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To: Vice Chancellor Robert Allison

Divest money from fossil fuels Loughborough University!

After a blistering campaign from Loughborough People & Planet students, this campaign was successful in super quick time. Loughborough now has a full divestment commitment and has gone Fossil Free!

Want to see all other universities do the same? Support our work: peopleandplanet.org/donate

We call on Loughborough University to:

1. Move its money

- screen for and exclude the fossil fuel industry from Loughborough University's investment portfolio
- immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies
- divest from the fossil fuel industry and shift funds to positive, ethical investments within 5 years, e.g. http://www.ftse.com/products/indices/ex-fossil-fuels (FTSE All-World ex Fossil Fuels Index Series)

2. Support a clean energy future and green jobs

- provide Loughborough students with ethical careers advice and opportunities
- refocus research & expertise on climate solutions and phase out climate-damaging fossil fuel research
- accept research funding from fossil fuel companies only for renewable technologies

3. Stop the greenwash

- publish full details of its financial and other ties to the fossil fuel industry
- refrain from giving out honorary degrees to fossil fuel industry CEOs (and start giving more to real leaders!)
- stop accepting sponsorship and advertising from fossil fuel companies

Why is this important?

Loughborough's endowment fund (http://alumni.lboro.ac.uk/page.aspx?pid=1062), with one part funded by alumni to benefit generation upon generation of students through the interest the fund earns, should not do so at the expense of our planet.

If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. Too many UK universities support the fossil fuel industry directly through their research, their endowments and investments and their partnerships with some of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world like BP and Shell.

UK students have decided to take on the fossil fuel industry by getting our universities to go Fossil Free. People & Planet is joining forces with the 350.org campaign that has been sweeping across North American campuses.

We believe that our educational institutions should serve the public good and live up to their promises to tackle climate change. No UK university in their right mind would accept funding from or invest their funds in tobacco companies these days - it’s inconsistent with their research on cancer. The same holds true for fossil fuel companies causing climate change and yet most universities still do not recognise this. That’s about to change!

200 publicly-traded companies hold the vast majority of the world’s proven coal, oil and gas reserves. Those are the companies we’ll be asking our institutions to break their links with. Together they hold five times more carbon in their fossil fuel reserves than we can safely afford to burn to stop runaway climate change. It’s that simple…if you do the maths.

From Canada’s dirty tar sands to Arctic drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) for shale gas - the fossil fuel industry is scraping the bottom of the barrel and causing huge environmental and human devastation in the process. Withdrawing our institutions’ financial and moral backing for this climate-wrecking industry is crucial to tackling climate change.
Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

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Updates

2021-03-09 09:48:46 -0500

Petition is successful with 1,015 signatures

2018-04-17 17:38:10 -0400

1,000 signatures reached

2017-11-21 11:33:02 -0500

500 signatures reached

2016-03-02 04:21:35 -0500

100 signatures reached

2015-03-19 05:53:47 -0400

50 signatures reached

2014-05-27 19:09:01 -0400

25 signatures reached

2013-12-10 06:23:07 -0500

10 signatures reached