, to draw a line in the sand to commit to keeping public money out of fossil fuels and to instead start funding the transition to a better, more sustainable world.