Photo Credit: 350 Chicago
Washington trade unions, including UFCW and AFT, have begun organizing a campaign for the state to divest its pension and other funds from fossil fuels. As Jeff Johnson, a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and a longtime member of the LNS board recently wrote:
Climate change is a job killer, a budget killer, and a species killer. Every additional dollar invested in fossil fuels contributes to arable land becoming increasingly scarce; shrinking fresh water reserves; a further loss of jobs, lives, and property; and tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing for their lives.
There is a moral imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar invested in fossil fuels accelerates climate disaster.
There is an economic and budgetary imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar spent cleaning up climate disasters is a dollar not spent on education, health care, addressing poverty and inequality, affordable housing, or public safety. This, of course, translates into thousands of lost jobs and a declining quality of life for most of us.
There is a fiscal imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since fossil fuels are consistently underperforming other assets. Sometime in the future, fossil fuel assets will become stranded assets. Financial prudence should, if nothing else, dictate replacing underperforming fossil fuel assets with climate-affirming assets with a promise of higher returns.
We should dramatically reduce our public and private consumption of fossil fuels and divest our state funds and public and private union pension funds from fossil fuels as well.
There is still time left to make good choices. How about we save our assets and our asses at the same time.
For Jeff’s full article “Protecting Our Assets and Protecting Our Asses”: https://www.psara.org/copy-of-