Divest Our Pensions Students at UMass, Harvard and all around the country have it right. It’s time to demand action on divestment from fossil fuel companies – both for moral and financial reasons. As a taxpayer I demand that the legislature act to divest the MA pension fund from fossil fuel companies and instead invest in renewable energy. Did you know that the MA State Pension Fund has lost a half billion dollars in one year from fossil fuel investment? It is time to conclude that fossil fuels are a bad financial investment. For moral and environmental reasons, we should not be investing the state pension fund in companies that promote an unhealthy planet and a non-sustainable future. Fossil fuel companies’ emissions are contributing to the impacts of climate change. Headlines from the news media in the last month continue to highlight the disastrous market for fossil fuels with articles such as “Oil Investors see $7.4 billion in Dividends Vanish” (Bloomberg Business), “Pension Funds Should Drop High Carbon Investments” (Investments and Pensions, Europe), “Biggest Wave yet of Oil Defaults Looms as Bust Intensifies (Bloomberg Business), and “U.S. Coal Giant Peabody Energy Files for Bankruptcy” (NPR). I urge you to contact your state representatives now and asking them to support divestment of the state pension fund from fossil fuels and investment in renewable energy. House Bill H2372, which would create a divestment commission to report on the advisability of divesting by the end of this year, is the only remaining bill that provides a path to divestment. Please ask your legislators to support H.2372 with amendments to get coal divestment started and to ensure that the composition of the commission is balanced.
Micky McKinley
Montague