1,000 signatures reached
To: Buckinghamshire Council
Buckinghamshire Council Stop Financing Fossil Fuels!
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNCIL – STOP FINANCING FOSSIL FUELS
Buckinghamshire Council is still backing the industries responsible for the climate crisis and pouring millions into the companies that are the major contributors to the climate emergency.
Bucks Council’s Pension Fund has £63 million invested in fossil fuels*.
Yet, Bucks Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. Councils have the responsibility to ensure local workers not only have a pension for their retirement, but also a future worth retiring into..
Halting the extraction and expansion of fossil fuels is a matter of survival for us all. Our local leaders must act now. It’s time our councils divest their pension funds and end their support for the companies driving the climate crisis, and instead invest our public money to generate both social and financial return.
Our Council needs to send a strong signal to fossil fuel companies that it will not continue to invest in the destruction of all our futures. Instead, they need to invest responsibly to create a sustainable future in which pension holders will NOT see “the collapse of our civilisations” (David Attenborough, 2018) . Avoiding this scenario requires urgent ambitious actions NOW!
Fossil fuels investments are also volatile investments, at risk of being ‘stranded assets’ that may lose value very rapidly – if Bucks Council fail to make wise investments NOW it will fall to ordinary council tax payers to fill the gap in the pensions fund.
It costs them nothing to make this change, and 5 councils have already committed to divest fully . Others are on the road for making such a commitment. It’s time to ask why our council hasn't. We call on Buckinghamshire to step up, take a lead and stop financing fossil fuels.
Why is this important?
CALL ON BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNCIL TO STOP INVESTING IN FOSSIL FUELS
The British public generally are rightly worried about climate change and biodiversity loss.
But do you know that UK pension funds enable more CO2 than the entire UK carbon footprint?
Halting the extraction and expansion of fossil fuels is a matter of survival for us all. Our local leaders must act now.
They may say they do better to stay invested with fossil fuel companies and challenge them from the inside, to transition into more sustainable activities. But, “shareholder engagement with fossil fuel companies has not, and will not, lead to change on the scale and in the timeframe necessary” . (Quigley et al, 2021)*
We call on Buckinghamshire to stop financing fossil fuels.
Start financing a sustainable future.
*https://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/sm6_divestment_report.pdf
